River King: Kite no Bouken - Part 1/5 - Game Boy Color - ぬし釣りアドベンチャー カイトの冒険 ~ Actual Fishing JRPG?
The "Nushi Tsuri" franchise was originally localized into English as "Legend of the River King" and later just "River King". Only four games in the franchise were ever brought over, most of them never leaving Japan's shores. Nushi Tsuri Adventure: Kite no Bouken for GBC is one of them.
Released on the Game Boy Color in 2000, Kite no Bouken goes out even further in the JRPG territory. You're not fighting wild animals anymore, but actual fantasy monsters! You gain levels! You can use special attacks! Wow! Sounds great, doesn't it? For that reason, I was really excited to play this game. Unfortunately, it falls short. Way short. The battle system is an afterthought. The battles are janky, clunky, awkward, and basically just extremely easy wastes of time for most of the game. The opportunity was huge, and they dropped the ball hard on that one.
And then, there's the boat sailing out on the ocean. First, it took me forever to understand it (yes, that's probably my fault). I was getting ready to quit on the game before I saw a video that explained to me how it worked. Once you know how it works, though, it doesn't get better. It's an extremely boring and tedious gameplay mechanism that just slows the game down to a crawl. In a fishing game! Wait for the wind to blow in the desired direction, hoist your sail, when the wind changes, furl the sail, drift on the currents, hoist the sail again, oops drop the anchor and wait for the wind to change... and so on and so on until you reach your destination. But make sure you have enough food in your boat's "pantry" to survive the trip! Trust me, it can take a long time! And that's not all, enjoy being interrupted every 5 seconds to fight an enemy! Oh, but not right away: first there's a boat battle mini game in which aiming with your cannons is so difficult that it's better to just let yourself lose so you can be boarded and then fight the enemy! So much wasted time! Oof. And guess what? Once you finish the story mode and you go back to catch the fish you might have missed, the game suddenly lets you control the ship however you want with the d-pad and without having to worry about the wind!!! Argh!!!
Ok, so how's the fishing? Thank goodness, if you're coming from Legend of the River King 1 or 2, this is pretty much the same. You can still fish from the shore or use your canoe to catch farther away fish. You still have a choice of rods, lures, flies, bait, hooks, etc. And since this is an actual GBC game, the fish look nice and colorful. You still have quests to fulfill that NPCs will give you, and you still need to catch specific fish to progress the story. Forget using a wet mayfly for most of the game this time around, though -- flies are probably the worst gear in this game because most fish won't bite them. No more bug hunting or flower picking, either. Instead, the game offers star gazing. When it's night out, you can look at the night sky and just press A everywhere in hopes that you find a new constellation. It's honestly quite boring. And some constellations can only be found at certain times in the year on certain parts of the map, so... No thank you. Another missed opportunity.
Does it show that I was disappointed with Kite no Bouken? I still enjoyed the fishing, for sure, but everything else felt like it could have been so much more. I still manage to catch every type of fish the game has to offer, so I complete the fish memo and I'm happy about that since I consider that to be the most important part of the game. Of course, every town location has its own unique types of fish but the ocean also has its own fish you must catch, so make sure you don't miss out on them! I also liked how the game makes you catch the very final "fish" of the game, as well as some of the music, but ultimately, Kite no Bouken (literally, "Kite's Adventure") was just OK.
Playlist: • Legend of the River King | 川のぬし釣り | River ...
Legend of the River King 1 & 2 playlist: • Legend of the River King / 川のぬし釣り - Game B...
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