Of all the Junior Arcade games I've played so far, this one feels the most like a game. It still struggles with some cheap level design and mechanics it just straight up doesn't explain (but I think the latter is actually mostly a good thing), but it features real gameplay to learn and exploit. In order to beat the game you MUST know how to beat the enemy AI and how to best route each level

Do yourself a favor though and play the last 5 levels with infinite lives and/or infinite bubbles though, will literally save you hours

So Humongous Entertainment really should have just stuck to making point and click adventure games if this is their output when trying something new.

Where do I even begin with this game. For starters, the AI is absolutely brutal for a kids game. There's only 1 enemy in the game with a recognizable movement pattern that you can memorize and figure out how to move around. All of the others just find the quickest path straight to you, even if it means camping the same spot for a long time. You only have 2 defenses for this, neither of which are guaranteed to be in any given level. There's a bubble shield that is given for a limited time and makes you invincible. When you run over an enemy, they're stunned for a short time allowing you to swim past them. There's also bubble projectiles that trap enemies in bubbles, which does basically the same thing but you have to actually fire the bubbles. This wouldn't be so bad if there weren't times the bubble just goes past an enemy. You can also use boulders to stun them, but given enemies are more often behind you instead of in front, it rarely works out. These problems can be made less annoying with some in-game cheats to give you infinite lives and infinite bubbles, but I don't think this should be relied on as a crutch to even finish the game.

Then there's the controls. You have 2 ways to control Freddi and neither of them work out well. You can use the arrow keys (no way to change it to WASD) and clicking where you want to go. Clicking doesn't really work cause Freddi's pathfinding has a very weird view of where you click if it's more than directly in front of her. There were so many deaths and game overs to me clicking right next to her to tell her to turn and she'd just turn around and ram straight into an enemy. Clicking also comes with this annoying noise with every click, so get used to hearing it. Arrow keys also barely respond from what I've tried. Oh and remember those bubbles you fire I mentioned earlier? Guess what they're mapped to? Right click so you can just use the mouse the entire game? Nope. Space bar so it's on the same level as the arrow keys? Nope. It's the enter key. This is so uncomfortable and you pretty much have to use the bubble projectiles if you don't want to pull your hair out, especially in the later levels.

Oh yeah the level design. It's fine to start out, but by the halfway point it's just enemy spamming and having to run back and forth across the entire map just to get through a couple doors. This is beyond tedious and just made me want to hurry up and finish the game.

So yeah I recommend skipping this one. I can't speak for the other Freddi Fish arcade game since I have yet to finish that one at the time of writing, but honestly just stick to the mainline adventure games.