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This is the PC and Nintendo Switch game the West has coined the spiritual successor to Ganbare Goemon.

It had appeared as though developer and publisher GoodFeel decided to let BAKERU skip a western release - or maybe nobody felt like taking it on? This stunning platformer that feels right out of the glory days of the PlayStation 2 was stuck languishing in the land of the rising sun for perhaps all eternity, completely swathed in moonrunes, and likely never to be understood and enjoyed by the masses. Thankfully it has seen this localized release, but the journey it took has been painful at times.

Bakeru is a Mamedanuki, a shapeshifting creature from Japanese folklore. Bakeru can transform into different hero forms that affect his movement speed and attack power.

This is a level-based 3D platformer. You have large, linear stages but with little nooks to find. In each stage, you’ve got to destroy all the festival markers to unlock the exit. Bakeru is given the Tanuki Drum to aid him on his journey - this is the main method of attacking enemies. The L or R shoulder buttons are your basic attacks. You can string them together by alternating the buttons to keep a flurry of hits coming. You have charged attacks by holding down either L or R. You can press L and R to attack simultaneously in one harder, stronger blow. And you can charge both L and R down together for a big attack with some area of effect, but it’s slower and leaves you open to getting pinged from the side.

Some slightly different attacks and moves were introduced in this localised release, which mostly serve to increase Bakeru’s repertoire of moves and help him reach his combat potential. A spinning move by holding L that deals multiple hits in quick succession (great for bosses) and a precision strike by holding R. They are arbitrarily locked but you do unlock them early on.

The enemies are all based on different folklore and Japanese traditions. There’s a lot of charming stuff in here. My personal favourite are kendo masters who try to hit you with their shinai, since a well timed block stuns them and gives you an in. New larger mid boss enemies were added to the English version which murdered the entire flow for me coming off the Japanese version, but you get used to fighting them.

Each stage has three hidden souvenirs to find. They range from stuff like collectible pennants and figurines all the way to items associated with where in Japan they were collected, and there are five "Scoops" to find. Also, a short way into the game there is a third, occasional collectible hidden within stages that is much harder to find. You feel pretty accomplished when you find some of these.

The character movement is fluid but snappy, the transformations provide a ton of gameplay variety, the integration of the Tanuki drum into the operation of stage gimmicks is just so immersive… It’s like playing a remake of a lost Dreamcast game, it’s so stylized and it’s also very clear that fun was absolutely prioritised.

I’m a firm believer that old games aren’t better because they’re old, they’re better because they had a clear vision that they achieved through limitation. Imagine playing a classic 3D platformer that keeps that same feeling, while working to new, more liberating limitations.

Leaning into the Goemon comparisons, the game features stages that switch out the platforming for on-rails shooting, driving, surfing and even piloting a big robot. The only thing missing is a musical number, like Gorgeous My Stage or something. Maybe if we get a sequel.

BAKERU was released a week before Astro Bot and during a super busy month full of big releases. It was published by Spike Chunsoft, who are notorious for not handing out content creators any game keys. At the launch price, and at a tight part of an already strict year for spending, I was unable to pick the game up until the Steam Winter Sale, where it dropped to 50% off.

At that sort of price, Bakeru is a steal. The game didn’t exactly have the most hot initial performance in Japan and it has left me concerned for the future of Good Feel’s new and exciting IP. It’s truly refreshing to see GoodFeel branch out from making Nintendo-mandated Yoshi or Wario sequels and put together something more distinctly their own again. If you want to see more games like this in the dried up, boring video game industry we find ourselves in today, then grab yourself a copy of BAKERU and help keep the dream alive.

Because if games like these don’t sell, we’re doomed to live in the Just Dance and Madden mines forever.

Borémon: The Legend of the Missed Opportunity
I never knew how to feel playing this game. On one hand it’s polished to perfection, but on the other, it’s just so uninspired in actual gameplay and design. Its moments of inspiration and delight are few and far between; a fleeting moment where you wish you felt this way the entire game. I was always teetering on wanting to play it and being bored at the same time. The only compliments I can think to give the game is sometimes the music is nice and the Japanese theming of the levels are always beautiful and delightful to look at.
If you decide to read on, there are gameplay spoilers in this review.
You can’t ignore the little elephant in the room: this is a spiritual successor to Konami’s long dormant Ganbaré Goémon franchise, perhaps slightly better known as The Legend of the Mystical Ninja outside of Japan. It’s made by Good-Feel, who have been most notably working on products for Nintendo such as Kirby’s Epic Yarn (2010), Yoshi’s Woolly World (2015), and Princess Peach: Showtime! (2024). They’re a studio that is technically proficient but have always put out bland games with appealing ideas yet unappealing execution. Some former staff from Konami who worked on the Goémon series work there and worked on this title.
As a big Goémon fan I was excited to play it, but it just isn’t there.
The lead platform was the Nintendo Switch, so the game isn't pushing any boundaries, but it doesn't need to with such strong art direction and design. The essence of Goémon is here in the whimsical and slapstick nature of stylized Japanese mythology and culture, but doesn’t have the twisted edge that Goémon has with innuendo and anachronisms that gives that series its playful dissonance. Does it have to be Goémon? No. Should it have an identity? Yes.
The game has 65 levels and is stretched thin with barely any memorable content. The first fourth of the game is a bore because it’s so damn easy, empty, and uninteresting a toddler would yawn. I can only make a guess that this title, like most of their output, was designed to be aimed at extremely young players and given the contempt that they were unable to be challenged.
Your main attack is that you have two taiko sticks you use with L and R bumpers, but the ambidextrous nature of this is never used in any creative way; a single button could have been used. Despite having the ability to jump, ground pound, parry projectiles, sidle, and use various special powers, the game barely does anything to utilize them and even their very game feel is bland.
Enemies are fodder and almost everything is just whacking it to death. The level design barely has any verticality or inventive platforming challenges in most stages. Rarely will you do something engaging that pushes back. I really think half the game should have been axed and the different level elements merged together to provide a higher level of interplay and variety.
There’s literally tens of thousands of ryo to collect to buy things and they only exist in units of one; it’s a grind even with a power-up that temporarily doubles your income. The only thing you can buy with them is various one time use power-ups, cosmetic masks that do nothing, permanent health upgrades, and robot upgrades.
Each level is padded with five hidden facts, three souvenirs, and some have a hidden tanuki. They slow the game down to give replay value, and getting them doesn’t do anything, except collecting a couple tanuki allows you to unlock robot upgrades.
You’d think looking for the hidden tanuki would be fun, but in practice it’s tedious searching for a well hidden object in big levels as you spend huge amounts of time scouring every corner.
The yellow poop fact guy, whose name I can't remember, that is hidden in each level has almost the opposite effect being almost too easy to find. The facts about Japan are genuinely interesting at first, but with 260 them, even they couldn’t keep from running out of steam, devolving into grasping at facts that have no semblance of relevance.
The essence of a straightforward run and attack platformer like some of the classic Goémon games is sabotaged with these useless distractions and trinkets to become meandering and unfocused. At times the game made me swear it was funded by Japan’s National Tourism Organization with how on the nose it was with pointing out and praising the distinct locales of Japan and activities in that region.
The map is awful. It starts out with a linear pathed level select, like some Goémon entries, and then psyches you out by allowing you to travel anywhere all over Japan in a flying vehicle. The camera never zooms out, you can’t see anything, know where to go, what levels you’ve been to, or what’s been collected in them. You have to go into menus to see what you’ve collected and to use a vague warp function, but it doesn’t help you quickly locate any level you want to go to. It is easily one of the worst parts of the game. It should not take minutes to find a level.
The boss fights are a chore. They come in two flavors: rivals and kaiju. Both varieties are about blunt force and endurance rather than skill or strategy. Defeating rivals gets you one of four permanent transformative power-ups that require spiritual energy you use from defeating common enemies. They're more for show than anything else. You running out of energy to attempt balance makes them tedious to toggle on and off to prevent you from running out.
The giant robot levels, which are analogous to Goémon Impact, should have been fun, but you move so damn slow it’s ludicrous. At one point I got stuck on one of the kaiju bosses and couldn’t figure out why the difficulty spiked. Turns out you can upgrade your robot and the game never even tells you. There’s no speed increase though and the battles are shallow with no depth or strategy.
There’s a couple auto-scroller levels and the isometric camera hampers them by obscuring the view and providing unclear boundaries of which will kill you.
The game also tries to give variety with racing and shmup stages, but besides being easy, they make you wonder what the point is. The racing isn’t a race. You don’t rank, you can’t lose, you can’t win anything, or if you can, it was next to impossible to know. All you do is get to the end before the extremely gracious time runs out. I mean, the controls and obstacles are fun, but there’s no reason you’d ever want to go back or any challenge to it where you need to improve your skills. Their only purpose is to break up the monotony of the rest of the game.
Characters and story are, you guessed it, as interesting as rice gruel.
The game left me feeling unsatisfied and I barely managed to get through it. It’s an AA game, but it just doesn’t have that spark of magic Goémon has. In terms of my personal subjective opinion of value, it has enough content that you could justify the price, but the quality of that content is so milquetoast I wouldn’t recommend paying more than $20 max. If you do decide to spend time with it, I don’t recommend you collect anything except enough tanuki to upgrade your robot.
I don't do achievements. I turned off notifications.
In terms of the PC version, it doesn’t seem to have an arbitrary framerate or resolution cap. It supports 21:9 ultra wide monitors. It looks fine and runs without any stuttering. The antialiasing is limited to FXAA or SMAA and is the biggest weak point with unpleasant aliasing and shimmering that can only be somewhat tamed with nVidia’s DSR feature. Its Nintendo Switch roots means almost anyone should be able to enjoy it on hardware from the last decade if not older.
I wanted to like it, and I want Good-Feel to reap the benefits in its talent, but I just can’t be dishonest; I don’t think it’s worth your time unless you’re a rabid Goémon fan who is desperate to relive memories of a forgotten franchise or bored as hell.

BAKERU is thoroughly... meh.
11 hours in I am struggling to continue and I know exactly why. The main reason is that this game is extremely repetitive, flat, boring. A series of design decisions make sure that this game kind of ... meh. You know.
The main collectibles do nothing. In each level are *five little facts about japan (I am not joking) in form of a character*, *three souvenirs* that the region in Japan which the level takes place in, is "famous". Later you can find a hidden Tanuki that has transformed into some random asset, in some of the levels.
I mean that as I wrote it, these collectibles do nothing. You can look at them or read them later, but they do not play into the actual gameplay. They do not provide upgrades or enable new gameplay. The Tanuki help upgrading your ship/transforming mecha.
In 11 hours of gameplay I used said mecha ONCE.
Now spotting the Tanuki that tranformed into a random Object in a level sounds fun at first but they collide with another problem that this game suffers from.
Level design and pacing is just boring. The levels are all linear, which is not a Problem at all, but the spaces between the fun parts are often far to wide and long and constantly break the gameflow.
The amount of walking while doing nothing is FAR to high. There is no reason that many of these levels are as expansive as they are.
When the game puts in interesting elements they never are used in a fun way. At one point you can turn entire buildings. But its mostly used to make bridges. They use it once or twice so you can bash enemies with that. But there is no sort of urgency to that. You could also just let it be. They try to create Sonic level at one point but even that is completely without bite or energy. Like most of them are.
The best levels so far were when the screen was after you and the player had to push forward. Because then they couldn't just stuff wide open levels full with random shit and you actually had some pressure and push to the gameplay.
The collectibles make this even worse. Because souvenirs and factoids are boring and do nothing it becomes quite unrewarding collecting them. Especially when you have to go off the beaten path down whats basically a just as boring U turn before trekking back to the main path.
Finding the Tanuki at first sounds charming until you realize that they used a different asset in every level. They do not tell you beforehand which one it is. A bush with a tail is easy to spot. Not so with a sun chair in a holiday resort with dozends of other chairs that look mostly the same way. Or with a Umbrella on a beach FULL of umbrellas.
Traversing most of the levels gameplay wise is just not fun.
I am certain the developers thought that as well. I think this for several reasons. First off, to end a level you have to destroy some specific lanterns to unlock the endpoint of a level, a massive drum. First it were exactly three Lanterns. But in later levels, even the more linear levels, they give you more lanterns to bash then you need. And you can leave levels at any point and do not loose any collectibles or even money from doing so.
The games visuals are.. okay. Highlight here are clearly the Character and enemy designs. But no matter the visuals if the game that is made from them is boring then they do not help.
Now further on to gameplay.
By hour eleven at least you will ahve gathered four special forms that baruka can transform into. The game does nothing with them.
One makes you tiny and you can enter small spaces. Its barely used. Two are the same ability, destroying enemies from a distance. One is very fast and so its no problem that the game autoaims for you. The other characters shots are slow and the character is sliding around making it dangerous to use in most cases. Biggest problem here is though the autoaim, which likes to aim at random enemies in view direction of the character, even if the closest enemy is massive and directly in front of you. Useless. The fourth is basically a damage buff that you use whenever there is a horde of annoying enemies that you just want to delete.
Combat could be good but for some reason they decided that you need to use two buttons for attacks. Your weapons is drum themed, so the two should triggers are effecting the left and right drim stick respectively. Problem is that it doesn't really work all that well. For starters the game doesn't really attack with the speed you can put in, making it worse that the combos, when you do it successfully, are slower then the standart bash. Additionally it happens frequently that the game doesn't evade/dash or black when you clearly did. I am not sure if some combos lock you in the animations or if the game simply can't keep up with the player. Either way its annoying.
You can also charge either the right, the left or both stick, for respectively three different power attacks. They do not use eny energy or charges. So essentially this is how you will delete most enemy groups because it just works the best.
This game feels at this point very flawed, very boring and kind of soulless. Which brings us to the Goemon Mystical Ninja comparisons.
First we need to make a few things clear.
When people bring this up I am thinking of Goemon Mystical Ninja on the N64, the first game.
I bring this up because I genuinely think the second game was and is trash. For one it was far less ambitious, 2D, with terrible movement and finicky and inaccurate controls.
Secondly I do not think that this game is worse then both of these games. That is just nonsense.
But it also doesn't have what Goemon Mystical Ninja has. Incredible charm. A good atmosphere, charm and a certain bite. For example it didn't just throw you into level after level. You start in a small town (which frankly doesn't hold up), you soak in the atmosphere and talk to people about the ridiculous things that just hapened in the intro.
It also introduces some really campy villains which are GREAT with a nonsense plan for world domination.
11 hours I have gotten one really empty hub, your tea pot ship, and otherwise disconnected levels.
Goemon Mystical Ninja also had interesting little and large fun sequences troughout its story driving the plot forward. In baruka I haven't had a conversation with a proper enemy ONCE. We do neither know why the enemies are doing what they are doing nor who the enemy actually is. I have yet to actually meet the big bad or have a conversation that isn't dissapointing. The former game had clichees and stereotypes but it actually did somethig with them that approached telling a story.
Most importantly the old game painted a world that was removed enough that it felt new and interesting despite the clearly more modern sensibilities of its inhabitants and characters.
The first sequence in Goemon Mystical Ninja is you and your friend fleeing from a shop because your partner thought it was s good idea to unveil his fat body to geta discount on the shops wares.
Baruka just flat out feels like a shallow marketing ploy for Japan then an actual story and world. And that in the worst way. Its extremely sanitized and just boring. It simply does not feel like the developers had a story to tell. The developers have just taken the most recogniceable symbols and elements of japanese culture or its different präfectures, cleaned them of any edges and then made some vaguely motivated levels around them.
Its just soulless, there is no spirit behind it, no creative spark besides the main character designs.
This is not a good game. It works (technically). But this game has run out of Steam after 11 hours.
Not even a week ago I finished The Plucky Squire. That game was linear and done in 10 hours. But every minute was a joy, every five minutes was something new, refreshing and surprising. Not revolutionary but just really fun and energetic and when I was done I felt like I had gotten a complete, satisfying and fun package.