The latest main instalment shifts the formula, with mixed results.

As I’ve been getting more into the Umihara Kawase series, the premise of Fresh interested me more. For one, there’s an actual story this time, with characters and dialogue! Also, rather than presenting a series of challenge rooms this puts the world in some kind of context, and has an open design. It’s sort of like the shift that happened with Super Monkey Ball Adventure, still the only one of those games I really connected with.

There’s parts of this approach that I really liked. Collecting ingredients is fun, although you end up stockpiling hoards of them in your bottomless backpack. They’re used to cook different food, more recipes for which unlock as you go, many of which give useful buffs (when I unlocked double jump I made sure it was almost permanently on). This ties into the health/hunger system, and it’s very nice not to die in one hit.

The game is still mission-based though, so you don’t really get to just explore the world. Also, many of the missions have you retreading over the same ground, so facing the same obstacles over and over can get dull. Still, the series’ central gimmick—the bouncy grapple lure—makes getting around a constant enjoyable challenge, and they’ve further refined it so it’s more possible than ever to pull off cool manoeuvres.

The story also gave me motivation to do every mission. There’s cute dialogue before and after each one with a series of adorable humanoid animals. There’s little relationship dramas, Kawase getting to know people better through her job as deliverer for the Return Pavilion, and the underlying intrigue of the seals and town’s history. Not to mention the mystery of why she’s there in the first place. To be frank, the game’s conclusion is a little vague and not everything is satisfactorily answered, but at least there’s a decent attempt at framing the character of Kawase and the strange dream world she finds herself in.

Apart from the 75 main game missions, there are time attacks if you’re so inclined and a set of much harder challenges, including remakes of the first and last levels of each of the three previous games. There’s also 7 missions each for the two guest characters: Cotton from Success’s series of shmups, and Curly Brace from Cave Story. It’s nice to have these cameos, and they have an extra ability each to shake up their playstyle slightly; you can also use them to mitigate the challenge missions, or even in main missions.

I bought the PC version, to avoid supporting Nicalis, but since their involvement is only with publishing the console ports Curly is only playable in those ports. They also did English localisation; the PC version only recently had one patched in, and Success’s effort is pretty unprofessional, a basic first-draft translation with no full-stops and those apostrophes with a space baked in. It’s fine though, it’s understandable. Either way you buy it is very expensive, so keep an eye out for a sale if you’re interested. And I do recommend it, as it’s probably the most accessible title in the series and the first one to feel like a full proper game rather than a charmingly odd tech demo (and I say that with a lot of love for the other games).