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[NSW] Umihara Kawase Fresh!

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    [NSW] Umihara Kawase Fresh!

    I know the dwellers of the Switch thread want a full, in-depth review of Panty Party, but a game that's over after three hours requires attention to unravel all its hidden mechanics. In the meantime, Umihara Kawase Fresh! will suffice.
    Impressions are based on the Japanese version, which features English text; Nicalis will publish the game in EU and US this June.

    Fresh! is the fourth (kinda) installment in the Umihara Kawase series, and still stars Kawase as the main character. Unlike Sayonara, Kawase is the only playable character, although the case teases Cotton (from the eponymous series). Fresh! completely restyles the graphical appearance, though the stage is still composed by random blocks of various materials and populated by walking fishes.
    There's also a story: Kawase dreams of the place where the game is set and reaches it after a perilous journey (told in the opening cutscene). There she gets by by delivering food to the various inhabitants of the land. I can't say for sure, but this feels like a reboot of the series, Kawase appears as old as she was in Sayonara.
    The graphical style is nice, bright and colourful, and a complete set-up from Sayonara. It's still in full 3D and maybe you won't like the shifting point of view which makes platform depth visible, but I never had troubles understanding what I could walk or hook onto.

    The main mode of the game is called "Quest", and it's unlike any of the previous games. If you paid attention in the previous paragraph I said "stage", and that's because Fresh! is not composed by a series of self-contained stages with multiple exits, but rather a large word you can explore as you wish. Quest mode features several tasks (referred to as quests, of course) with different starting point and goal, and many quests will see Kawase retread old ground to reach, at times, new locations.
    This is a very drastic departure from the original and Sayonara, and one I'm not too fond of. I miss the simplicity of sidescrollers, and to reach certain location all you have are one or two paths, populated with the same challenges and enemies. Across the world there are camping sistes which work as checkpoints, and most quests are over within five minutes. Quest 30 and onward are longer and do require the knowledge of some advanced movement/grappling techniques, but there's no gradual introduction of these elements, from one moment to the next the game removes the "easy" path to reach the goal.
    A lot of quests can be completed with minimal grappling, you can take the longer and easier route to jump across platforms and climb on vines to reach everything. Sure that will look bad on your completion time, but for a large portion of what I've played, Fresh! never really required to learn grappling movement options aside the basic reel-in.

    Kawase now has a life and a hunger bar. The hunger bar drops as you move around, and once empty will affect the health. Without replenishing health, three or four hits will kill Kawase.
    Health and hunger can be replenished by cooking food and eating it. Fresh!'s world is full ob objects in addition to walking fishes, and everything Kawase reels in is transformed into ingredients for recipes you unlock as you progress through Quest mode. Food not only satiates hunger but also bestows special effects, like faster movement, better jump, or longer lure.

    You also get money by completing stages, and money is used to buy ingredients in the shop if you are running out if ingredients and don't feel like grinding quests for collectibles.
    Each time you complete a quest its time trial variant will be made available, and there you can't use items as your time will be uploaded on online leaderboards. Some stages also feature a "challenge" variant with stronger enemies and somewhat rearranged platforms.

    Controls work well, are tighter than Sayonara (on both 3DS and Vita) but not as tight as the original game. All the techniques are there: pendulum swing, vertical spring, lure dashing...even the giant tadpole makes its appearance in the only (for now?) boss stage, but here that thing has a lifebar and how to defeat it is much more straightforward than before.

    So far Umihara Kawase Fresh! is a fun game, but I'm not sold on the decision to have a single world for everything. It's better than Sayonara, but I'd say I still prefer the original over this one.

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