Of the great discoveries in the universe, few are more important than the legendary 8 elements. When the evil Rukifellth found one of these elements - the powerful Celestial Stone - he used his influence to assemble the dreaded BHB Army. Armed with his new army and a giant space warship, the power-crazed Rukifellth began scouring the galaxy for the other 7 elements, invading planets and enslaving innocent races throughout the galaxy. Rukifellth controls these enslaved planets with special Gravity Generators - the same devices the BHB Army used to create a Black Hole. Rukifellth uses his Black Hole to capture new planets... But he should have thought twice before he tried to capture Bomber Planet!
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I don't think I ever beat it, but my favourite of the N64 Bomberman games. I personally loved the more open levels and exploration, as well as a slightly less bare-bones story, compared to other games in the series. Also, getting all the different types of bombs and leveling up Pommy is a treat.
There are a lot of good ideas presented here that seemed to improve an idea of the sequel to the first game, but the execution brings it down a bit to the point where I couldn't enjoy this as much as Bomberman 64. I still enjoyed and appreciated some aspects to it.
I really liked the original Bomberman 64. It had a few flaws in a couple of areas, but I was more forgiving to it considering it was the first 3D adventure-style Bomberman. The main issue I had with Bomberman 64 was that the level design was okay if you weren't fully exploring the level for the 100%. You could beeline it to the end of a level without much challenge. In Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, this is the main thing they addressed, but not to the degree I like.
As opposed to the open-ended nature of levels in the original, levels are now structured like Zelda dungeons. I like this idea for a 3D Bomberman game that is based around exploring and puzzle solving. The more intricate level design actually puts you to the test without the need to go for 100%
While the "Dungeon puzzle" designs are fine and clever. The execution is not. The game has a lot of backtracking, which is fine for a game like this, but the problem is there are a lot of rooms that are locked and won't open until you beat all the enemies in that room. That is also a fine concept, it is done in Zelda too. The problem is that every time you leave and re-enter a room (which you will be doing a lot) the enemies are reset and the doors are locked again. And this happens so much, I can tell you it probably adds an unnecessary extra 2 hours to your playthrough.
For every level, if you die you start all the way back at the beginning. Sometimes with some of the puzzles already solved, but you have to track all the way to the point where you previously were. It is real easy to die with the fact that there are bottomless pits everywhere (insta-kill), so this also heavily takes momentum out of the game.
The original Bomberman 64 let you move the camera around which was a godsend in a game where you need to properly see all your enemies and aim your bombs carefully. This game does the genius idea of removing all camera control, so now you're stuck with a fixed camera and worse bomb aiming because of that, with the prone-ness to easily die now due to falling off things because of the bad fixed camera. The fixed camera also makes the game feel much less grandiose.
In regards to the gameplay itself, everything here feels slightly worse than it did than the original. Movement, charging bombs, throwing bombs, kicking etc. Everything feels more sluggish and less accurate. They really messed up what was fine to begin with controls. The biggest sin is how bombs are charged. Originally, you had to pump them up by mashing the A button, which would give you a satisfactory pumping animation. The faster you mash the faster it would pump. Now for this game, you have to hold the B button and it will slow grow. Keep in mind if you are next to a well, or your companion, the bomb won't grow at all for some reason. This makes charging infinitely less satisfying and made me want to avoid doing it.
The act of boming itself is much worse too. In the original 2D Bomberman games, you bomb would blow up in a '+' shape. This made sense for how the game is presented. For a 3D game, the + shape does not cut it. Good thing this was addressed immediately in the OG Bomberman 64 with the fact that the explosion is circular, but in this game it has been reverted back to the + shape. This is a bad idea with the fact that enemies move in a free 360 degree motion, as opposed to just a vertical or horizontal direction. Because of this, your bombs will now miss like 60% of the time.
You are given different bomb types this time around which act like new Zelda dungeon items. Each bomb fulfills a different purpose for solving puzzles, and enemies are weak to some more than others, but you will be using your Ice bombs 90% of the time as that is the only bomb that will blow up in a circular shape without charging it.
On top of all the annoying gameplay quirks that heavily bring the game down. There is a lot of unskippable dialogue, which I'm normally fine with in RPGs, but this is a Bomberman game. Like I don't wanna spend 5 minutes reading dialogue about "deep" Bomberman lore, c'mon.
This game on paper sounds like my ideal kind of Bomberman game, but it shows how even with the best ideas, bad execution can ruin something good. I still enjoyed the game for a single playthrough, and the best parts were going through these dungeon like levels, and figuring out the puzzles as you go along, but with everything else bringing the vibes down I just wanted this game to end.
If you want a REALLY good Bomberman Zelda-like though, go play Bomberman Quest on the Gameboy. That shit is as good as Link's Awakening let me tell ya.
I really liked the original Bomberman 64. It had a few flaws in a couple of areas, but I was more forgiving to it considering it was the first 3D adventure-style Bomberman. The main issue I had with Bomberman 64 was that the level design was okay if you weren't fully exploring the level for the 100%. You could beeline it to the end of a level without much challenge. In Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, this is the main thing they addressed, but not to the degree I like.
As opposed to the open-ended nature of levels in the original, levels are now structured like Zelda dungeons. I like this idea for a 3D Bomberman game that is based around exploring and puzzle solving. The more intricate level design actually puts you to the test without the need to go for 100%
While the "Dungeon puzzle" designs are fine and clever. The execution is not. The game has a lot of backtracking, which is fine for a game like this, but the problem is there are a lot of rooms that are locked and won't open until you beat all the enemies in that room. That is also a fine concept, it is done in Zelda too. The problem is that every time you leave and re-enter a room (which you will be doing a lot) the enemies are reset and the doors are locked again. And this happens so much, I can tell you it probably adds an unnecessary extra 2 hours to your playthrough.
For every level, if you die you start all the way back at the beginning. Sometimes with some of the puzzles already solved, but you have to track all the way to the point where you previously were. It is real easy to die with the fact that there are bottomless pits everywhere (insta-kill), so this also heavily takes momentum out of the game.
The original Bomberman 64 let you move the camera around which was a godsend in a game where you need to properly see all your enemies and aim your bombs carefully. This game does the genius idea of removing all camera control, so now you're stuck with a fixed camera and worse bomb aiming because of that, with the prone-ness to easily die now due to falling off things because of the bad fixed camera. The fixed camera also makes the game feel much less grandiose.
In regards to the gameplay itself, everything here feels slightly worse than it did than the original. Movement, charging bombs, throwing bombs, kicking etc. Everything feels more sluggish and less accurate. They really messed up what was fine to begin with controls. The biggest sin is how bombs are charged. Originally, you had to pump them up by mashing the A button, which would give you a satisfactory pumping animation. The faster you mash the faster it would pump. Now for this game, you have to hold the B button and it will slow grow. Keep in mind if you are next to a well, or your companion, the bomb won't grow at all for some reason. This makes charging infinitely less satisfying and made me want to avoid doing it.
The act of boming itself is much worse too. In the original 2D Bomberman games, you bomb would blow up in a '+' shape. This made sense for how the game is presented. For a 3D game, the + shape does not cut it. Good thing this was addressed immediately in the OG Bomberman 64 with the fact that the explosion is circular, but in this game it has been reverted back to the + shape. This is a bad idea with the fact that enemies move in a free 360 degree motion, as opposed to just a vertical or horizontal direction. Because of this, your bombs will now miss like 60% of the time.
You are given different bomb types this time around which act like new Zelda dungeon items. Each bomb fulfills a different purpose for solving puzzles, and enemies are weak to some more than others, but you will be using your Ice bombs 90% of the time as that is the only bomb that will blow up in a circular shape without charging it.
On top of all the annoying gameplay quirks that heavily bring the game down. There is a lot of unskippable dialogue, which I'm normally fine with in RPGs, but this is a Bomberman game. Like I don't wanna spend 5 minutes reading dialogue about "deep" Bomberman lore, c'mon.
This game on paper sounds like my ideal kind of Bomberman game, but it shows how even with the best ideas, bad execution can ruin something good. I still enjoyed the game for a single playthrough, and the best parts were going through these dungeon like levels, and figuring out the puzzles as you go along, but with everything else bringing the vibes down I just wanted this game to end.
If you want a REALLY good Bomberman Zelda-like though, go play Bomberman Quest on the Gameboy. That shit is as good as Link's Awakening let me tell ya.
Known in the West as Bomberman 64: The Second Attack, it's always been weird to me how this is often a 500 yen game in Japan but in the West it's easily in the $200-range. So last weekend I finally took the plunge on giving this game a go, as I'm really in the mood for some N64 stuff, I suppose. Now, I eventually realized with the help of TCRF that the Japanese and American versions are significantly different, and that was further driven home by looking at the HLTB time. The HLTB time for just beating the game was 6.5 hours, and this game easily took me over 20 hours to finish with the good ending in Japanese XD. This was definitely a game I didn't wanna let beat me, but it certainly was never something quite as bad as Maken X.
Baku Bomberman 2 is another in the series of more action-adventure spins on the Bomberman formula that Hudson became so obsessed with in the 5th console generation, and the 3rd of such games on the N64. Bomberman found an egg at some point and he brought it with him because he thought it was cool. Then, flying along in his spaceship, he gets sucked into a black hole and captured by a mysterious group known as the B.H.B. Gang. The egg hatches to reveal Pomyu, a little Kirby-like (extremely Kirby-like) alien who was just napping inside the egg and whom Bomberman has effectively unintentionally kidnapped XD. They fight a sentai-esque bad guy to escape this prison planet and begin their mission to fight the Seven Elemental Knights (the heads of the B.H.B.), destroy the black hole generators, and escape from this black hole dimension.
There's a really weird amount of text in this game for a Bomberman game, but I wouldn't say it's all bad. Some of it is quite weird, like there being a good and bad ending for the game each with its own final boss (and the conditions for activating each ending are just how you defeat the sub-boss in the final mission), and the credits being like 15-20 minutes long with the cutscene that happens after the final battle. Some of it is also quite funny, like how the Seven Elemental Knights all seem to hate each other and never get along despite being part of the same organization XD. But for the most part, it's silly, sentai fun with Bomberman fighting different campy elemental-themed bad guys. It's nothing to write home about, sure, but it's not a drag on the game either.
The game itself is made up of 8 stages which have a first and second part, with each part split by a boss fight against one of the Seven Elemental Knights. You beat a Knight, then use the new element you get from it to solve more puzzles between that and the puzzle room at the end where you need to destroy the black hole generator. The platforming (although given that Bomberman can't really jump, it's kinda odd to call them that) sections are generally pretty fun. Some of the puzzles are signposted terribly (particularly one in the final level regarding a lava pit), and I had to look up what to do/where to go more than once, but it has the same basic powerups of bombs, power, speed, remote detonation, throw, and kick that Bomberman usually has. If you keep an eye out and return to some past stages, you can even get armor that permanently gives you the throw, kick, and remote detonation powers! Although the remote detonation does deactivate during boss battles, unfortunately.
And the boss battles are the best but worst parts of the game, largely for reasons that were thankfully fixed in the English version. The bosses tend to have at least two forms, and all of them have a sort of super saiyan-looking charge up move they do when they get to low health that will instantly kill you if they hit you (ouch). The biggest problem the bosses have, in either version (so far as I can tell) is that their invincibility frames are utterly unfair garbage (particularly the wind boss). It makes hitting them really awkward and difficult to do, and that's already a difficult task when you have to hit them with only bombs that you can't remotely detonate. They're thankfully learnable and for the most part do have readable patterns.
I would say the final boss of the good ending is one of the best fights in the game in that regard. I was on voice chat with a friend at the time, and upon beating it I told her "this must be what people who like Dark Souls feel like with those games" with just how proud I was of myself that I stuck through it, learned the patterns, and conquered that final challenge. But there are also some bosses, most notably the final boss of the bad ending, who have nearly (or outright) undodgeable attacks and are horrible, unfun fights (the reason I went for the good ending in the first place is because I didn't see myself ever beating that bastard). On the whole, I would say the boss fights are the highlights of the game, but a combination of weird I-frames and sometimes painful backtracking to their locations sours that a fair bit.
Now would be as good a time as ever to clarify the significant changes made to the Western port of this game and explain the large differences between the HLTB times. One of the first big changes is that the Western game has a life system. While this may sound bad at first, the weird way it's implemented means it makes the game a lot easier and at the very least saves you a lot of time. In the Japanese version, whenever you die, you get a continue screen where you can back out to the world map (and lose all progress in the level) or continue from your last checkpoint (usually either the start of the level, or just after beating the mid-boss). There's also a really mean and unnecessary countdown timer on that screen that more than once sent me totally out of a level because I forgot it was there and looked away for a little bit too long XP. But in the Japanese version, you always lose your powerups when you activate one of these infinite continues. In the Western version, as long as you have an extra life to expend, you keep your powerups. This means you spend a lot less time going around re-collecting them before boss fights and hard enemy rooms.
The most significant change, however, is definitely the fact that Bomberman simply moves far faster in the Western release of the game. In the Japanese version, with a speed powerup (as only the first one you collect seems to do anything), you're just about barely fast enough to dodge what's coming at you, particularly in boss fights. The reason the bad ending final boss is so hard is that he has a rapid laser fire move that you just aren't fast enough to dodge, and lots of bosses have attacks that you need to barely juke them out of by doing hard-corners since they're so much faster than you when they do faster attacks. Moving faster means you not only die to bosses less (since you can dodge easier), but you also just move through the levels a lot faster too (it's genuinely like 75% to 100% faster than the Japanese version). For example, you can actually run fast enough to dodge the bad ending final boss' laser attacks in the Western version, where that just isn't ever possible in Japanese.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. While I did complain a fair bit about this game to friends over Discord and Slack in the course of playing it, I stuck with it because I was genuinely enjoying my time with it and really wanted to see it through to the end (even if that was at least partially because I just didn't want the game to beat me XD). The game isn't impossible in Japanese, but from everything I researched, the Western release definitely seems to be the version to go with if you're gonna play it. It's a 3D game typically rough for this time period, but it's closer to the "still enjoyable" end of the 3D-jank spectrum of 5th generation games. Certainly not for everyone, but worth a try via emulation if you want something a little different, and especially if you enjoyed the other N64 Bomberman games at all.
Baku Bomberman 2 is another in the series of more action-adventure spins on the Bomberman formula that Hudson became so obsessed with in the 5th console generation, and the 3rd of such games on the N64. Bomberman found an egg at some point and he brought it with him because he thought it was cool. Then, flying along in his spaceship, he gets sucked into a black hole and captured by a mysterious group known as the B.H.B. Gang. The egg hatches to reveal Pomyu, a little Kirby-like (extremely Kirby-like) alien who was just napping inside the egg and whom Bomberman has effectively unintentionally kidnapped XD. They fight a sentai-esque bad guy to escape this prison planet and begin their mission to fight the Seven Elemental Knights (the heads of the B.H.B.), destroy the black hole generators, and escape from this black hole dimension.
There's a really weird amount of text in this game for a Bomberman game, but I wouldn't say it's all bad. Some of it is quite weird, like there being a good and bad ending for the game each with its own final boss (and the conditions for activating each ending are just how you defeat the sub-boss in the final mission), and the credits being like 15-20 minutes long with the cutscene that happens after the final battle. Some of it is also quite funny, like how the Seven Elemental Knights all seem to hate each other and never get along despite being part of the same organization XD. But for the most part, it's silly, sentai fun with Bomberman fighting different campy elemental-themed bad guys. It's nothing to write home about, sure, but it's not a drag on the game either.
The game itself is made up of 8 stages which have a first and second part, with each part split by a boss fight against one of the Seven Elemental Knights. You beat a Knight, then use the new element you get from it to solve more puzzles between that and the puzzle room at the end where you need to destroy the black hole generator. The platforming (although given that Bomberman can't really jump, it's kinda odd to call them that) sections are generally pretty fun. Some of the puzzles are signposted terribly (particularly one in the final level regarding a lava pit), and I had to look up what to do/where to go more than once, but it has the same basic powerups of bombs, power, speed, remote detonation, throw, and kick that Bomberman usually has. If you keep an eye out and return to some past stages, you can even get armor that permanently gives you the throw, kick, and remote detonation powers! Although the remote detonation does deactivate during boss battles, unfortunately.
And the boss battles are the best but worst parts of the game, largely for reasons that were thankfully fixed in the English version. The bosses tend to have at least two forms, and all of them have a sort of super saiyan-looking charge up move they do when they get to low health that will instantly kill you if they hit you (ouch). The biggest problem the bosses have, in either version (so far as I can tell) is that their invincibility frames are utterly unfair garbage (particularly the wind boss). It makes hitting them really awkward and difficult to do, and that's already a difficult task when you have to hit them with only bombs that you can't remotely detonate. They're thankfully learnable and for the most part do have readable patterns.
I would say the final boss of the good ending is one of the best fights in the game in that regard. I was on voice chat with a friend at the time, and upon beating it I told her "this must be what people who like Dark Souls feel like with those games" with just how proud I was of myself that I stuck through it, learned the patterns, and conquered that final challenge. But there are also some bosses, most notably the final boss of the bad ending, who have nearly (or outright) undodgeable attacks and are horrible, unfun fights (the reason I went for the good ending in the first place is because I didn't see myself ever beating that bastard). On the whole, I would say the boss fights are the highlights of the game, but a combination of weird I-frames and sometimes painful backtracking to their locations sours that a fair bit.
Now would be as good a time as ever to clarify the significant changes made to the Western port of this game and explain the large differences between the HLTB times. One of the first big changes is that the Western game has a life system. While this may sound bad at first, the weird way it's implemented means it makes the game a lot easier and at the very least saves you a lot of time. In the Japanese version, whenever you die, you get a continue screen where you can back out to the world map (and lose all progress in the level) or continue from your last checkpoint (usually either the start of the level, or just after beating the mid-boss). There's also a really mean and unnecessary countdown timer on that screen that more than once sent me totally out of a level because I forgot it was there and looked away for a little bit too long XP. But in the Japanese version, you always lose your powerups when you activate one of these infinite continues. In the Western version, as long as you have an extra life to expend, you keep your powerups. This means you spend a lot less time going around re-collecting them before boss fights and hard enemy rooms.
The most significant change, however, is definitely the fact that Bomberman simply moves far faster in the Western release of the game. In the Japanese version, with a speed powerup (as only the first one you collect seems to do anything), you're just about barely fast enough to dodge what's coming at you, particularly in boss fights. The reason the bad ending final boss is so hard is that he has a rapid laser fire move that you just aren't fast enough to dodge, and lots of bosses have attacks that you need to barely juke them out of by doing hard-corners since they're so much faster than you when they do faster attacks. Moving faster means you not only die to bosses less (since you can dodge easier), but you also just move through the levels a lot faster too (it's genuinely like 75% to 100% faster than the Japanese version). For example, you can actually run fast enough to dodge the bad ending final boss' laser attacks in the Western version, where that just isn't ever possible in Japanese.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. While I did complain a fair bit about this game to friends over Discord and Slack in the course of playing it, I stuck with it because I was genuinely enjoying my time with it and really wanted to see it through to the end (even if that was at least partially because I just didn't want the game to beat me XD). The game isn't impossible in Japanese, but from everything I researched, the Western release definitely seems to be the version to go with if you're gonna play it. It's a 3D game typically rough for this time period, but it's closer to the "still enjoyable" end of the 3D-jank spectrum of 5th generation games. Certainly not for everyone, but worth a try via emulation if you want something a little different, and especially if you enjoyed the other N64 Bomberman games at all.
It's impossible to be upset at Bomberman. He's Bomberman, look at him!! It's also kinda hard to be mad at his little friend Pommy, even though I want to be. And therefore, I find it impossible to say I truly disliked this game, or think it was some kind of mistake, even though I had to drag myself through it.
Let's talk about aesthetics first. Following in the footsteps of the other Bomberman games on N64, this game has some truly exceptional music, with talented and recognizable names on board. What's more, after you've defeated the boss on each planet (which comes a fair bit before you'll actually be done with a given planet), more instrumentation gets added to the world's music track, which is a really fun detail. The level and enemy themes also work pretty well, and are substantially more interesting than the first Bomberman 64's rather generic areas, taking you from a casino planet to an apocalyptic city in the midst of a zombie outbreak and gang war. Overall, the simplistic style of the Bomberman universe and character design ethos is a perfect fit for the N64's limitations, leading to a game with plenty of visual charm.
The thing that stands out to me most about this game is its ambition. There's an unexpectedly detailed JRPG styled story, complete with extreme stakes, and a surprising amount of dialogue. Believe it or not, I enjoy when otherwise "simple" franchises attempt this sort of thing now and then. The story and structure actually reminded me a LOT of Super Paper Mario, which for me is one of the highest compliments I could give something. I want to love this! The main baddie is an emo cowboy and there are are interstitial "at the villain's lair" segments, gosh darn it!! The problem is that most of the characters' personalities are one-note, if there's a discernible note at all, without enough there to justify their amount of dialogue or the gravity with which the plot later wants to treat them. Still, I'm not going to fault them for trying, and it was fun.
The game's structure is puzzle-dungeon based, and solving problems with the various elemental bombs you're given (and there are a LOT by the end of the game) can be quite fun. That said, with so many options, certain solutions can just as much feel like a guessing game. Why do my super-overpowered earth bombs not destroy this gate, but my basic fire bombs do?
All of the pieces were in place for a game I would actually appreciate and love, and about halfway through it, I was ready to say this was my favorite Bomberman game on N64, despite its flaws. But over time, the game's innate problems just started to build up more and more to a degree where I no longer wanted to play the game, and forced myself through it. (This echoed the two GameFAQs guides I occasionally consulted, one of which was less than half complete, and the other in which the author had to recruit others to help with later sections as they did not finish it personally.)
First of all, each level consists of a series of lots of little rooms, and enemies will respawn when you leave a room and re-enter. This makes backtracking for exploration or puzzle-solving a massive pain. But what's more, the game frequently uses the classic Zelda dungeon structure where you'll have to defeat all the enemies in a given room before the doors will unlock and you can move on. This means you'll have to be fighting through the same rooms again and again- and this means patience, placing bombs, waiting for them to explode, trying not to get hit or blow yourself up in often cramped spaces.
Oh, and the only time you can save is when you beat a level. The levels are LONG. So, you want to get started on a planet? Get comfy and grab a drink; you're gonna be there a WHILE. You'd best commit. Granted, I'm a very slow gamer, but I don't think there was any planet that took me under an hour. (An hour of praying my N64 wasn't going to crash, as it sometimes does.) Once you figure out what to do, it'd be much faster, but finding out how to make progress can stop you in your tracks for a bit.
The checkpointing in the levels is the major source of the time sink. Some levels are structured in such a way that you can open up shortcuts and paths for yourself which can be utilized between lives, but this is very often not the case, and any death will result in you having to redo quite a bit, including certain puzzles which might involve pushing statues around or the like. AND THEN, when the game DOES give you a legitimate checkpoint (as in a change of where you respawn), it's often so unhelpful as to be almost insulting, maybe just a room or two out from your previous spawn point.
Aside from these major structural issues, there are a number of smaller frustrations that add up. In addition to the plentiful amount of "power-downs" that spawn as pickups, there are enemies that, if they hit you, will remove all your power-ups in
a given category (bomb number, bomb strength, or movement speed), rendering Bomberman instantly weak or- worst of all- extremely slow, until you find some boxes to blow up that will tediously get you back to where you were before.
Now imagine all that combined with how many things in this game can insta-kill you, from spikes to water and lava (that you have to build bridges over while trying not to harm yourself in the process because every chunk of an ice bridge is itself formed from an exploding bomb) to simply miscalculating your wind-bomb-blast as you propel yourself over a pit. Or falling into a pit because there was a small hole you couldn't even see.
All of these issues add up to a game that feels extremely punishing, but Bomberman's little friend Pommy is an aspect that COULD make an unfriendly game much friendlier. Based on food you find in the world, he can evolve into a number of really cute designs, and later evolutions can damage enemies for you (while earlier ones will just stun them and frankly, he will be mostly useless). The problem is, on a regular playthrough, both me and my partner and the random person whose let's play I watched and the OTHER random person whose cutscene collection I watched, never got past his second form. The amount of grinding for food you'd have to do to get Pommy into a state where he's actually useful doesn't seem to happen naturally over most playthroughs.
Pommy can be controlled by a second player, and could potentially be useful at strategically stunning enemies even in earlier forms, but for the vast majority of people who aren't going to be able to recruit a friend or loved one into playing Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! with them, he pretty much just gets in the way and spends most of the time stunned himself.
But the absolute worst thing that happened to me is that I completed all the requirements to get the good ending and "true" final boss, but due to extreme bad luck in the final level, had something happen which locked me into the bad ending anyway, and which I would have had to replay about half the level to revert (and even then there's a chance it could have happened again, with save-scumming not being an option). I don't want to spoil the details, but that's a thing that can happen and you might want to look it up before going in. So I accepted my bad ending, complete with bad final boss which seems to actually be more difficult than the other one, and just watched the good ending on Youtube. I was ready to be done.
Upon writing this review, while re-listening to this game's soundtrack, I decided to bump it up from a two and a half to a three on sheer ambition. This is a strange, unique game that very few people have played or even know about. Even some people (including myself until the past few years) who've heard of it assume that it was only released in Japan. The game deserves love and praise for some of its mechanics and the amount of care they put into certain details. Like I mentioned above, I would rather a game be ambitious in its story and structure than a franchise constantly playing it safe. I just really, really wish it wasn't dragged down by so much frustrating nonsense, leading to an overall experience that's very hard to recommend. Even Bomberman seems to spend most of this game being either confused or pissed off.
Let's talk about aesthetics first. Following in the footsteps of the other Bomberman games on N64, this game has some truly exceptional music, with talented and recognizable names on board. What's more, after you've defeated the boss on each planet (which comes a fair bit before you'll actually be done with a given planet), more instrumentation gets added to the world's music track, which is a really fun detail. The level and enemy themes also work pretty well, and are substantially more interesting than the first Bomberman 64's rather generic areas, taking you from a casino planet to an apocalyptic city in the midst of a zombie outbreak and gang war. Overall, the simplistic style of the Bomberman universe and character design ethos is a perfect fit for the N64's limitations, leading to a game with plenty of visual charm.
The thing that stands out to me most about this game is its ambition. There's an unexpectedly detailed JRPG styled story, complete with extreme stakes, and a surprising amount of dialogue. Believe it or not, I enjoy when otherwise "simple" franchises attempt this sort of thing now and then. The story and structure actually reminded me a LOT of Super Paper Mario, which for me is one of the highest compliments I could give something. I want to love this! The main baddie is an emo cowboy and there are are interstitial "at the villain's lair" segments, gosh darn it!! The problem is that most of the characters' personalities are one-note, if there's a discernible note at all, without enough there to justify their amount of dialogue or the gravity with which the plot later wants to treat them. Still, I'm not going to fault them for trying, and it was fun.
The game's structure is puzzle-dungeon based, and solving problems with the various elemental bombs you're given (and there are a LOT by the end of the game) can be quite fun. That said, with so many options, certain solutions can just as much feel like a guessing game. Why do my super-overpowered earth bombs not destroy this gate, but my basic fire bombs do?
All of the pieces were in place for a game I would actually appreciate and love, and about halfway through it, I was ready to say this was my favorite Bomberman game on N64, despite its flaws. But over time, the game's innate problems just started to build up more and more to a degree where I no longer wanted to play the game, and forced myself through it. (This echoed the two GameFAQs guides I occasionally consulted, one of which was less than half complete, and the other in which the author had to recruit others to help with later sections as they did not finish it personally.)
First of all, each level consists of a series of lots of little rooms, and enemies will respawn when you leave a room and re-enter. This makes backtracking for exploration or puzzle-solving a massive pain. But what's more, the game frequently uses the classic Zelda dungeon structure where you'll have to defeat all the enemies in a given room before the doors will unlock and you can move on. This means you'll have to be fighting through the same rooms again and again- and this means patience, placing bombs, waiting for them to explode, trying not to get hit or blow yourself up in often cramped spaces.
Oh, and the only time you can save is when you beat a level. The levels are LONG. So, you want to get started on a planet? Get comfy and grab a drink; you're gonna be there a WHILE. You'd best commit. Granted, I'm a very slow gamer, but I don't think there was any planet that took me under an hour. (An hour of praying my N64 wasn't going to crash, as it sometimes does.) Once you figure out what to do, it'd be much faster, but finding out how to make progress can stop you in your tracks for a bit.
The checkpointing in the levels is the major source of the time sink. Some levels are structured in such a way that you can open up shortcuts and paths for yourself which can be utilized between lives, but this is very often not the case, and any death will result in you having to redo quite a bit, including certain puzzles which might involve pushing statues around or the like. AND THEN, when the game DOES give you a legitimate checkpoint (as in a change of where you respawn), it's often so unhelpful as to be almost insulting, maybe just a room or two out from your previous spawn point.
Aside from these major structural issues, there are a number of smaller frustrations that add up. In addition to the plentiful amount of "power-downs" that spawn as pickups, there are enemies that, if they hit you, will remove all your power-ups in
a given category (bomb number, bomb strength, or movement speed), rendering Bomberman instantly weak or- worst of all- extremely slow, until you find some boxes to blow up that will tediously get you back to where you were before.
Now imagine all that combined with how many things in this game can insta-kill you, from spikes to water and lava (that you have to build bridges over while trying not to harm yourself in the process because every chunk of an ice bridge is itself formed from an exploding bomb) to simply miscalculating your wind-bomb-blast as you propel yourself over a pit. Or falling into a pit because there was a small hole you couldn't even see.
All of these issues add up to a game that feels extremely punishing, but Bomberman's little friend Pommy is an aspect that COULD make an unfriendly game much friendlier. Based on food you find in the world, he can evolve into a number of really cute designs, and later evolutions can damage enemies for you (while earlier ones will just stun them and frankly, he will be mostly useless). The problem is, on a regular playthrough, both me and my partner and the random person whose let's play I watched and the OTHER random person whose cutscene collection I watched, never got past his second form. The amount of grinding for food you'd have to do to get Pommy into a state where he's actually useful doesn't seem to happen naturally over most playthroughs.
Pommy can be controlled by a second player, and could potentially be useful at strategically stunning enemies even in earlier forms, but for the vast majority of people who aren't going to be able to recruit a friend or loved one into playing Bomberman 64: The Second Attack! with them, he pretty much just gets in the way and spends most of the time stunned himself.
But the absolute worst thing that happened to me is that I completed all the requirements to get the good ending and "true" final boss, but due to extreme bad luck in the final level, had something happen which locked me into the bad ending anyway, and which I would have had to replay about half the level to revert (and even then there's a chance it could have happened again, with save-scumming not being an option). I don't want to spoil the details, but that's a thing that can happen and you might want to look it up before going in. So I accepted my bad ending, complete with bad final boss which seems to actually be more difficult than the other one, and just watched the good ending on Youtube. I was ready to be done.
Upon writing this review, while re-listening to this game's soundtrack, I decided to bump it up from a two and a half to a three on sheer ambition. This is a strange, unique game that very few people have played or even know about. Even some people (including myself until the past few years) who've heard of it assume that it was only released in Japan. The game deserves love and praise for some of its mechanics and the amount of care they put into certain details. Like I mentioned above, I would rather a game be ambitious in its story and structure than a franchise constantly playing it safe. I just really, really wish it wasn't dragged down by so much frustrating nonsense, leading to an overall experience that's very hard to recommend. Even Bomberman seems to spend most of this game being either confused or pissed off.
the BEST bomberman game no question!!!!!
-Story mode director Naoki Yoshida is the director of Final Fantasy 14.
-For the composers: Yasunori Mitsudaalso did the music for Xenogears, Yoshitaka Hirota worked on Shadow Hearts, while Tomori Kudo and Hiroyo Yamanaka worked on Xenoblade.
-There's money and a shop to buy stat upgrades.
-There's a monster sidekick, Pommy, who you can evolve into multiple forms by giving different kinds of food.
-Attacks are elemental and enemies have weaknesses.
-Character names are based on Christian texts like Lilith, Angel, Bulzeeb, Baelfael, etc.
-Costs over $200 on ebay.
-Final boss is God.
Yep, this is a JRPG.
-For the composers: Yasunori Mitsudaalso did the music for Xenogears, Yoshitaka Hirota worked on Shadow Hearts, while Tomori Kudo and Hiroyo Yamanaka worked on Xenoblade.
-There's money and a shop to buy stat upgrades.
-There's a monster sidekick, Pommy, who you can evolve into multiple forms by giving different kinds of food.
-Attacks are elemental and enemies have weaknesses.
-Character names are based on Christian texts like Lilith, Angel, Bulzeeb, Baelfael, etc.
-Costs over $200 on ebay.
-Final boss is God.
Yep, this is a JRPG.