Goemon’s Great Adventure — Issue 50

Lat­est, great­est adventure

Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture has always had the unfor­tu­nate posi­tion in gam­ing of com­ing after the excel­lent Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It can’t help but fol­low in the shad­ow of the game as its direct sequel, and it’s nev­er going to stand up to make itself the pre­mier entry in the series. What it does have going for it though are two things: Rar­i­ty and some improve­ments in areas where the oth­er entries struggled.

Based on real-life fig­ure Goe­mon Ishikawa, the tit­u­lar hero stays sav­ing the day in an alter­nate Edo with his allies Ebisumaru, Yae and Sasuke. In this tale, the gang wit­ness­es an Ebisumaru looka­like steal the Old Wise Man’s new dead-res­ur­rect­ing device and wreak hav­oc on the land. It’s a cute set­up and it does­n’t take much to get into the sto­ry of the two zany nin­jas. Where this entry excels is the much-improved inter­face. Though it seems less per­son­al and plot­ted out like Super Mario World with a world map, it’s a wel­come relief from the some­times-con­fus­ing lay­out of Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It’s nice to just choose a loca­tion on the map and go there with­out hav­ing to remem­ber how to get there.

Also improved are the mechan­ics. The biggest change in the game is arguably the switch from over-the-shoul­der view la Mario 64 back to a side-scroller in the vein of Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. Despite how jar­ring it may have seemed at first, even­tu­al­ly I came to love the fact that it’s slight­ly eas­i­er to move around and get a feel for the char­ac­ters than it was in Star­ring Goe­mon. Move­ment seems more sub­stan­tial and there’s no more fight­ing with the wonky cam­era that won’t cooperate. 

The way it looks is bet­ter also in Great Adven­ture. Every­thing is cleaned up and less polyg­o­nal, though some char­ac­ters retain that blocky look no mat­ter what. How­ev­er, the glow up is most notice­able in the envi­ron­ment. Edo looks fan­tas­tic, with the beau­ti­ful recre­ation of feu­dal Japan­ese archi­tec­ture stand­ing out the most. I was always impressed with the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja series in what it tried to do graph­i­cal­ly, and this is a sol­id-look­ing entry.

Just as good as the graph­ics is the sound. Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja, as a series, is known for its sub­lime sound­track and Great Adven­ture does­n’t dis­ap­point. We’ve cov­ered this in our review of the game’s tracks (Edi­tor’s Note: See Issue 39) for Beat.Trip.Game, and it’s so good it’s worth men­tion­ing mul­ti­ple times. 

Though it’s an improve­ment in most areas, there are some spots where it could be pol­ished a lit­tle more. Some of the trans­la­tion is rough and there are fre­quent gram­mar errors in the text. For a game that relies on text to get the point across, that’s too jar­ring and takes me out of the expe­ri­ence. Anoth­er gripe is that, while most of the mechan­ics are improved, some of the new mechan­ics — such as the pole vault — need some work. It’s not hard to do — once you fig­ure it out. The prob­lem is that it takes much too long to fig­ure out. If I have to watch a playthrough video to get the con­cept, it’s doing too much.
Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound and com­pe­tent entry in a much-loved series. Despite my ini­tial annoy­ance with it 25 years ago, it’s grown on me with anoth­er replay. While it’s not as great as the stel­lar Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon, it’s defin­i­tive­ly a wel­come entry in the series. One thing we’re going to do is let Goe­mon be great, and he achieves it with this sol­id entry in the franchise.