This is a game I've had my sights on for a LONG time. Like, since I saw it in Nintendo Power 7 years ago. Honestly, I really didn't know what to expect after waiting for so long, but I was very very pleasantly surprised with this great game.

The action is good. Hatsworth moves just about as fast as he needs to to maneuver the platforming and enemies, and you need to constantly be keeping your combos in mind in the later levels so you don't get squashed in and murderized, because this game is harrrd. I would say in terms of general difficulty, it's probably one of the hardest original DS games I've ever played.

In terms of gameplay, it's your standard jumping and platforming affair. You slowly get new powers like a wall jump and a dash move, but that's it in terms of your mobility. You use a cane/sword to combo up enemies, and once you kill an enemy it goes down to the puzzle screen. The puzzle game on bottom is just Panel De Pon. You match blocks and tiles to get up a puzzle bar which can restore your health, activate powerups, and if you get it all the way, you can activate it for a big invincible super-robot suit.

The game has character in spades from the uber-English Tea Land it's set around. Hatsworth and his myriad of enemies are all very silly, and the music is also great to compliment it. The story is nothing incredible, but the characters are written very entertainingly, and I'll say that I genuinely didn't expect the twist at the end.

Verdict: It's not the best platformer ever, but I really loved it. In my opinion, you'd be hard pressed to find a better 3rd party action game of this quality on the DS. It'll always remain in my heart around where Loco Roco 2 is: A very charismatic platformer that I'll remember forever :)

This game does a great job using the dual screens of the ds. The top screen shows you a platformer game where you control an old man. The bottom shows a match 3 puzzle. Enemies killed up top become enemy(or item) blocks below. As the match 3 puzzle continually adds new blocks, you have to make sure you don't let enemy blocks rise back up into the platformer world. Making matches charges a special meter to help with combat abilities.

I think that the platformer is pretty ok. I think that the match 3 is pretty basic. Yet somehow, together, they are better than the sum of their parts. Having to manage your puzzle to kill enemies and charge your special meter is a really enjoyable loop.

Main gripe from me is that it just sort of keeps trudging on and doesn't really innovate that much as it keeps going. You can slowly get money to upgrade your ability l, but enemies and levels get stronger and harder at the same or faster pace. This makes the upgrades feel more like I need to keep purchasing just the abilities I do use to keep up, and everything else goes to the wayside. Making my upgrades feel like I'm barely keeping pace with the game just feels bad. Killed the game for me after a while, but I did enjoy my time with the game up to that point.

Well this was an interesting game.
It's a neat concept, and the writing is really fun and silly. The bosses were pretty awesome as well. Hard, but I always felt I was making progress and I was able to beat them before too long. There are also a fair number of secrets to find, and it was really satisfying finding them.

However, I think this game falters in two places. One, the entire draw of the game. While the match three part is an interesting concept, in practice you just have to constantly interrupt the platforming in order to clear out some blocks. It's not always that bad, but especially with the later and harder levels, it got frustrating to have to suddenly shift focus from really precise maneuvering and combat just to clear blocks.

The other part is the level design. It started off pretty good, but already by world 3 it was getting really frustrating. Hard, and not in a fun way. The game would put hard to kill enemies in hard to attack spots with death pits all around you. Not to mention that even with as much attack power as possible, most enemies still take at least 2 hits, if not between 4 and 9 hits. This makes combat areas really unfair and annoying when you have a ton of really tanky enemies to hit. Not to mention most of the times those combat segments are usually at the ends of rooms, so if you die, you have to do the whole room again! It's super tedious, annoying, and not very well designed. This game feels like the kaizo version of itself.
Also, your ranged weapons require some meter to be filled that you fill by doing puzzle stuff. But the problem is, if you lose a certain amount of HP, it nearly completely drains that bar. So it ends up being that you have to play extremely well in most places, otherwise you'll die. It's exhausting.

I still think it was an interesting experience. There is definitely still stuff to like about the gameplay, and the music & graphics were amazing, but I was struggling to force myself to finish the game by the end.

Henry Hatsworth has a lot going for it, from the lighthearted goofiness of its plot and characters to its unique gameplay. The game has the player freely alternating between the platforming adventure on the top screen and the deceptively simple match-three puzzle game on the lower screen, the events in both affecting one another. Your aim is to get Henry in one piece across the dangerous stages in pursuit of a fabled suit with magical abilities, each collected piece of which provides a new game mechanic necessary for the road ahead.

I found the bosses to be more challenging and well designed than I expected, while the platforming sections were nothing to write home about at best, at worst sort of frustrating in moments.

It’s a good execution of its concept all told, and one of the games that took the hardware most seriously in its core design.