i adore absolutely EVERYTHING about this game's aesthetics and surreal world with weird fishes that'd be fucking terrifying without the jolly music AND the whole fishing rod mechanic is sick as hell and an incredibly interesting way to move and platform. this could have very well been my favorite snes game ever but dear scott is it demanding. the further you go, the things the game expects you to manouver through get more and more absurd and the fact all this is under a time and lives limit makes it so much crazier. give me the will to train speedrunning this daily and it'd be an easy 9/10.

the whole randomly appearing enemies thing is not as big of a deal to me as it is to others. it's pretty easy to tell where they'll show up and the game prevents them from spawning right where you are, so i've had few moments of running into them right as they spawn. the one big issue i have with it is that the game will spawn like 3 or 4 enemies at the same spot while you're trying to get past them and they're spitting stun-fish at you and it is Not Very Fun. the bosses are kinda lame too. really cool and/or funny looking (i love the idea of a giant tadpole birthing frogs) but too many of them are essentially just "wait 5 cycles until you can proceed".

i'd still recommend trying this one. maybe not beating it, but the core gameplay idea mixed with the sweet and dreamy art is plenty of fun for a little while