So once upon a time, the king of monsters was lonely so he went to the human world and stole a little girl’s teddy bear. She went after it, and after many adventures, she and the monster king became friends and he wasn’t lonely anymore.  The girl and her teddy bear returned home, but later the monster king was defeated by an evil magician, and possesses the girl’s teddy bear and leads her on an adventure in the monster world.  So yeah, the story of this game doesn’t make any sense, but nothing about this game does.  Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus is a 2-D side-scrolling adventure game with exploration elements similar to Metroid or Zelda.  It features retro-style pixel graphics and atmospheric music and is downloadable on the PS4 and Wii U (reviewed here on the latter).

At first glance, this game has all the elements to become great. A charming retro style and gameplay to match, a huge world to explore and monsters to defeat with the girl’s sword and shield.  But unfortunately, that’s where the promise ends because the rest of the game is garbage.  First of all, play control is clunky and slow.  Your girl plods along and can’t jump very high.  You can run, but all the buttons are mapped weird and you can’t change them as far as I can tell.  The puny sword you start the game out with is also a joke, especially since the enemies have further ranged attacks and can move much faster than you.

Goals are also very unclear. Most of the time I just wandered around, just following my nose and not really knowing where to go or what to do.  And the in-game map is no help at all.  You’d think that such a secretive game would have tons of FAQs and strategy guides on the Internet, but it doesn’t.  Most of the time, you’re searching for stones with runes on them, which you can use to make words to communicate with things in the game, usually to reach another area.  But this becomes tedious and confusing pretty quickly.  The in-game manual is also not helpful at all.

And finally this game is buggy. Half the time I would play, the music would cut out inexplicably, and since the game relies a lot on music and atmospheric sound, once it cut out, the game would be very unplayable.  It’s a shame, too, because I REALLY wanted to like this game.  With some tweaking and polish, this game could’ve been awesome.  But as it stands, it’s a buggy mess.  With its secret codes and 2-D swordplay, it reminds me of a cross between FEZ and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.  Unfortunately, I didn’t care for either of those games.  But if you liked them, you might find more enjoyment out of Chronicles of Teddy than I did.

Kid Factor:

Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus is rated E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Mild Fantasy Violence. When you attack enemies, they just explode into a mess of pixels and marbles.  Although when you lose all your energy, the girl also explodes into a bunch of marbles, which looks a little weird.  Reading skill is a must for the text, and younger gamers may get frustrated at the high difficulty, unclear goals, and clunky controls.

Tags: Game Reviews