River King: Mystic Valley

Rating Everyone Genre adventure Publisher Natsume

River King on the DS is a return to the pleasant yet expectantly bland world of Natsume “Serious (mellow) Fun”. For old PS2 fans who remember the original title not much has changed, save for plot tweaks and fantastic monster buddies. For the uninnoculated, the legend of the River King centers on an ancient and mythical fish by the same name. Legend goes that whosoever catches this scaled lurker is granted their deepest desire, in this particular instance, to rouse your sister from her sudden onset of magical coma. Making friends along the way, our main ‘hero’ attempts to become the best fisherman around and snag the freshwater beastie.

Again, not much has changed of the overall gameplay. It’s still eat, sleep, fish, bug hunt. With the slight graphical upgrade provided by the Nintendo DS, some new spark of life is rekindled within the previously thought dead title. In order to break from the monotony, Natsume has instituted an up-to-four-player tournament mode. You can call up your friends and register their Multi-card codes through the phone in your house. Perhaps the most disappointing element of the game is its repetitive but still enjoyable game mechanics. With scores of fish to catch in each area, every screen revealed brings with it more hours of near-mindless fish, insect, and plant hunting grinding. With time of day figuring into each fishing hole, every screen counts. If you still don’t have an image of this game, try to imagine Harvest Moon, only without the farm, or the popular Animal Crossing without… well without the damn near everything except fishing.

I know its difficult to discuss a game without drawing certain likenesses to other titles but, unfortunately for River King, none of these similarities turn out positive. One of the massive redeeming aspects of this title are the cute and fun characters you, the intrepid young fisherman encounter along your not-so-epic journey. After first firing up, the character soon comes across a mysterious baby monster, and one thing all baby monsters have in common is a deep seeded and fairly befuddling love of fresh raw fish. These cute balls of ??? type monster spawn, will consume your catches literally till them pop, and transform into their more evolved form. It’s similar to <`>Pokemon, except Fish are XP and your monster buddies aren’t ENDENTURED SLAVES!

Politic-omons aside, these monsters buddies each have a unique ability as well as assist you in catching fish and finding critters hidden in the brush. With an even wider selection of rods, baits, lures, and various magical fish-summoning items than before, it’ll be a good long while before any completionist checks that list. A seemingly useless, but collection-getty Card System has been worked in so that random, untasty fish will no longer be a basketed burden to the play. Speaking of baskets, larger and better ones will also eventually be up for purchase in the game. With a new massive energy gauge, job memo book for objectives, and easy to use touch-screen technology, River King : Mystic Valley might just be the game for your fishing enthused Harvest Moon / Animal Crossing loving outdoorsman. :