Sayonara Umihara Kawase

normalize adding vr support to ports of 3ds games

the guilty gear strive of umihara kawase
its alright

Quick Score: 3/5

Notes: Outclassed by "Umihara Kawase Shun" in every way. Play that game instead. After that if you really want more, then feel free to try this one out. Overall the game isnt bad, but the physics are not as good as the OG games, visuals are kind of wack, and the final crab boss is fucking annoying.

A short but sweet game. I would say this game along with the SNES version they are great starting games to the series. I really love the music of this game and the game is pretty relaxing despite its difficulty.

The weakest and easiest of the original trilogy, though it's still fun.
The easy difficulty comes mostly from the fact that in this game you're no longer always starting a run from Field 0 and then practicing the difficult stages. The practice mode has become the main mode and the original mode is unlocked later and has been renamed "Survival". This time, bosses are always placed at the end of every route. Finishing the game once with all characters in Survival is required to unlock everything the game has to offer. Some characters offer gameplay benefits (such as respawning you at a checkpoint once after dying before you lose a life) at the cost of not uploading your times to the leaderboards.
The main difficulty comes from collecting all the backpacks, which are only counted as collected if you reach an exit door after picking them up, but because this can be done even outside of Survival Mode, it felt like there weren't many memorable Fields this time around.
The soundtrack is still great, though the songs are longer which means I don't find myself returning to this one's soundtrack often. The songs "Apartments", "Public Bath" and "Parent and Child" are the main highlights to me, as are the remastered versions of Shun's soundtrack (which the Steam release of Shun also uses, meaning the original versions are not available anywhere on Steam). These remixes from previous entries in the series can be heard depending on the character you choose to play as. Boss Fields have their own unique music as well.
This game introduces some new enemies and gimmicks. I love the gun fish. There's also trampolines, and they're terrible. The physics have changed a lot compared to the previous two games, they're a lot more floaty and slow. I don't like it, but it's nothing that makes the game unplayable. At least it makes climbing up a lot easier, though horizontal movement is a lot harder to master in this.

Okay this is one of those reviews where I have mixed feelings. I don't hate it but this game is far too difficult for its own good, yet i keep coming back to play it.

Now I've played difficult platformers before like Mega Man Zero 1-3 and Gravity Circuit for some background, that being said this is far more frustrating.

It has a nice art style and music, its not the mechanics themselves that's the issue, its the level design. The game starts out fine and is even clever in design, however it becomes brutal and your failure is permanently shown to you on each level in a game that wants you to try risky moves.

I want to not recommend this title and recommend it all at the same time. Anyways do plenty of research before buying this one because your in for a very difficult game.

It can get devilishly difficult, but the movement just feels so good. This one lets you make progress in unlocking new stages by clearing them one at a time, and you can test your mettle with traditional full runs from start to finish once you get used to the individual stages

All the games in the trilogy are so pleasant to play once you get a hang of the mechanics

Me after clearing the first 3 stages: comfy game :)

Me after dying 450 times on stage 33: comfy game >:)

This game is REALLY hard sometimes, but a lot of fun once you get a hang of the controls.
Has some cool changes compared to the last games that make it easier and harder:
-You can pick levels one at a time and still progress, so no more game overs and restarting the run (survival mode can be unlocked and is effectively the same as how the old games played)
-There are multiple characters which give you an advantage (mid-level shortcuts is a big one), different Umihara costumes also change the music!
-You can freeze time to readjust where you're aiming, although I didn't find this very useful
-Reeling/unreeling the grappling hook is way stronger, so wall climbing and swinging is a lot easier

-Enemies are noticeably harder to reel in, so it's easy to get dragged along by a fish you've hooked
-Line tension isn't as strong without reeling, so rocket jumping isn't a thing anymore, instead you can gain momentum by reeling the line and jumping
-The new pistol fish enemy is really annoying
-The dedicated diagonal throw buttons from Umihara Kawase Shun are gone
-Because you can pick levels one at a time instead of having to reach them in a single run, there are some REALLY hard levels now to compensate for you being able to retry them over and over

Being able to pick levels one at a time makes this one of the best in the trilogy because you can reasonably make progress a little bit at a time. The soundtracks of the last two games are also included and the 3D graphics (which could use a little anti-aliasing) are actually quite pretty.

From looking at the trailer I found the game to look so wacky. What drawed me in was the grappling mechanics. And let me just say, this game is absolutely fun. The mechanics are weirdly enough complicated. Complicated enough for it to take me at least 8 hours of gaming to fully understand it. And let me just say I'm preeeety dumb. Anyways because of this game I fell in love with the series and hope to master the rest. ;-;

P.S. The soundtrack goes hard.

9/10

It's a special breed of video game that can claim, with essentially unimpeachable authority in either direction, to be be both one of the comfiest and one of the most frustrating games ever made.

It's a fiendish physics-based platformer starring a bloodthirsty Sushi Chef schoolgirl who cleaves through sentient fish people like some sort of more lame version of Miyamoto Musashi. And yet it all feels like coming home from school in the 90s. Probably so that you can turn on the Super Famicom and play Umihara Kawase. You can play it in a myriad of ways these days, and I say this way is just fine. It's a scientific fact that all humans should play Umihara Kawase.

One of my favorite platformers of all time.

It's a grappling hook game where your "rope" behaves like an elastic band. It's hard to control at first, but learning to tame your grappling hook makes you feel like a superhero. Over the course of the game you'll go from slowly wobbling your way through a level's intended route, to flinging yourself across a bunch of shortcuts and reaching secret exits. In that sense, it's much closer to Super Monkey Ball or Getting Over It than it is to Mario or Bionic Commando.

It's the third game in the series (the previous two, originally for SNES and PS1 respectively, also have fantastic Steam ports) and it's made by the original staff, so the physics and the level design are as good as they've always been.

You can buy the trilogy on Steam as a pack, but this is the most accessible place to start. The later levels are still super hard but there are tutorials to help you get started, and the default game mode lets you play through the game one stage at a time instead of sending you back to the start of the game when you run out of lives. They also removed time limits and respawning enemies, so you can take your time and learn to climb.

VR actually works with this game, though you are NOT playing in a first person perspective and using the Vive wands to hook and reel things in. In fact you don't even use the Vive wands, but a regular gamepad to play. All it really does is give you a 3d image and the ability to turn your head to get a better overall view of the map. This is possibly more useful than I realize, since I haven't tried playing this game without the VR headset.

I played the original Umihara Kawase through an emulator and had some fun with it, though I constantly kept getting destroyed by specific levels. I'm not sure if this game is easier, or if I've just gotten better, but I've actually gotten upto and beaten a few boss fights already. Teh one boss fight was absurdly difficult to figure out how I was supposed to do anything to attack it, since there wasn't any hint of what I was supposed to be attacking it with until after I accidentally met the conditions. Once I figured out what to do it go incredibly easy. The other boss fights were signifigantly harder.

There's a character selection, but I'm not sure if any of the characters actually have different abilities or not, similarly, there are different "endings" but the credit sequence at the end is always the same. Still, there's something about the gameplay that is simply fun when you get it to work, and frustrating when you don't.

Played this in VR using my Vive and a Xbox 360 controller so consider this a "seated VR review" for fellow Vive or Rift (if support gets added) owners .

So like the description says, you're " a girl who uses a fishing hook as a grappling hook.". Gameplay wise from my brief stint (I will play more) it's a traditional oldschool 3D side scroller. Jump between platforms, hook enemys climb ladders etc. It's not really anything new gameplay wise but it does what it does well and works well with a xbox controller (I assume it will work simillarly with other controllers).

VR wise however...I'm impressed. The depth and resolution is spot on and as good as it gets in VR. I had no issues reading text and everything was rendered quiet clearly. There are 2 scales avalible to play in. One a smaller desktop size where you can see everything and move the main character around in and one much larger where you're focused on the character and her immediate surrounding area. There are pros and cons to using to using either scale. In the smaller scale you can see most if not all the play area (including hidden objects you need to collect) and plan ahead accordingly but it makes certain moves harder to time right. In the larger scale moves are easy to make/time but you have to explore more to find those hidden objects and solve the level.

For a seated side scrolling experiance I found the whole VR element incredibly smooth. I was worried it might induce the dreaded VR sickness (as some seated games can do) but I was fine with this title and to be honest there seemed to be no element that could cause it as head tracking was spot on.

The only downside (if you can call it that) is that you will need a xbox or similar controller. Most Steam users have them anyway but worth mentioning for those who don't. Also, it's got that whole weird anime theme thing going on. I personally don't understand anime but fish with legs fighting school girls with backpacks atop giant celery bunches is just..odd. then again who am I to judge when I grew up with blue hedgehogs who collect rings and Plumbers who like to jump on turtles.

All in all well worth owning on the Vive if you like platformers.

Own a vive and want to play a good platformer on it? Buy this.

Now with VR support. Already an excellent platformer and you should see the reviews why, and now with VR support as an update; the 3ds version can only dream of being this immersive. Looking around and seeing the whole stage, being able to see depth, can help knowing when the cast the hook. Frame rate is VR spec.


Note: the moment you start the game, press start to reset the view to your default head position, VR dimension settings can be adjusted in the options menu, such as scale of the area.

Kinda cute moving you head around and looking at the characters and mobs on screen.

A fun elastic physics based platformer with an easy-to-understand, challenging-to-learn and hard-to-master movement system, a relaxing soundtrack, a surreal dream-world aesthetic, and cute anime-styled playable characters.

Has a large number of levels, many of which have collectibles for added replayibility. Plus there's the fact that you'll rarely beat a level on the first try, let alone the first 5, maybe even 10+, until you gain confidence with the movement system.

HIGHLY reccomended you play with a controller.

This series is one of my favourites and I'm really pleased about it being released on steam. This is the Vita version of the game without the original super famicom game as a bonus, this means some extra levels that the 3DS version did not have and graphical and performance improvements (better looking models, textures, 60fps instead of 30, more background elements like birds).

The gameplay of the series is probably best described as a physics based puzzle platformer. But rather than pushing a box onto a button the puzzle part comes from how best to use the fishing lure and the swinging mechanics to get to the end of each stage. It's extremely satiisfying when you swing around to the exit in a way that makes it look like you knew what you were doing. It definitely requires you to get familiar with the controls before you can really get... in the swing of things. The tutorials at the beginning of the game are a bit much though, the original game had small little cutscenes showing an example of how to use swinging that you may not have thought of, but this game likes to completely spell it out in text which slows down the beginning of the game, especially if you are already familiar with how to play. Thankfully these can be turned off in the options

The swinging mechanics aren't identical between the three games. Personally I'd prefer more horizontal swinging control like the super famicom game had, but these elvels are designed around the physics that are there.

Much like the other games in the series, the boss fights are some of the worst stages, this is pretty much a result of the controls not being designed for what they want you to be doing in them. There aren't that many in this game, and this game's bosses are much better than the previous games, except maybe the crab.

I still have no idea when the time stop function is supposed to be used, this is not the kind of game where that allows you to carefully plan when to launch your lure, and you can't even launch it when time is stopped so it will mess up your timing more than anything unless you're using the character that slows time instead. Also the quick retry function only works on stages you've already beaten which kind of makes it pointless as if you've already beaten it then you probably don't need to retry that often.

Overall I'd say this is a good port. However there are no resolution options so you have to play in a sub-720p resolution, and you can only map controls according to the vita controls i.e. only two shoulder buttons, which is disappointing because I would have liked to map downwards diagonals to the extra shoulder buttons for extra accuracy.

Fuck fields 33, 24, 46, 35, 59 and 54 though.

Are you looking for a unique platforming experience that's unlike anything most people know about? Then you should give this game a gander. If you've played Bionic Commando, then you might know what to expect. I haven't had a chance to play any Bionic Commando games before but I've been told they're similar to a degree.

The third entry in the Umihara Kawase series, Sayonara Umihara Kawase originally came out for the 3DS in Japan back in 2013 and it was later released outside of Japan over in Europe and North America a year later in 2014. The version we got was localized as Yumi's Odd Odyssey but references to the first two games in the series were kept the same.

In April of this year, the game was ported to the PS Vita under the name of Sayonara Umihara Kawase Plus, including extra stuff and the original Umihara Kawase that came out on the Super Famicom back in 1994 (both with their own trophy lists).

On October 6th, 2015, the Plus version was ported to PC, and later in the year both Umihara Kawase and Umihara Kawase Shun will get PC ports as well so now everyone will finally be able to enjoy and experience this series in its entirety.

As for how the gameplay actually functions, you traverse levels using a fishing rod to swing and propel yourself across, over and under enemies (fish with legs and some bosses like a giant crab or giant tadpole) and platforms, all while trying to get to a door as fast as possible (if you're into speedrunning or leaderboards) while some levels have 2 doors with a harder to reach door acting as a shortcut to get to levels further along the level select screen (sometimes it's necessary to access the second optional door to reach branching paths to get to one of the different bosses).

I probably could've left out most of the info before the part where I talked about how the game plays, but I just wanted to throw in a little extra context. Hopefully more people will get into this wonderful series and enjoy it as much as other people do B^)

This is a superior version of the 3DS port that came to the United States. Runs at 60fps and has a good online time ranking infrastructure. The Umihara Kawase games have such a wonderful feel and at 15 bucks this one is a steal (it originally retailed for 30 on the 3DS). I've always loved exploring and rubbering around in the surreal Umihara Kawase worlds and I'm so happy that this and apparently the other ones are coming to Steam. The truth is, Umihara and I are best friends in real life. We got on adventures together and she shares her best sushi recipes with me

The Umihara Kawase series is known for its fun-yet-difficult platforming, and for the most part, hasn't really changed too much in the past 20 or so years. Sayonara Umihara Kawase, the most recent entry to the series (actually released a while back on 3DS and PS Vita), is no different, for the most part. Still, should you pick it up?

Gameplay:
As stated earlier, the core mechanics of this game aren't all-too different from the old Super Famicom game. Many people describe it as Bionic Commando-esque, in that you use a hookshot-like item to aid in much of your platforming, and I'd say that's quite a good comparison (other than the fact that you can, in fact, jump in this game). Your character wields a fishing hook, which you use to grab onto walls, as well as stun your enemies (which are mostly walking fish). As you progress through the game, or whenever you feel like speedrunning through the levels, you'll eventually have to employ some tricks with your fishing hook to reach various platforms in the game, or help boost you through levels quicker. Some include using your hook to launch yourself into a sprint, swinging around walls/ceilings in the level (which is pretty challenging to do right), etc. It's a lot of fun, once you get used to it, and it's pretty neat to see yourself pull off these weird tricks (see some videos of the gameplay to get a sense of the kind of tricks you can do).

Music:
The music in this game is extremely calming, and catchy. I admit, I found myself trying to beat levels just to uncover more of the soundtrack. In fact, the music of the trailer was one of the things that drew me into this game, in the first place. This is definitely welcome, given the frustrating difficulty of the game. If you've ever played Donkey Kong Country 2, I would liken the use of the music in this game to how Donkey Kong Country 2 used Stickerbrush Symphony (one of my favorite songs from a video game) for its Bramble levels (which were also rather frustratingly difficult).

Graphics:
Sayonara Umihara Kawase provides no way to control the graphical quality of the game, so you're stuck with relatively low resolution graphics (no 1080p, basically). This can be quite annoying, as you'll wind up with pretty pixelated graphics. On the bright side, you do get 60 frames per second, which is a welcome change compared to the 3DS and PS Vita versions of the game (which were locked at 30 frames per second), so the animation is very smooth. The artstyle is also quite decent; backgrounds and levels colorful, and the enemies look quite whimsical in nature. It's not anything amazing, based on my knowledge of anime art (though, I admit, I'm no anime art connoisseur), but it gets the job done.

Conclusion:
If you want a challenging platformer, and/or are into speedrunning, this game could be of interest to you. I especially recommend this game, if you're a fan of the Umihara Kawase series, as it's more of the same. If you already have the 3DS and/or PS Vita version, I'm not sure this adds too much. Personally, if I already had those versions, I probably wouldn't have bought this on Steam. However, if you'd like to see the game run in 60 fps, have achievements, or possibly make use of the Steam Workshop for it, Sayonara Umihara Kawase might be worth a look, even if you already have the 3DS and PS Vita version(s).

Rubberband Fishing Girls Simulator 2015

Seriously though, outside of the lack of graphical and resolution options, this runs pretty well at 60fps and is a much better version of the game I have on my Nintendo 3DS (which ran at 20-30 and 15-20 with the 3D on) that I spent $30 on from the eshop 1.5 years ago.

Really good game for $13 atm. It'll make you wanna throw your controller sometimes or you'll feel like a total badass when you pull off some sexy grappling moves that saves your butt.

Bionic Commando with cute girls and walking fish. The puzzlest of platformers. Use fishing line to move yourself around large art supplies and search for doors to the next set of large art supplies. You've never known a tension like this before.

This is a no-frills port of the PlayStation Vita version of the game. Runs smooth, but functionally it's developed like a lot of Japanese doujin games. Control mapping is basic and assumes you have a controller of some sort, though there are some mysterious keyboard bindings. There are basically no graphical options apart from making the game fit your screen, but simply maximizing the windowed version looks fantastic in my opinion (again, coming from the Vita version.) I'm not a major PC gamer myself, so I'm totally fine with a barebones PC port, this is a series where the gameplay takes center stage after all.

In terms of the gameplay, this is a platformer/puzzle game with physics-based rope-climbing, except with elastic properties. Unlike many physics-based platformers, it is incredibly intuitive and you feel satisfaction not just by solving the puzzles of navigating each stage, but by simply flinging yourself around and still feeling in control. Fans of the Ninja Rope from the Worms franchise will be very familiar with this kind of gameplay. There are also a handful of boss fights which make for some nice variety. Expect a decent challenge from this game as well, whether you go hunting for backpack collectibles and hidden doors or not!

The stage design and visuals are very quirky, very Japanese, and all incredibly charming. From the walking fish, to the school supplies, to the bathhouse backgrounds and recognizable beer bottles, it's a colourful game that compensates for the otherwise geometric levels.

This is a series that's been around since the Super Nintendo days, finally coming to the west in full force, better than ever before. It would be an absolute shame to miss it, even if you're picky when it comes to your PC ports.

I've been pretty up to date with the Umihara Kawase Series, even to the point where I even have this here game on the 3DS (where it's title Yumi's Odd Odyssey). I decided to go ahead and buy it again on Steam just cuz it looks like it's a slightly better game than the 3DS Original and, to my satisfaction that is completely true. The game runs at a solid 60 Frames and it just feels a bit tighter overall.

Only drawbacks I've noticed is that Full-Screen makes the game look horribly fuzzy, and the Quick Restart Function doesn't work (unless you've beat the level once, which kinda doesn't make sense to me). Other than that I'm seeing no real problems with this title, and even in its native windowed resolution it's still pretty big without taking up the entire screen (which is pretty comfortable imo). So if you haven't already tried a Umihara Kawase Game yet, want a new UK fix, want to try a slightly better version of the 3DS/Vita Game, or just want said game on PC, then I'd say check this one out. =)