Yakari: The Mystery of Four-Seasons (Nintendo 3DS) Review

Yakari: The Mystery of Four-Seasons is an incredibly barebones platformer that sees the Sioux hero traverse forests, icy mountains, and caves on an adventure to restore the Four-Seasons, which have been placed out of order, leaving his fellow villagers at risk of the sudden winter. Inexplicably, this is done by collecting a specific number of bags of pemmican (a Native American food consisting of a mixture of buffalo meat and preserved fat) that are dotted around, before meeting up with Yakari's totem animal, Great Eagle, to progress to the next level.

The premise fits together as loosely as the rest of its components. The story is barely existent; each level is tied to the next with a couple of images and a handful of lines of dialogue that do little to advance the plot or even spotlight any of the fan-favourite characters; and key figures from the comic books, such as Yakari's friends Rainbow and Little Big-Shot, are completely absent, with only Yakari and Great Eagle appearing at great length.

That said, if The Mystery of Four-Seasons' setup is a mess, then the actual gameplay is a catastrophe. The level design is abhorrent, requiring countless leaps of faith and containing poorly signposted pathways to the point where signs with arrows pointing in completely opposite directions are placed right next to each other, leaving nobody with any idea where to go next.

Each level contains multiple paths that take Yakari high into the sky or deep into caves, providing a nice change of landscape despite a noticeable lack of variety among the levels themselves, but these pathways are ultimately inconsequential as the majority don't offer extra pemmican bags to help Yakari complete the level faster. The pemmican bags are so common that there's little need for exploring, and it actually winds up easier to just carry on from left to right, unless feeling a desperate need to collect any of the hundreds of stars littered across the stage.

These stars give Yakari an extra unit of health for every fifty collected, but even these are unnecessary. Receiving a Game Over takes gamers to a screen, which offers the chance to restart from the last checkpoint, of which there are so many that it's impossible to lose more than a minute or so's progress.

Even restarting the stage wouldn't be a drastic waste of time, as no stage lasts longer than a couple of minutes. Objectively, there's no problem with a forgiving game with levels that allow short bursts of play, especially when such a game appears to be aimed more towards children, but it's the number of levels that causes a real problem - there are eight in total, which means that one entire playthrough takes around half an hour. For what is equivalent to full-price at retail, this is simply insulting.

There are hastily hidden treasures in each stage that can be collected if so desired, but these are so obscurely tucked away, appearing only as easily-missed sparkling spots on the map, that it's just not worth the hassle of tracking them down as they don't actually carry any weight: they slowly fill up a picture on the "Treasures" screen on the main menu, but that's all.

Aesthetically, Yakari is nothing to write home about, either. To its credit, the game does utilise the handheld's stereoscopic 3D feature, but this is bears no relevance to the gameplay and is shoddily-developed anyway, leading to ghosting within the few still images present. The spritework is lacking, too, with Yakari's death animation (in which the hero falls off the screen, completely motionless and expressionless) being almost comedic in nature, especially when mixed with such a poorly-chosen sound effect. The sound itself is badly mixed - Yakari's jump sound is barely audible, for example - and the repetitive and ill-fitting music is as if it's been taken directly from a royalty-free provider.

All in all, The Mystery of Four-Seasons does absolutely nothing to justify its price tag. It's a badly designed, soulless product that should be avoided at all costs. The game does at least look like a Yakari book, but when that is the only good point about a licensed title, something has gone seriously wrong.
Aesthetically, Yakari is nothing to write home about, either. To its credit, the game does utilise the handheld's stereoscopic 3D feature, but this is bears no relevance to the gameplay and is shoddily-developed anyway, leading to ghosting within the few still images present. The spritework is lacking, too, with Yakari's death animation (in which the hero falls off the screen, completely motionless and expressionless) being almost comedic in nature, especially when mixed with such a poorly-chosen sound effect. The sound itself is badly mixed - Yakari's jump sound is barely audible, for example - and the repetitive and ill-fitting music is as if it's been taken directly from a royalty-free provider.

All in all, The Mystery of Four-Seasons does absolutely nothing to justify its price tag. It's a badly designed, soulless product that should be avoided at all costs. The game does at least look like a Yakari book, but when that is the only good point about a licensed title, something has gone seriously wrong.