I played the game in Japanese, so opinions might be different from the English release.
I'm shocked that a game like this even got an English release, a text-base adventure game for the Famicom given to the NES when the most popular games of the same year were SMB3 and Tetris in the Western world. The US was still very used to arcade style gaming, rarely having success with games that branched from the side scrolling that was almost expected of video games at this point and instead focusing on story-based little movement gameplay.
As fun and wacky of an idea that Tomato-Hime is, it is a game that did not age remotely well, and I can imagine did not translate very well into English either, with a majority of the plot based around this mix of 75% Japanese royal influence and 25% around what Japanese people imagine Western fairytale royalty to be like. Though honestly, I find that charming in its own way.
Princess Tomato is a genre of game that absolutely had the technology to perform what it wanted to do, but also had the unfortunate luck to be one of the first to do what it does, helping pave the way in learning what to do and NOT do for a player-friendly experience. The game is extremely unfriendly with mistakes that could be made per chapter, where if you do choose to play the game wandering around without a guide and experiencing things naturally (as you SHOULD in a story-heavy adventure game) you absolutely will need to restart the chapter over multiple times from spending your limited money where you weren't supposed to or using an item for an event you thought you needed.
The story is cute and definitely very creative, having you learn to flirt with tipsy lemons in the cabana club and punch potatoes (but not the carrots!!) in order to gain more information on the rebellion. The story is cute but the game feels like pulling teeth in order to continue with any of it! Obviously, playing with a guide would be the quickest and easiest way to get through the whole thing, which is what I ended up doing, but for this genre of game, that takes away all the fun.
Play it if you'd like, the story is fine, but also something you can just read online. The fun of exploring and figuring out the plot yourself in the game is practically impossible, and may cause more rage than you expected going into the game if that's how you intend/want to play.
Guides for both versions if you play, you're going to need them -
ENG: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Princess_Tomato_in_the_Salad_Kingdom/Walkthrough
JP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIexaIxPOE
I'm shocked that a game like this even got an English release, a text-base adventure game for the Famicom given to the NES when the most popular games of the same year were SMB3 and Tetris in the Western world. The US was still very used to arcade style gaming, rarely having success with games that branched from the side scrolling that was almost expected of video games at this point and instead focusing on story-based little movement gameplay.
As fun and wacky of an idea that Tomato-Hime is, it is a game that did not age remotely well, and I can imagine did not translate very well into English either, with a majority of the plot based around this mix of 75% Japanese royal influence and 25% around what Japanese people imagine Western fairytale royalty to be like. Though honestly, I find that charming in its own way.
Princess Tomato is a genre of game that absolutely had the technology to perform what it wanted to do, but also had the unfortunate luck to be one of the first to do what it does, helping pave the way in learning what to do and NOT do for a player-friendly experience. The game is extremely unfriendly with mistakes that could be made per chapter, where if you do choose to play the game wandering around without a guide and experiencing things naturally (as you SHOULD in a story-heavy adventure game) you absolutely will need to restart the chapter over multiple times from spending your limited money where you weren't supposed to or using an item for an event you thought you needed.
The story is cute and definitely very creative, having you learn to flirt with tipsy lemons in the cabana club and punch potatoes (but not the carrots!!) in order to gain more information on the rebellion. The story is cute but the game feels like pulling teeth in order to continue with any of it! Obviously, playing with a guide would be the quickest and easiest way to get through the whole thing, which is what I ended up doing, but for this genre of game, that takes away all the fun.
Play it if you'd like, the story is fine, but also something you can just read online. The fun of exploring and figuring out the plot yourself in the game is practically impossible, and may cause more rage than you expected going into the game if that's how you intend/want to play.
Guides for both versions if you play, you're going to need them -
ENG: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Princess_Tomato_in_the_Salad_Kingdom/Walkthrough
JP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIexaIxPOE