Beat. The platforming in this game was not challenging at all, rather it was all about the combat. The enemies started out very easy but became progressively more difficult as the game went on. They were sometimes placed in very inconvenient locations, like camping at the top of a ladder where it would be impossible to get past them without getting hit. But the stages usually had alternate ways to bypass or flank those enemies. I most hated the fast flying enemies in the late game, which were very difficult to deal with; they sometimes moved faster than the player, and the lack of vertical aiming made them hard to hit. Most of the bosses were extremely difficult, often being too fast to reliably avoid, and having unpredictable movements. The best way to deal with them was the grape gum, which made Storm invincible while doing contact damage to enemies. It was by far the best gum power, and also incredibly useful for regular enemies, but made platforming harder. The green gum was also good as a screen clearing multiple hit attack. Cherry was good for flight, but given the easy platforming, it was more for reaching powerups and skipping enemies. The orange was not very good and really only useful for killing a few enemies when lacking the red jewel ranged attack. It sucked that the orange projectile had less range and only fired for a brief time period rather than number of shots. The red jewel ranged attack on the sword was my standard move, making many enemies easy. Losing it upon taking a hit was interesting, as well as the green jewels giving another hit. It was a bit weird how all green jewels were lost at once, but then I noticed that accumulating 25 gave a life while resetting the jewel total to 0. The game and stage design were bland but inoffensive, though the graphics were a bit below average. The saving grace were the gum powers and the little bit of story. It could have used more gum powers and most of the story was in the manual rather than in the game, but there was enough in the game to be slightly interesting. I did read the full story online. While a decent read it did not tie into the game very well. Like how Storm didn't even have the sword in some of the action and didn't unlock the red jewel shoot attack until over halfway. More of the story and background lore should have been in the game, though certainly not the contradictory parts.

6.0/10