In this review, we collect the curio in the Game Boy Advance game Frogger’s Journey: The Forgotten Relic. We find out how well this adventure game plays.
This game was released in 2003.
We have a lot of familiarity with this franchise at this point. We first played the Atari 2600 version of Frogger. That game got a very solid score. From there, we tried the Atari 5200 version of the same game. That game also got a very solid score. We then tried Frogger II – Threeedeep! for the Atari 5200. That game earned a great score.
From there, we tried Frogger for the Sega Genesis. That game wound up bombing hard. The Game Boy Color version did a bit better, but only wound up being passable and little else. After that, we tried Frogger 2 also for the Game Boy Color. That game turned things around pretty well, earning a solid score here.
We then moved on to the Game Boy Advance where releases seem to be a bit more plentiful. We tried Frogger’s Adventure: Temple of the Frog. That game got an OK score. After that, we tried Frogger Advance: The Great Quest. That game took the franchise into a very different direction. Unfortunately, it only managed to score a fairly mediocre score. In spite of that, we decided to give this next title a try.
The story of this game is that Frogger is sitting around in Firefly Swamp. He is bored and says he is tired of resting. When he wishes for something interesting to happen, a plane crashes near his house. The pilot gets out and gives Frogger a memo from his grandfather. Apparently, the grandfather made an interesting discovery and is inviting Frogger to help find the final piece of the puzzle. Frogger immediately decides to take him up on the offer and flies to Kabohti. When he arrives, he discovers that his grandfather is missing. He decides to take up the adventure of finding him.
This game does move things back closer to the roots of the franchise’s style. Movement is tile based and you will be focusing more on enemy evasion rather than defeating any of them for the most part. Boss enemies, of course, are an exception to this.
One thing you’ll likely notice is that, unlike other games in the series with this type of movement, you’ll still have to traverse large areas much like a regular adventure game. Additionally, you are no longer operating on a one-hit-kill basis. You now have a health bar that starts off with 3 hearts. Most hits take away one heart while a few other hits deduct 3 hearts. This game offers an ability to extend your maximum health. If anything, this game comes off as being heavily influenced by some of the earlier Legend of Zelda games.
While you can get hit, it’s more than possible to recover health. Along the way, you can encounter various fruit that can help heal you. A red apple will restore one health. Banana’s will restore, seemingly, all of your health. A blue rotten fruit will deduct one heart. Meanwhile, green pear’s will remove negative conditions. Actually, this game only has one negative condition: hyper hop. This forces you to keep moving for a period of time. If you collect the green pear, it will remove this condition more quickly.
Another item is the Frogger icon. This will increase your maximum health by one. They are definitely more difficult to find, but definitely worth the find.
There are also plenty of enemies throughout. Most enemies will have routine movements for you to figure out. Some simply go around in a circular path. Others go back and forth. A few stay in place and attack a square next to them. A few will simply stay in place and become harmful at certain moments in their movement cycle. All of them are predictable, though it can be challenging to determine this – especially when there are multiple enemies on screen.
Water, for a large portion of the game, is hazardous. Fall into water and you’ll lose health, being forced to restart earlier in the area.
Additionally, there are pits in this game. Unlike virtually every other game in this franchise, falling into these by accident does not mean death or a reduction of health. Instead, you’ll be taken into a “basement” area where you need to dodge a large number of enemies. Get to the exit and you’ll return to the area you fell from – offering you an opportunity to try again.
Along the way, you’ll collect your main tool of the game: The Opart. Opart is basically a black ball with blue eyes. While it doesn’t directly communicate with Frogger for the most part, it does have brief moments of dialogue. While it, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily help your quest much, upgrades through relics become mandatory for completion of a normal playthrough.
Further into the game, you’ll find yourself not only collecting memo’s, but also relics. Memo’s are meant to be given to Leona. The grandfather is leaving notes everywhere, giving Frogger clues on where to head to next. Relics are meant to be handed in to Rusty. For a price, he will combine the relics to Opart, giving you an additional ability.
Special abilities include Jump (allowing you to skip two spaces), flashlight (lights up dark areas), and even a hammer (destroys breakable objects). In all, there are 8 abilities to obtain.
Curio is the currency of this game. At first, you are simply collecting coins which are worth 1 curio each. Later on, you’ll get the chance to collect bags of curio. Each bad is worth 30 curio. This money is used to upgrade Opart as well as a few extra items you can buy along the way.
Near the dig site, there is a mini-game called “Catch Your Own Fish”. This mini-game, at first, looks like a simple rhythm game much like Dance Dance Revolution. You have a shadow on the top of the screen. When a fish moves up to the shadow, you need to press “A” to “catch” the fish. The closer they align when you press “A”, the better the grades. The better the grades, the more curio you’ll get (depending on how much you bet of course). Those grades include “Marvellous”, “Perfect”, “Great”, all the way down to “Boo”.
There is, however, a catch to this game (pardon the pun). The fish can face four different directions: Up, down, left, or right. What you need to do is use the D-pad to move the shadow in the matching direction. If the shadow is facing the wrong direction, you’ll simple be awarded a “boo” for your efforts. This can be quite irritating as the fish might change direction on the last split second. So, some luck is definitely involved in catching the fish.
Also along the way, you can buy furniture for your grandfather’s house. This really doesn’t do anything to help your adventure, but you can collect as many of these pieces of furniture to see if you can get them all for the end game evaluation.
There are a number of Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) in town. In addition to Leona and Rusty, there is also the pub. The white dog there allows players to save. Additionally, you have to talk to NPC’s for “clues” on where to go next. There is also a few modes of transport including raft and plane needed to get you to where you need to go.
When you leave, you’ll be taken to the world map. It’s a small area featuring forest, mountain, river, cave, desert, and other areas. Each area is unlocked one at a time. If you got the right clues, Frogger will automatically head to the next area.
One thing to note is that as you collect Opart relics, different area’s otherwise inaccessible will become accessible. So, if you are looking to complete the game entirely, revisiting area’s will become critical later on in the game.
As mentioned, boss fights are present in this game. Most boss fights simply are a case of understanding the movement and attack patterns. After that, you just need to use whatever Opart upgrade you have to your advantage.
Opart moves can be equipped in the select menu. Each move can be assigned to either “A” or “B”. ideally, you’ll want to have a system of what types of moves you want for each button. Otherwise, it can be easy to confuse your buttons part way through a map. For me, my strategy is that “A” will have movement parts while “B” is for utilities abilities. It won’t be perfect throughout the entire game, but that’s how I ended up keeping things straight in my mind while working my way through the game.
For me, the first problem with the game is the general movement. Most games I know of up to this point in time simply rely on you using your directional pad and holding it down to get to places. In this game, this will slow you down and demand that you constantly mash the arrow in question to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time. This does grate after a while because I’m not aware of very many other games outside of this that did this that aren’t RPG games. It wouldn’t be so bad if I also didn’t have to traverse such large distances in the process.
A second problem that does hinder things a bit is the fact that you have to collect the “right clue” from the right NPC. Otherwise, you’ll be stuck dead in your tracks trying to advance in the game. It’s more than possible to find a rout throughout town where you can just talk to everyone to get the storyline moving. Still, some clues are generally adequate with where you need to go next. Unfortunately, these clues can sometimes “not count” and you need to find a more obvious clue. Otherwise, the game halts your progress. This can be an annoying expedition of just talking to people over and over again in earlier parts of the game.
A third problem is that this game does come off as being quite derivative rather than innovative. Let’s be clear here, this franchise does desperately need a facelift of some kind. Simply crossing over a highway and river might have worked well in the 80’s, but by this point in time, such a concept simply doesn’t cut it. In order for this game to be compelling, something novel would need to be thrown into the mix. Unfortunately, this game simply does not deliver on that. Instead, it relies on mechanics that seemingly look less risky. So, this game does suffer from problems of standing out because of this.
Having said that, there are a number of positives to point out. One thing I do like about this game is the ability to explore older area’s for bonus items. This does allow for this game to have a certain amount of depth. The levels themselves don’t change, but over time, your access does change. This helps give the impression that there are layers to this game beyond simply going from point A to B. That does get a thumbs up from me.
Another positive is that this game is fairly easy towards the beginning. This allows players to get used to the controls and learn all the in’s and outs of the game without breaking too much into a sweat early on. At the same time, this game does challenge players part way through. One wrong move or one over-calculation and you are going to be scouring the level for health items. Midway through the game, those are certainly there, but later on, there is an ever shrinking margin of error. Puzzles will certainly test you and you might have to rely on quick button presses to make it through certain bottlenecks. So, the difficulty curve does get a thumbs up.
Another element which I briefly touched on earlier is the learning curve. I would like to say the learning curve is pretty solid, but there is a catch to this. That catch is that this game explains every tiny detail including dropping hints on how to beat levels and bosses. In the final boss, for instance, you are effectively instructed on how to beat the final boss which is pretty bizarre to me. Most games simply leave the final boss to you to figure out, but in this game, you apparently have to be told how to beat that final boss.
Overall, this is one of those games that have its strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include a good difficulty curve and an ability to revisit levels for bonus items. Weaknesses include hand holding in the instructions area, a demand to get obvious clues from random NPCs, and a shortage of anything innovative outside of modifying the formula a bit. It’s a decent game all around, but nothing that I would consider something to get overly excited over.
Graphically, this game is pretty decent. What I really like is how well animated everything is. There are a number of ways you can injure or inconvenience Frogger. Still, each animation sequence is actually nicely animated. Movements and the overall look of the game is decent. The portraits of different characters are nicely done. While it may not be mind-blowingly innovative like some of the third person perspective racing games such as Need for Speed: Underground, this game does have plenty of positives here.
Audio is decent. The music gets the job done, though nothing really stands out to me. Sound effects are pretty well done. There may not be voice clips, but there are definitely some sound effects that really help make this into a cartoon style game. Since this is a Frogger game, it’s hard to argue against this style, really. So, decent all around.
Overall, this is a game with its strengths and weaknesses. Strengths include the difficulty curve and the ability to revisit area’s for extra items. Weaknesses include the overall movement, some of the hand holding that goes on and a general lack of anything truly innovative to help make this game stand out. Graphics are pretty decent and the audio is also pretty decent. So, an alright game all around.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Beat the game (under 4 hours), though not 100% completed.
General gameplay: 17/25
Replay value: 7/10
Graphics: 7/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 68%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
