While in Nintendo’s area of the show floor at E3, there just so happened to be two lonely looking DS units just waiting for Anthony Burch and I to come to them and try out the demo of The Legendary Starfy. The Starfy games are one of the reasons why I’ve long envied Japan; I figured that they were just Kirby underwater, which excited me to no end. Really, as a huge Kirby fan, how could such a game possibly not be great?
The game certainly looked inviting, with its big, pretty sprites and such, but was it worth waiting all those years for Nintendo to bring one of Starfy’s games to the States? Is this one you’re going to want to pick up later on? You can go ahead and hit the jump to read our back-and-forth impressions on the game to see what we thought of the demo.
Ashley: So, after many years of Japan having a very cute looking game starring a starfish, he finally gets a slight name change and comes over to the states in The Legendary Starfy. The demo was just too cute for Anthony and I to resist. We were pulled in by the promise of adorable underwater adventures.
Anthony: We were.
Ashley: I had always heard that Starfy games were a lot like underwater Kirby, and that’s kinda true. I most certainly got a Kirby vibe off of what I played, but the game showed a lot more variety in gameplay. First there was a fetch quest, then a section where Starfy gets rolled up into a snowball, and then a boss. Who was a giant penguin whose weak spot was the bellybutton.
Anthony: Who was in 3D. Looked kinda like King Dedede, actually.
Ashley: But unlike Kirby, I found Starfy a little weird to control. Like, there seems to be a different button assigned to every different little thing.
Anthony: It was just B to swim, Y to attack. I didn’t find it all that confusing so much as just boring.
Ashley: And X to get through doors!
Anthony: Right, sorry.
Ashley: That’s tthe one that kept getting me. It may sound like a small thing, but I kept getting them mixed up.
Anthony: My issue was that it is boring as heck. Swim around in a Kirby-esque environment, spin into things, collect coins. Occasionally get out of the water.
Ashley: That too.
Anthony: Even that snowball sequence could have been really exhilirating, but you just hit B every once in a while to jump. You don’t even control the snowball.
Ashley: You don’t? I was pressing on the D pad thinking I was moving it.
Anthony: You were wasting your time. It moved no matter what.
Ashley: I think “You were wasting your time” about sums it up, I’m sad to say. I was expecting something so much more.
Anthony: Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of potential in this water/land dichotomy, but it was handled so shallowly that I wasn’t interested. The pacing was pretty humdrum, the stuff I was asked to do was boring, and the boss fight wasn’t terribly challenging.
Ashley: I wasn’t expecting a challenge, just some pure fun. But the game is definitely boring in the things it asks of you. Even the one transformation wasn’t that great just because there’s nothing in that area that you couldn’t do when not in the mouth of a seal.
Anthony: There was some glass to break, but it just led to a secret area full of more goddamn coins. And other than that you controlled in the exact same way except you didn’t have to press B to swim.
Ashley: It’s strange, because that’s how Kirby games operate. You can go through as normal Kirby, or you can use a powerup. But Starfy is just lacking.. something. I can’t put my finger on it.
Anthony: It doesn’t even try to plumb the depths of its core mechanics. It was just, “hey, here’s water, move around in it, collect stuff. You like collecting coins and shit, right? That’s what you assholes like?”
Ashley: That would be it. Thank you for being better at explaining things than me.
Anthony: I’m just more experienced at being negative.
Hey, does Starfy qualify as a first-party Nintendo character?
Ashley: Starfy qualifies as something I’d put up my dick.
