chuckro | For Frog the Bell Tolls

Officially known as "Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru", this is a fan-translated otherwise-lost Game Boy game, that uses the same engine as Link's Awakening, though not the same battle system. This is a strange rpg-puzzle-platformer hybrid that's fairly long and detailed for a Game Boy title.

(One of the major characters in this, Prince Richard, makes a guest appearance in Link's Awakening that never made much sense to me until now. The dude's in a villa surrounded by frogs, and without knowing about this game, it just seemed really random.)

The fan-translation is really nicely done. Everything is smooth, it didn't introduce any glitches, there's no random untranslated text I could find, and they add some funny localization bits. (There's a mammoth control device you get from Nantendo Island--the "Nantendo Mamicon.") It looks like a professional job, so kudos to that.

The game itself is a pseudo-rpg. The battles are automated and 1-on-1, and winning them generally hinges on whether you'd picked up that area's key item or not. (There's no randomness, so repeated attempts at a fight with the same stats always have the same outcome.) There are also several platforming sections which are really nasty--moving platforms over instant-kill lava, jumping fireballs and falling spikes. It's very Mario-inspired, and surprisingly difficult. Really, it plays like a genre-roulette hybrid--the rpg sections are more like a puzzle/adventure game, only with occasionally having to grind for money (Think King's Quest, only with Zelda-style movement and puzzles) and the platforming sections are more Mario-Metroidvania.

As you get further into the game, you gain the ability to switch into frog and snake forms, and switching between them is how you solve many of the puzzles. (Frogs jump highest, instant-kill insect enemies and can swim; snakes can crawl through small passages and turn weak enemies into blocks. But only your human form can use items and properly fight.)

There are definitely a few points where you need to wander around looking at things and talking to people until something changes--the event flags are not the most sensibly-marked ever. But the game isn't that big and there aren't that many places to go at any given time, so it's not too bad.

Overall: If you like "games made by Nintendo" as a genre, you'll probably enjoy this. Especially if you also like the "wander around talking to people and fetch-questing" aspect of rpgs but dislike grinding, because there is no real grinding. Oh, and by the end of the game, the title makes total sense.