Review RehRomano 2/5 · Jun 6, 2025
Beautifully animated and painfully frustrating, I have no idea how I made it as far as I did playing this as an 8 year old. The Lion King is a relic from a time when everything got a videogame tie-in, for better or worse.
For worse, the platforming demands aligning exactly the right pixels with Simba's paws and the combat …
Beautifully animated and painfully frustrating, I have no idea how I made it as far as I did playing this as an 8 year old. The Lion King is a relic from a time when everything got a videogame tie-in, for better or worse.
For worse, the platforming demands aligning exactly the right pixels with Simba's paws and the combat is simple but often unfair. Simba has giant hitboxes and enemies and objects will drop from the ceiling or jump in from out of frame. There's the odd "puzzle" or "combat puzzle" but I use scare quotes because they're so poorly defined I'm not sure they're possible to decipher without a guide.
For better, this is an adapted property that matches the same stunning visuals of the movie in its own way. The animations feel hand-crafted in the classic Disney style, and environments are brimming with vibrant colour. Most of the "story" is inferred, the clear assumption being the player has watched the movie, and that works to keep things moving.
At a playthrough time of maybe 40 minutes, it never outstays its welcome, but good luck seeing the end without save states.
