I'm genuinely saddened by the fact that this is a Nintendo IP because I just know that's going to end up like StarTropics and just languish forever in Nintendo's company portfolio as "that weird thing that failed" rather than receive a sequel/spiritual successor that irons out all of the rough spots. There's some great ideas here! The execution is a little rough and the combat is boring, but hey, I appreciate the spirit.

It's pretty clear that the people developing this were hoping that this was going to be a smash hit, right down to a species designed with the specific purpose of becoming marketable plushies. Someone really wanted those Noot birds to be on phone cases and keychains.

I also love that Nintendo has an IP where the main story is "the apocalypse happened, most of the cities are dead, humanity is also dead, and the wilderness is a bleak wasteland of sand". They tried to soften the blow by having a localization where the words "Squee" and "Rawr" are honest-to-god used in a 2017 release, but man, we could've had a Nintendo franchise where the premise was "global warming fucked us all over, go time manage your desert survivor town and hope that this named character doesn't die like the other named characters".

Reviewed on May 15, 2022


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