Mario Golf: Advance Tour (GBA) Retro Review

Sometimes I get the urge to play a retro game. Sometimes it's one I've played countless times and never reviewed, but other times it's one that slipped through the cracks of my gaming knowledge and/or prowess. 

Mario Golf: Advance Tour is somehow one of those, as it comes from my second-favorite Mario spin-off series: Mario Golf! How I never fully dove into this entry is anyone's guess, but now I remedy that with not just my completed playthrough, but a full SuperPhillip Central retro review! 

As a supplement to this review, be sure to check out my review of Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour, which links up to this game.

Linking up on the links, with both positive and negative results.

Out of all of the Mario spin-offs that have come around the bend and released (Mario Kart notwithstanding), one of my absolute favorites HAS to be the Mario Golf series from Camelot. It's Mario, and it's golf--a sport that is otherwise boring in real life to me, but offers so much more as an interactive video game. You have colorful, fantastical courses, strategy in how to take on each hole of a given course, an assortment of larger-than-life characters to play as, and it all usually works out to be more engaging than the real sport could ever hope to be for me. 

That said, it blows my mind that despite playing all of the console entries of Mario Golf, I've missed fully experiencing all there is of the handheld games. Now, I've played a hole or two here and there, and Mario Golf: World Tour on the Nintendo 3DS is my favorite of the franchise to this day. However, I've never seriously spent time with the Game Boy Advance entry--until now. Mario Golf: Advance Tour is the second entry in the series with a dedicated story mode, one that fans continue to miss from future installments. What makes it so irresistible to players? Allow me to take to the first tee, get out my driver, and experience this answer for myself. 

Mario Golf: Advance Tour is neither a dumbed down nor a lesser experience than its big console brother: Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. While the visuals, of course, are not lovely polygonal 3D models and environments, Camelot has done some technical wizardry with making a duo of different graphical modes that make for a magnificent experience, whether through viewing it or actually playing it.

Who left all of the palm trees? Are we sure these are regulation fairways?!

You get an overhead look of the current hole you're playing on itself, complete with friendly fairways, the verdant putting green, as well as all the hazards that surround it: rough, bunkers, trees, out of bounds areas, and yes, water, too. What's amazing about this aforementioned technical wizardry is that no matter where your ball may lie, when you switch to setting up your shot through the traditional three-click accuracy meter (one the series has long used), the camera shows everything that is around your character to perfect quality. That is to mean that if you had a tree your ball narrowly dodged to the right, and your ball is currently sitting on a fast fairway with a bunker in front of it, the game will accurately show this in the behind-the-shoulder viewpoint. That tree will be sitting directly to your right, your character will be standing on a fast fairway, and wouldn't you know, that bunker would be dead ahead.

A second view shows off shots, as well as serves as a means to get an overhead view of the course.

Mario Golf: Advance Tour is first and foremost a golf RPG. Immediately upon turning on the game you're greeted with a Toad who asks whether you want to play as a boy or a girl character. Whichever gender/character you choose, the other serves as your doubles partner through the game's story. Advance Tour sees your ragtag group of up-and-coming golfers entering the Marion Golf Club, much to their equal delight and anxiety. "Are they ready for the big leagues?" and "Can they compete against everyone?" These are some of the doubts and questions that linger in their minds.

What follows is a LOT of verbose talkative characters and scenes, which is pretty much a trademark of Camelot's RPGs, especially if you were just coming off Golden Sun on the same platform. Fortunately, like Golden Sun before it, if you can get through the "saying very little worthwhile despite talking a lot" dialogue that Golden Sun threw at players, then you can get through a lighter version of this with Mario Golf: Advance Tour.

And you can bet that our teacher isn't Kid-ding around. (His name is Kid. Get it?)

Your room is your headquarters and place to save data, as well as switch between solo singles play and doubles play with your CPU partner. It's also the place where you'll store your multiple trophies that you and your doubles partner will hope to claim victor to. 

Starting from the Marion Club, there are four other major courses to tackle on your quest to be the best golfer. As you complete either solo or doubles tournaments and match play battles, you'll unlock access to new courses, new characters, and more content within the story mode. 

Of course, starting out immediately, you probably won't be out-driving or putting with the best of them. Thankfully, as you play and engage in every kind of golf activity there is to do in the story: whether that's competing in tournaments, facing characters in match play contests, and taking on various challenges like approach, driving, and putting challenges, you'll earn experience points--win or lose. Though, of course, you'll earn more EXP for winning. These points can be divided up between you and your doubles partner to level yourselves up. Each level nets you the ability to level up one stat: from your maximum driving distance, to your control, to your impact, and even the spin you can put on your shots.

Each time you level up, you earn a stat to upgrade! Choose wisely!

Whether you're playing in Singles or Doubles play, where your CPU partner does their best to either sink hard putts or sink your chances of making it on the green in regulation due to poorly made shots, you're at the mercy of your stats. If you hog all the experience points for yourself, your CPU partner will play even more poorly than they otherwise would.  

My doubles partner and I are out and about on the world map.

There is a wide abundance of activities outside of tournaments and match play contests. While those are the star of the show and the main events to compete in and complete, there's a whole world map of activities to take on. You have a Ring Shot-style mini-game where you drive and hit the ball through colored gates and try to make par or better on a given hole while doing so. There is a long-distance expedition of a hole that is far beyond traditional golf regulations with regards to its par, offering a Par 9 hole. The requirement here is to reach or beat par. As you continue on to the normal and hard difficulties, the par requirement lowers. 

Sink par or better while hitting your ball through all of these gates in this particular mini-game.

Thus, not only do the activities reward you with experience in point and level form, but they also reward you with experience in actual golfing form. These activities are essentially tutorials in all but name, but given a fun gamified aim to them to keep them interesting and feeling fresh and original.   

To make it feel even more like home to RPG fans--if the experience and leveling up didn't already do so-- there is plenty of discovery and exploration to be found in Mario Golf: Advance Tour. From little mini-games in each course, like one where you follow a Pokey around the Dunes Club, hitting it with a golf ball several times at different locations around the map to ward it off, to items found in cupboards and drawers, there's a lot to do and find. 

These items come in the form of instant level ups, power increases, and custom tickets are able to be traded in to a world map location where custom clubs can be created. These custom clubs can bring your characters more power, better control, straighter shots, higher or lower shot trajectories, and much more in a pinch, depending on how you utilize your tickets.  

Speaking of utilization, Mario Golf: Advance Tour utilizes connectivity with the GameCube's Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. While this is nifty and pretty cool in theory, in practice it locks out a hefty amount of content from Advance Tour players if they don't link up with Toadstool Tour. The connectivity between the Game Boy Advance's Advance Tour and the GameCube's Toadstool Tour is available with the asterisk and expectation that you've playing through both games intently. 

What I mean by this is that to unlock most of the Mushroom Kingdom cast within Mario Golf: Advance Tour, not only do you need to link up to Toadstool Tour, but you have to at least have earned a requisite amount of Birdie Badges through the latter's Tournament mode. Further, throughout the story mode of Advance Tour, you'll find yourself unlocking different Star versions of the base game's various holes. These add Mario-themed items, gimmicks, and hazards to the standard courses, but only for the holes that you unlock them in. Most of these, unfortunately, require completing certain tasks in Toadstool Tour and linking them to Advance Tour, as well.

Not "mushroom" for error on the course today, Mario!

As a positive, you can transfer your custom golfers over to the Toadstool Tour game and vice versa and gain experience points through either game. Plus, you get a severe advantage of having a playable character in Toadstool Tour who can theoretically drive off the tee for more than 350 yards, making your power hitter and character all the more useful and worthwhile to link between the games for.

Now, to be fair, it's not as if you're missing content that is must-have or makes Mario Golf: Advance Tour an incomplete experience if you don't have access to a GameCube, a Game Boy Advance, and a copy of Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. It's actually just gravy to the mound of mashed potatoes that Advance Tour already is, or maybe I can turn that into something golf-related. It's actually just using a 1-Wood when a 3-Wood would already suffice. Eh, I tried!

Mario Golf: Advance Tour is definitely not lacking in golf goodness to enjoy. I haven't even mentioned everything available outside of the story mode: Match Play, Stroke Play, Skins Play, Speed Golf, Club Shots, Near-Pin, and Tournaments are all featured outside of the story, accessed through the main menu. Plus, you can even check out and record your best shots. Sink an impossible putt or score a surprise chip-in eagle? You can easily look back on that in the Records menu. Amazing how a Game Boy Advance game installment can contain all of these modes and options, yet modern Mario Golf games have missed the mark content-wise by so much! Frustrating, but I digress.

It's amazing just how well Mario Golf's console level of gameplay has transitioned to the small screen of the Game Boy Advance with much less in the way of buttons and functions. You have your previously talked about traditional three-press system. One press of a button to start the gauge, one press to set the power, and one press to set the accuracy of your attempted shot. This is all the while factoring the lie of your ball, wind velocity, surrounding hazards, and other factors. Like Toadstool Tour, topspin, backspin, and special super topspin and super backspin effects, as well as being able to control where on the ball you wish to hit it in order to add spin (perfect for aiming around hazards like trees) are available in Advance Tour.

And a nice second shot from the fairway for Her Highness!

And if the "ain't broke, then why fix it" gameplay transitioned well from console to handheld, then so did the presentation. Again, while no one should expect 3D models and the level of graphical fidelity that the much more powerful GameCube can present to players, what Mario Golf: Advance Tour on the Game Boy Advance does offer is working with the system's strengths to impressive degrees. I mentioned how the game shows two viewpoints, an overhead view for aiming your shots and seeing the lay of the land, and one for actually taking your shits, and how detailed each are. It's borderline mind-blowing just how readable these environments, holes, and courses truly present themselves.

On the sound side, Nintendo continues its penchant for incorporating voice clips to show off the sound potential of the Game Boy Advance. This is something the company did ever since one of its launch titles, Super Mario Advance. Either way, it's cute and charming here with both the Super Mario characters featured in the game and the original cast of human characters introduced within the story mode. Meanwhile, Motoi Sakuraba knocks it out of the park--uh, better use another golf-ism here--rather, he sinks a clean chip-in for eagle with his soundtrack. Yes, a fair amount of it is recycled from Toadstool Tour with lesser sound quality, but it all sounds chipper, catchy, and delightful with its infectious melodies and strong synth brass and pan flute incorporated throughout.

As stated, Mario Golf: Advance Tour isn't a downgraded version or lesser experience than Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. It's just different, and in a lot of ways it's a superior game. In other ways, it's less so. In fact, it wouldn't be a mistake to say that both games are best as supplementary experiences to one another. Both supply excellent golfing gameplay in a highly accessible form while offering a level of challenge that starts small and grows as you progress through their respective games. Mario Golf: Advance Tour is a remarkable adaptation of the franchise in portable, pixelated form. It makes me a bit sad that we haven't seen an RPG mode with this much depth from the series since this installment. At least whenever a more in-depth RPG scenario hits a future Mario Golf entry, we won't have to deal with a link cable...

[SPC Says: A-] 

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World (Multi) Gameplay Trailer

Not one to leave its other popular RPG franchise in the dust, Square Enix has also published a new trailer, this one focusing on the gameplay that players can discover and (hopefully) enjoy in Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World. From scouting new and old monsters to the introduction of Joint Battle to the series, this trailer could possibly make you want to catch 'em all. Wait. Wrong franchise, but still! Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World is due out on December 3rd on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and PC. Like Final Fantasy Resonance before it, a free demo is available to try the game out. 

Final Fantasy Resonance (Multi) Tokyo Game Show Trailer

With the Tokyo Game Show beginning in Japan, Square Enix has published a full, three-minute trailer showcasing the latest in the Final Fantasy franchise: Final Fantasy Resonance. A demo has been available since the most recent State of Play presentation earlier this month, but this is just a reminder it's still available and progress from the demo will be retained to the full release of the game when Final Fantasy Resonance returns to its roots and enters HD-2D for the first time on October 22nd, 2026.

Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia (PS5, NSW, XBS, PC) Review

It's a Marsupilami kind of Monday here at SuperPhillip Central. That's because it's time to check out the sequel to Marsupilami: Hoobadventure, a Donkey Kong Country-style game I really enjoyed. Check out that game's review from August 2024, if you'd like, HERE. 

Otherwise, sit back and enjoy this new review of that game's recently released sequel: Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia. HOOBA! 

Pure Palombian Platforming

My knowledge on Marsupilami is admittedly quite narrow and limited. Really, I only knew of the yellow, long-tailed character from the Disney-produced series of the 1990s and a little-known Sega Genesis game. However, Marsupilami goes way beyond that as a franchise, debuting in Belgian comics in 1952. Since then, the character's popularity mostly sticks and is situated in Europe, more specifically in France and Belgium where the character originated. That said, Marsupilami has taken quite a storm as a multimedia franchise, appearing in cartoons, movies, and yes, video games.

The latter I'm most familiar with, having played Marsupilami: Hoobadventure several years ago--a surprisingly enjoyable, highly competent and capable Donkey Kong Country-like platformer. Now, Ocellus Studio brings out a sequel: Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia, with a meatier adventure, three playable characters, and local co-op. 

Right from the get-go before the gameplay even occurs, Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia doesn't hide its Donkey Kong Country inspirations and influences all that well. Whether that's intentional or not is up in the air. Nevertheless, even its simple story is reminiscent of Donkey Kong Country Returns, where a strange and mystic melody begins playing within the jungles of Palombia, the home to our Marsupilami heroes Twister, Hope, and Punch. This melody puts all of the local wildlife into what essentially boils down to a trance making them all dance, which causes nothing but havoc all around the nearby islands. To put a stop to the melody and the one who started it, the Mummy Queen--villain of the first game--our trio of long-tailed protagonists have platforming adventures through four unique worlds ahead of them.

From there, the first level of the game, Palombia Skies, introduces players to the action. As I moved through the utterly gorgeous sunset-soaked skies of the jungle background and hear the boisterous flute main melody and tribal beats backing it, I was pretty impressed. The tutorial is limited to this level, showing button prompts for everything from jumping, rolling, ground pounding, wall jumping and climbing, grabbing and swinging, as well as a new mechanic debuting in Marsupilami 2, that of the different playable characters.

Our heroes' lengthy tails can grab onto latches, hooks, and swings, as well as smack down foes.

In the original Marsupilami from Ocellus Studio, Twister was the main playable character, and even in this sequel, he's learned some new tricks. More on those shortly. With a press of the top face button, you switch between characters on the fly, one of two different protagonists. Each level automatically chooses the two characters you play as, while the third is temporarily left out. This is because all levels are designed for specific members of the Marsupilami crew. Plus, I imagine it'd be mighty confusing to have to cycle between three different characters on the fly, or at least quite a bit clunky.

Regardless, each Marsupilami has their own special abilities. Twister, our yellow-furred friend from the first game has those previously mentioned new tricks. He can dive forward and twist in the air, gaining some invincibility frames in the process to pass through enemies, and can also spin his tail after to slowly descend to the ground and hover across chasms. 

Hope springs eternal. She also springs into action in this Rail Graveyard level!

Meanwhile, Hope has no power of flight (or hovering, as it were), but can instead double jump. She can spin in the air to slowly make her descent, as well as spin off the heads of the Zinger-like bat enemies in the game, that would otherwise harm her and any other of our heroes. Last but not least is the decidedly unwieldy Punch, who can wrap himself into a big ball and bounce about. Spikes and thorns are no danger when in this form. Controlling this bouncy ball of Marsupilami isn't the greatest aspect of the game, as there is quite the learning curve.

At any rate, with two Marsupilami able to be cycled between with the press of a button, it opens up the level design quite a bit. There is more complex design to be discovered in this sequel to Hoobadventure, and to be fair, Salsa Palombia's predecessor wasn't exactly weak in its levels. But here, in this sequel, there are a lot of fun ideas, challenging platforming here and there, and plenty of well-hidden secrets, too. One level you'll be avoiding the snapping jaws of carnivorous plants within the jungle, while another you'll be evading and sometimes even using traffic to your advantage to reach hard-to-reach areas in a beautiful city setting. 

Whatever level you find yourself in, you're due for a rather breezy challenge to start, but by the endgame, the platforming gets a little taxing. It's never so much that it seems like a giant difficulty jump either. Salsa Palombia does a great job in easing the player into its platforming challenges. 

And sure, running, rolling, and jumping through levels is simple enough. If you're going straight from start to finish, the levels might not trip you up too terribly much. With that said, you're not only cheating yourself out of the myriad secrets and collectibles to nab in levels, but you'll probably hit a roadblock, too. That is because each island's boss in Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia requires at least 40 Musical Notes to unlock. It's similar to Super Mario 3D Land or 3D World in how you needed to collect a certain amount of Star Coins or Green Stars respectively to open up levels, or else you'd be blocked from progressing until you gathered the required amount to continue. That's the case for Salsa Palombia as well.  

An example of one of the many Musical Notes to find and collect for our Marsupilami friends.

There are 13 Musical Notes available in each level of the game. Five of these are located within a given level themselves, two are rewarded from completing Donkey Kong Country-style bonus rooms within hidden portals in the levels, and up to three are earned at the end of a level depending on how much fruit you've collected. 

Now, no doubt if you were counting along, you noticed that all of this doesn't add up to 13--just 10 instead. The other three are earned in a separate mode of Marsupilami 2, which opens up after its corresponding level is beaten. It's also the mode that based off Marsupilami 2's subtitle: Salsa Mode.  

Salsa Mode replaces the time trials that were seen within Marsupilami: Hoobadventure. Though you still need to be pretty fast with your platforming and running through the levels nonetheless. This mode is all about collecting fruit as fast as possible to build energy in a meter. As the meter fills with fruit collected, you eventually gain a fruit multiplier: up to four times the amount of fruit grabbed. However, the multiplier ends if you take damage, if you haven't collect a fruit in a handful of seconds, or otherwise take too long. 

The final three Musical Notes of the level for Salsa Mode are earned by meeting certain fruit total thresholds, much like the normal mode's levels, but here, it's important to not take damage while also being fast. I found I could lose my combo/chain/multiplier/whatever at least once in a level and not fail to meet the point goal I needed to reach to earn all three Musical Notes. That said, one obnoxious flaw is that if you find yourself failing in the middle of a level, you simply can't restart from the pause menu. Instead, you have to back out to the world map, and re-enter the level to try anew. A frustrating oversight.

The presentation and polish are somehow even greater than the original Marsupilami with this Salsa Palombia sequel!

Apart from the standard levels and the extra levels that are unlocked by paying a fee of fruit, each of the four islands in Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia house dojo levels. These are like the bonus room portals of standard levels, but you have to complete three in a row successfully. These throw challenges at you such as collecting all the music notes in a room, smashing all jars, defeating all enemies, or simply surviving for a set amount of time. Needless to say, these dojo challenges can get quite difficult when you have to flawlessly pull off three in a row without taking damage or failing. 

Generally, though, Marsupilami 2 is a rather breezy game. The life system of the original Hoobadventure is gone, so you have the ability to plummet to your doom as much as you'd like. Checkpoints are generous as well, so you're seldom ever having to redo large portions of levels. Even the last level that unlocks upon beating the final boss is gracious enough to include checkpoints. 

Speaking of bosses, this is where Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia might turn off some players. They're not bad boss battles by any stretch of the imagination--you dodge attacks until you can lay waste to the boss's boombox. The fact of the matter is that the difficulty jump here is noticeable. While I didn't struggle facing the game's bosses myself, I can see that younger or more inexperienced platforming fans might find these fights frustrating. Fortunately, you can change the difficulty of the game, bestowing players with more hearts aka hits they can work with, if push comes to shove.

A boss battle awaits, and the challenge dial gets turned up a few levels!

Marsupilami 2 isn't too lengthy of an adventure. It's certainly longer than Hoobadventure's base game before that title saw a free expansion in the form of a dinosaur-themed world. That said, in order to 100% the game, it took me about eight hours. For me, that was a perfect length.

One aspect of Marsupilami 2 I briefly mentioned but didn't go into detail yet about was the local co-operative play. You and a friend, or family member, can indeed play the entire game together. Each player is assigned a character from a given level's game-selected pair, and before starting the level, you can swap the two characters between players. Thus, if you have Twister and your co-op partner would rather play as them rather than Hope, you can swap and switch characters before the level begins. 

The top face button doesn't change characters in co-op, instead it puts your current character into a New Super Mario Bros. Wii-like bubble--or in this case, an egg. This is good for those platforming sections of levels that admittedly don't work well and/or don't seem to be designed with co-op play in mind. 

This particular level is essentially all about sliding along these icy rails. Hooba!!!

In co-op, part of the Salsa Palombia experience is easier, while others parts are decidedly more difficult. For example, bonus rooms aren't failed when one player gets hit. Both players must take damage for the challenge to be failed. Conversely, in Salsa Mode, if one player takes damage or if one player is much slower than the other and is forced to "bubble" or enter an egg when they go off screen, the fruit multiplier immediately ends. On the matter of entering an egg, this actually can be abused. If you're about to lose all of your health, you can manually enter into egg form, pop out of it, and have a full set of hearts. Plus, if one player perishes in a level, they return immediately in an egg. Thus, all in all, the positives, I say, definitely outweigh the negatives, and co-op is an enjoyable addition to Ocellus Studio's Marsupilami series. 

Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia is every thing a sequel should be: It improves upon pretty much all aspects of the original--gameplay, level design, and presentation--adds more features and content, and is just an overall greater adventure. The three protagonists play uniquely to one another, each have their own special uses, short detours and paths through levels they can access, and all I would consider useful to play as. The local co-op could be better, and Salsa Mode especially desperately needs a quick retry option--but otherwise, Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia certainly got me into a very good groove.

[SPC Says: B+] 

This game was played via the PlayStation 5 version. Marsupilami 2 - Salsa Palombia is also available on the Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series consoles, and PC.

Lou's Lagoon (NS2, PS5, XBS, PC) Review

With a new banner for the fall season proudly displayed on SuperPhillip Central's header, we also have a new review to read together on the site. It's a cozy game that is one part platforming and one part crafting. It's all Lou's Lagoon, and here is the SPC review.

 You win some, you "Lou-se" some.

Lou is a local hero at the ol' archipelago--a famous, fabled deliveryman loved by all, who helps supply the tropical seas with the materials and goods each island demands, needs, wants, requires, etc. When a sudden strong storm hits the archipelago, Lou goes missing upon going out to do a little investigating. His current whereabouts? Well, they're unknown! That'd be a problem indeed for the archipelago, but your character has a more personal stake in Lou's disappearance: he's your uncle! So in his absence, you tentatively take over his island, get help from his employees, and take the keys to his airplane to soar around the archipelago in search of him.

The beginning of Lou's Lagoon eases you into the most essential gameplay loops and formulas through some simple tutorials in the form of quests. It all starts with being handed an impressive and important tool known as the Swirler and being tasked with siphoning up materials with its electronic tendril-like vacuum arm in order to repair your plane. 

I'd carry more materials, but I currently don't have "mushroom" to do so.

Starting out, the Swirler lacks a powerful enough oomph to it. It can grab level one materials like driftwood and pebbles, for starters, but anything else will cause it to futilely attempt to suck stronger materials until it eventually overheats. The Swirler is helpful enough, and you earn other gadgets along the way to assist you on your adventure, such as fishing rod, an excavator to find hidden goodies underground, and even a Breath of the Wild-like glider. All of these can be upgraded with various materials in addition to in-game currency.

You'll find out relatively quickly that upgrading is not only helpful but pretty much a prerequisite to make progress in Lou's Lagoon. There are some roadblocks that get put in front of you which require certain tools requiring specific materials. Not all materials are found in the wild.

Your inventory may be limited, but at least pleasant views are in a surplus within Lou's Lagoon.

No, instead, they must be crafted. You have myriad means to craft in Lou's Lagoon. You have a refiner that takes scrap and other junk and transforms it into more useful materials. You have what essentially comes down to a loom which creates textile materials like silk and cotton. Then, there's the manufacturing station that makes components like processors and chips. 

All of these craft-able goods need you to earn their recipes through various skill trees of sorts. As you complete quests around the archipelago, you earn what amounts to points that unlock new recipes on these trees of recipes. The deeper you delve into each type of crafting stations' trees, the more complicated and costly the required material becomes. 

This doesn't just stop at the cost of materials or money. No, there's also a rather sizable time investment as well. Lou's Lagoon uses a crafting system that works in real time. It's not instant. If you insert materials into a given crafting station or machine, you're going to be waiting a fair amount of time for the machine to finish and cough up your bounty of desired materials. This can take upwards of minutes just to get one material--now to be fair, that's one of the higher rated materials in the game. Still, it's a long time to wait.

As the late and great Tom Petty once sang, "The waiting is the hardest part."

Sure, you can explore the islands of the archipelago or even wander around Lou's Island in the meanwhile to grab more materials for later, but that compounds things with another of the game's problems. Starting out, your inventory is limited to about ten different materials that you can hold at once. This can be upgraded through completing quests and finding upgrades in treasure chests, and you can also hold a modest amount of extra materials in your plane's cargo hold, or sell them to a shopkeeper to later repurchase. 

The point here is that you will find yourself quickly running out of space for materials and constantly juggling between what to carry and what to leave behind, especially when a fair number of quests require you to build something with materials, return to the quest giver with the correct materials, etc.

Like your character, your plane is yours to customize as well. Aye-aye! That's a sharp dresser!

Lou's Lagoon is, as stated, set on an archipelago, so you're not limited to the starting island. After all, what good is a plane if you can't FLY it!? You do get some time in the sky, mainly transporting yourself from one of the four main islands of the game that eventually open up to you. There are also materials and money that can be received by flying through balloons and specific crates in the sky, as well as time trials where you attempt to fly through a set amount of rings within a time limit, but for the most part, your plane is to travel from island to island. 

Times like this are when I wish Baloo was piloting this bad boy instead.

The islands themselves contain one major town apiece surrounded by what amounts to platforming playgrounds, covered in materials to nab, optional treasure chests to find, and uncharted areas to explore. Your character has no health bar and has no real dangers to worry about. Yes, there are pirates that don't take too kindly to your arrival in the archipelago and will attempt to attack you with a smack of their sack full of plundered booty, but this is but a daze. There's no fall damage, and the only actual danger is getting stuck in a buggy part of the environment with no way out. Fortunately, the pause menu houses an "I'm Stuck!" prompt specifically for these occasions, taking you back to the entrance of an area for the times this occurs.

Lou's Lagoon's four islands each have their own environments, challenges, and, of course, quests to complete.

Really, the need for an emergency teleport is the least of Lou's Lagoon's technical problems, at least when playing on the Nintendo Switch 2 version like I was. Truth be told, Lou's Lagoon is one of the most unpolished and uneven games of this cozy type I've played in a long time. There were glaring turn-offs like frame-rate issues where the FPS sunk to slideshow levels at rare but certainly noticeable times, and moments where the camera couldn't focus on the character you're speaking to, instead opting to awkwardly focus on the background. (This was a much more commonplace problem with the presentation.) Loading times also leave something to be desired, as well.

I think I see a shrine over ther--wait. Wrong game.

Still, Lou's Lagoon left me warmly wanting more rather than instead of leaving me out in the cold. Yes, its inventory and crafting systems should be updated if even a little bit to help with the grind, and polishing and debugging for the presentation and multiple technical issues are required for certain. Even with all of my gripes with the game, I deeply enjoyed the adventuring aspects, the platforming, the exploration, the massive amounts of customization, and much of the colorful cast of quirky characters. As it is now, Lou's Lagoon is a tough game to wholeheartedly recommend in its current shape when half of the experience is mired and betrayed by its design.

[SPC Says: C] 

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review. 

This game was played via the Nintendo Switch 2 version. Lou's Lagoon is also available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series consoles, and PC.