Returning with another Cringetober game, I play this one that I chose for the same reason as many of the others. That it looks all pinky and girly and see exactly how bad it is.

Now, I'm not a fan of the show and I felt that the game was an ok ARPG like Zelda, or more apt, Alcahest for the SNES that I did also stream. No real complex bits to levelling up from what I remember but the story covers the TV show by showing off various moments with short clips after boss fights or when progressing to a major part of the story.

Gameplay/Stream

What are your expectations from Winx Club for Game Boy Advance? Is it a hidden pile of trash or a hidden diamond? The answer is DRUM RO-it's bad. Winx Club is an unimpressive top down action game.

You control Bloom in a story that follows the first season of the animated series. You can jump which is useful in certain areas like climbing up a ledge or jumping over some obstacle, but it feels more like a scripted event because there’s no skill involved in using this action, there's no pits to fall off or anything. You can also shoot projectiles to defeat the enemies, and said enemies are pretty annoying to deal with. The combat is not that great to begin with, you can’t strafe so you either shoot and move towards the enemy or just hope you’re facing the enemy when standing still. You can also use a shield cloak ability but I honestly didn’t find a use for it in actual combat. Lastly, you can charge your attack for a few seconds, making a more powerful torrent of fire, however when performing this action, you’re a sitting duck, and the enemies can just move out of the way, limiting it’s usefulness. The bosses are all pretty pathetic and don’t display any intelligent behavior. You can easily exploit them by making them run into a wall in a back and forth dance. They won’t try to run along the wall, they’ll continue running into a wall, then back away a little, then run back into it, making them very easy to pick off. During boss battles, you can summon Bloom’s friends to aid in battle once a special meter has been filled, but they’re made redundant thanks to the tasty cheese.

When you’re out of the first level in the park, you’re transported to Alfea, which will act as a main hub of the game, and where you’ll have to do a few tasks before moving onto the next level, and you can also take on a few side quests to find key items in different levels, though these are optional. This area reveals another issue I have with the game – the movement speed is atrocious. There’s no way to run, so you’re stuck slowly walking to your destination. On the bright side, the game does tell you your next objective by bringing a menu via Select and moving to the objectives tab with L/R, though I wish I found this earlier because I did end up wandering aimlessly which contributed to my frustration with the movement speed.

Aside from combat and fetch questing, the game also features some very basic stealth segments. Just don’t touch the enemy’s scan area and you’re golden. As you can imagine, they aren’t much fun. In fact, the only part I thought had any semblance of fun was one part in Ice Caverns, towards the end where you have to solve a few riddles, in my opinion this is the only section in the entire game that required some skill to get through, which is logical thinking. There are extra collectibles you can find in the game, fireflies that upgrade your abilities, usually you’ll find them by shaking bushes and, oddly enough, barrels, though not every single one contains those items and the procedure of checking every single object isn’t that fun. The game does make an audible cue when you’re near something interactable, be it an NPC or said object, so you don’t have to mash a button for everything in the game, this isn’t like a traditional RPG like Final Fantasy VI or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone GBC, where you can find goodies by mashing a button in every corner you can think of. Aside from fireflies, there are low-res photos that can be found or awarded for special occasions.

Graphically, the game is a mixed bag. The human characters feature large heads and small bodies, but they don’t look all that great if I’m being honest, they aren’t cure chibis, that’s for sure, and there are some characters that have normal proportions, making them stand out, in this example, Knut, the yellow guy to the right looks fine. The backgrounds on the other hand are pretty decent, Alfea itself gives me The Legend of Zelda vibes, and other areas don’t look too bad either. The game also features animated clips from the cartoon, and they’re as low quality as you’d expect, a potato put into microwave put into fridge type of quality. The music is also average, there are few memorable tunes, and even if there are decent songs, they’re usually pretty short, looping quickly so you won’t listen to them for long.

Once I defeated the three antagonist witches, the game features probably the saddest ending I’ve ever seen, it’s just a text scroll and no music. I think it’s supposed to be a bad ending because I didn’t do all of the favors, which are aforementioned side quests, and it doesn’t roll the credits, but no thanks. I think this is a perfect summary of the game, there’s little fanfare in beating the game, it lacks in fun or satisfying moments, the action is subpar, the combat is lousy and the alternate playstyles that attempt to add variety are half-baked. Best to avoid this one.