Well at least I didn't expect too much from Bakeru. Beat em up combat was never really my thing, so just watching some of the trailers and reviews gave me a good idea that I wouldn't necessarily fall in love.

Unfortunately, outside of the beat em up combat, the levels themselves aren't all that well designed. Lots of open spaces with enemies that die easily and not much else. Of course there are at least 8 collectibles to obtain per stage, but finding them isn't especially rewarding either.

Additionally, this game is way, waaaay too long for the depth of its gameplay. I stopped seeing new and interesting things after about 25 stages, and even that was pushing it. Imagine my dejection to find out that there were over 25 more stages to play. I just couldn't stomach listening to those same annoying songs over and over...

Overall there's just a little too much of the bad and not enough of the good in Bakeru. I love the Goemon-esque characters and set pieces, but for every cool 17th century Japanese castle level there seem to be about 10 boring beach levels.

I wouldn't recommend Bakeru except to a Goemon fan, and even then I'd only recommend the demo. If GoodFeel should make a sequel to this game, however, I'd be open to the idea. There are clearly some talented people on that staff and given enough time and room to flesh out the good ideas and filter out the bad, I think there could be something special here.