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A game you probably are more familiar with under the title of "The Game of Life," that board game is actually popular enough in Japan to have received Japan-specific editions as well as video games (of which this is one). I hadn't planned on picking this one up, but I'd heard it was quite neat and happened to find it at Book Off earlier in the month, so I figured I'd give it a try. Upon reflection, I actually had probably heard of the Taito-developed game released a year or so earlier, so I hadn't actually found the sick score I thought I had, but I bought what I bought, so I figured I might as well see what makes it tick XD. I played the game on real hardware, and I went through three games (two short, and one long) and spent about 11 hours doing it all, though I managed to win only the last of those games that I played (the 5+ hour long one).
There is no story to speak of, as this is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the board game. The additions present are largely in the execution of the gameplay experience, but the story is still the same. You start as a baby, and this game follows you through school and work all the way to the end of your life, and at the very end King Yama judges your soul and you get to see which part of the afterlife you end up in. It's just a board game, though, so it really doesn't need a story. The story is one you put together yourself as you rage at your friends for how much bullshit luck they happen into XD
The actual gameplay is really just The Game of Life, though it is a very noble attempt at trying to make that (bad) board game more interesting. You spin the spinner, you get good events and bad events, you decide to go to university or not and you get a job, you can get cards to use when you want. It's nothing that different from many versions of the game, at least as far as the base mechanics go. For the more advanced stuff, they've put in a small handful of mini-games which you get to play now and then to upgrade your stats. That's right, there are stats in this version, smarts, body, style, and morality, and you'll need higher stats to both get certain jobs as well as get promotions in those jobs. You can also get married and have kids (if you get lucky enough to land on the romance spaces and get lucky enough events with them), and you can also buy things like pets or real estate or find things like skills or items, though this is still The Game of Life. At the end of the day, everything comes down to money, as that's the game's only real method of totaling up your scores, and that's really where a lot of the faults come into play.
Now when we start talking about faults, we can't really ignore that, at its core, The Game of Life is a pretty boring board game. You can make little decisions here and there on how to use the special cards you find, what job to pick and when to change careers, and which path to take on the small handful of tiny forks in the road, but this is a game largely defined by how lucky each player gets and not much else. This isn't helped by just how badly the AI is at playing the game. They make utterly nonsensical choices constantly outside of cards with specific targets (which they always use to target the person in 1st place). They never buy real estate, and that's often going to be the metric that decides who wins, so they're actually really hard to lose to once you know what you're doing (especially because your standing only takes into account your current cash-on-hand total, not your net worth, for whatever reason). It's also really easy to get trapped into cycles of debt that are nearly impossible to get out of, as the game makes it VERY hard to get out of debt with your debt growing by 10% every payday regardless of your salary.
I could list a bunch more little problems here and there, but it all comes down to that playing by yourself is awful, and the way the game works overall makes it not terribly fun to play with friends either. It has procedurally generated boards, and you can even make your own boards and make your own characters to play as, both of which is quite neat. However, on my copy, character creation simply doesn't work, so take that for what you will. Games also take like 2+ hours to play at the absolute shortest, so even if you're just playing with one other person, get ready for the long haul if you're playing this game. That's right, it's not just boring, it's also VERY long too XD
The aesthetics, at the very least, are very nice. The 2D animations that play for your character during the good, bad, and otherwise events are very charmingly put together and it's always fun to see what weird nonsense is gonna befall your poor little fellas. The music isn't anything special, but it fits the tone of the game just fine, and the mini-games in particular have very fun little songs tied to them.
Verdict: Not Recommended. While this may be about as noble an attempt as is possible (outside of the nearly useless AI) to make The Game of Life an interesting and fun experience, but there's only so much that you can polish a turd XD. It's a neat curiosity on the N64, but it's also just such a crappy time that it's not worth much more than being a neat curiosity, and your time is probably better spent playing any of the other myriad of party games that are on this console.
There is no story to speak of, as this is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the board game. The additions present are largely in the execution of the gameplay experience, but the story is still the same. You start as a baby, and this game follows you through school and work all the way to the end of your life, and at the very end King Yama judges your soul and you get to see which part of the afterlife you end up in. It's just a board game, though, so it really doesn't need a story. The story is one you put together yourself as you rage at your friends for how much bullshit luck they happen into XD
The actual gameplay is really just The Game of Life, though it is a very noble attempt at trying to make that (bad) board game more interesting. You spin the spinner, you get good events and bad events, you decide to go to university or not and you get a job, you can get cards to use when you want. It's nothing that different from many versions of the game, at least as far as the base mechanics go. For the more advanced stuff, they've put in a small handful of mini-games which you get to play now and then to upgrade your stats. That's right, there are stats in this version, smarts, body, style, and morality, and you'll need higher stats to both get certain jobs as well as get promotions in those jobs. You can also get married and have kids (if you get lucky enough to land on the romance spaces and get lucky enough events with them), and you can also buy things like pets or real estate or find things like skills or items, though this is still The Game of Life. At the end of the day, everything comes down to money, as that's the game's only real method of totaling up your scores, and that's really where a lot of the faults come into play.
Now when we start talking about faults, we can't really ignore that, at its core, The Game of Life is a pretty boring board game. You can make little decisions here and there on how to use the special cards you find, what job to pick and when to change careers, and which path to take on the small handful of tiny forks in the road, but this is a game largely defined by how lucky each player gets and not much else. This isn't helped by just how badly the AI is at playing the game. They make utterly nonsensical choices constantly outside of cards with specific targets (which they always use to target the person in 1st place). They never buy real estate, and that's often going to be the metric that decides who wins, so they're actually really hard to lose to once you know what you're doing (especially because your standing only takes into account your current cash-on-hand total, not your net worth, for whatever reason). It's also really easy to get trapped into cycles of debt that are nearly impossible to get out of, as the game makes it VERY hard to get out of debt with your debt growing by 10% every payday regardless of your salary.
I could list a bunch more little problems here and there, but it all comes down to that playing by yourself is awful, and the way the game works overall makes it not terribly fun to play with friends either. It has procedurally generated boards, and you can even make your own boards and make your own characters to play as, both of which is quite neat. However, on my copy, character creation simply doesn't work, so take that for what you will. Games also take like 2+ hours to play at the absolute shortest, so even if you're just playing with one other person, get ready for the long haul if you're playing this game. That's right, it's not just boring, it's also VERY long too XD
The aesthetics, at the very least, are very nice. The 2D animations that play for your character during the good, bad, and otherwise events are very charmingly put together and it's always fun to see what weird nonsense is gonna befall your poor little fellas. The music isn't anything special, but it fits the tone of the game just fine, and the mini-games in particular have very fun little songs tied to them.
Verdict: Not Recommended. While this may be about as noble an attempt as is possible (outside of the nearly useless AI) to make The Game of Life an interesting and fun experience, but there's only so much that you can polish a turd XD. It's a neat curiosity on the N64, but it's also just such a crappy time that it's not worth much more than being a neat curiosity, and your time is probably better spent playing any of the other myriad of party games that are on this console.