Emily Balistrieri
December 14, 2007 I am standing in front of one disgusting sludge spill. The dump is oozing. Why is there a dump? I don’t know. I am an environmentalist fruit. I notice something out of the corner of my eye. A blurp, a disturbance in the muck, and suddenly rearing its fearsome nastiness is a Fern Gully-grade pollution nightmare minus the voice of Tim Curry. Ekorisu is the Pikmin meets Pokemon-styled solution: save the forest!
Dorian, thedorian, is a lunky, big-hearted guy. He is protector of the forest in-training, and there’s a lot of work to be done what with all the evil tree-chopping, garbage-dumping minions of the Kingdom Kingdom (yeah, it’ll be interesting to see what they do with that in the localization for next year) wreaking eco-havoc all over. If he fails at this mission Mana Mountain is doomed and the Mana gods will put on their angry face.
Luckily his friends are woodland creature spirits with special powers. Ekorisu the squirrel dances to encourage seeds you plant to grow, while Ekomon the flying squirrel can fetch items out of reach, and Ekobi the beaver can build ramps out of timber. Of course, fighting the busy little robo-lumberjacks is on order as well, and all of these tasks will keep you frightfully busy.
The controls are stylus-intensive, although you can walk around with the d-pad and probably perform some other actions with face buttons as well. In fact, it would probably pay to figure out exactly how much of the game can be played hotkey style because trying to double-tap little upsettable rodents, who are at one moment dancing in earnest and at the next rampaging after a closing-in enemy, can be a little tough sometimes. Double-tapping yourself to open the magic menu can even be a pain, since when in a hurry you tend to just tap tap-tap-tap-tap-tap and miss the actual menu by clicking something.
After the tutorial there are levels with specific scenarios, “free battles”, and boss fights. When they expect you to be growing trees to inch that percentage up to a hundred is beyond me, because your pals are generally needed on the front. Lots of different types of trees can be had, though, if you can dance them out, depending in what sort of terrain you plant the seed. For example, planting in a field of yellow flowers will yield a health fountain tree, while planting in pink flowers will give you another Ekorisu.
For some reason this game can get pretty hard. Whether it’s the sheer amount of guys you’re expected to fight or the seeming indestructibility of some bosses, something is always coming down on you and making this game feel a little more frustrating than you would expect for something that seems to be aimed at kids. Whether kids could really get the strategy down in the first place is a whole other issue. Am I just missing a trick or two?
The Pokemon aspect comes in with the evolution of your furry friends. If you level them up with enough Mana Drops they’ll change into a faster or stronger version with a new prefix. Mana Drops usually appear as diamonds, although there are other colorful varieties which bestow certain boosts (in defense, offense, and speed) while taking a little off the top of another category. The gems can be had for scrubbing away dirty air (with your stylus), usually as level end bonuses, and occasionally as rewards for playing with your eco-pals.
Every once in a while you’ll get a message that so and so would like to play, so you are transported to a cute little story scene of frolicking (ok, not quite) and then a choice will come up. Sometimes creatures are fighting, sometimes you see some bugs, sometimes you find a fish, but you always have to pick a way to react, and depending on whether you stop the fight, notice a butterfly, or catch a fish, a different one of your friend’s personality traits will change. Those traits affect how they act during battle: whether they stay put when idle or meander about (to a corner of the map so you have to run and find them), whether they charge bravely into battle or tend to wimp out and run the other way. It’s an interesting system, but wears a bit thin when the scenarios start to repeat.
Also wearing thin at times is the music, but it’s pretty cute and changes when danger nears, so you can’t fault it too much. The characters are adorable in cheerful colors. Add on the mapmaker for your wireless or Wi-Fi multiplayer battles and that’s your game. Whether it’s a game you want to see to the end is another question, but somebody should really help out those trees.
Majesco schedules Ekorisu for release in the US as Eco Creatures: Save the Forest in ’08.
Publisher: InterchannelHolon
Developer: Lightweight and Headlock
System: Nintendo DS
Available: Now (Japan)
Rating: A (Cero)
