Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom - Review
Adventure Time is a phenomenon and for good reason, it looks wacky and colourful from the outside, but taking a closer look and there are pieces of story that reflect struggles that people have to face.
Over the years we have seen many games come from that universe, from simple mobile and web games, to more grand adventures for consoles and handhelds. The most recent game, The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom takes the form of a more traditional game, inspired by The Legend of Zelda series and offers up a larger quest for players to undertake. The gameplay is very much inspired, but the story is all Adventure Time, with all new characters and classics coming in for large and small roles.
Finn and Jake have been sent to the Nameless Kingdom by Princess Bubblegum in order to help Pillowmint Butler find the three Princess’ of the land so one of them can become the queen. But the three of them being captured and imprisoned in their temples by a mysterious force. Outside of a few shops and the main castle, there are very few citizens around to provide any extra story, which is a shame.
The gameplay that is on show here is very much inspired and sourced from other games, but the problem with that is they feel like a cheap version of them. Moving around the world is easy enough, you can use either the Circle Pad or the D-Pad, but moving with the D-pad is a lot more accurate, with the circle pad offering up a really odd sense of floating as you move. Attacking is pretty straight forward, with Finn using a Grass Sword and Jake providing a shield, along with extra options unlocked as your progress.
In order to access the very first temple you need to have a selected piece of equipment that you can purchase, but outside of that hint, the rest is all up to you. The temple itself is filled with a variety of enemies, secrets and puzzles, each will require a little thought to defeat, locate or solve. Even some of the enemies require a little extra effort to defeat, but sadly there is little else that this temple offers. Exploring it will reveal a series of images around the place that you need to remember in order to solve the final puzzle, but there is nothing at all around the place to tell you to do that.
For all the issues the game has with the lack of information with the gameplay, it is even worse when it comes to the overall presentation. The audio in the game is some of the worst I have had to listen to, whenever the characters speak, the audio comes through with a layer of static, but that can be overlooked, Finn saying one of the same 6 phrases every time he collects something from the ground is really annoying, but these issues are nothing compared to the visual problems. Almost every time I crossed paths with an enemy there was a large black line that would appear in the screen, once we were no longer aligned the line was removed, but it was quite noticeable.
Finn also has issues with doors and stairs, with you needing to be close to centre in order to use them, but if you are just off centre, then you get to see Finn walk through walls or bannisters. Even out in the world the amount of invisible walls constantly restricted where I could go as opposed to where I thought I could go.
Fans of the show will enjoy being able to explore a new part of the land of Ooo, but anyone coming here for the Zelda influence is better off looking elsewhere for it. A solid game is here, but with the strange visual bugs and horrible audio, it feels cheap and that is not a good thing.
The Score
6.5
Review code provided by Bandai Namco
The Pros
+More Adventure Time
+The gameplay will feel familiar to many gamers
The Cons
-Wears its inspiration on its sleeve, but doesn't match it
-Presentation is all over the place
