Chronicles Of Teddy is a absolute love letter to Zelda II: The Adventure Of Link. Even from just the opening text crawl it was obvious to me that they were trying to create a new game with similar gameplay. They succeeded in doing that with some flaws that started to appear the closer I got to the end. I’ll talk about those issues a bit later in this review when they are relevant. Instead this is where I usually write up a bit about the storyline.
The game literally begins within a game that our protagonist Tarrant is playing. It sets up a big backstory of another world and the king getting kicked out of his world to ours. He mind links with Tarrant’s teddy bear to bring her to his world so she can save it. Other than this small opening burst of lore the rest of the game barely even cares about telling one. Relying instead on the gameplay to keep the player hooked till the final boss tastes your blade.
How this game plays should be familiar to just about anyone owned a NES. All the moves and how it feels to control Tarrant really made me think I was playing Zelda II again. Between having a down thrust attack and being able to attack high/low you will have plenty of tools to deal with most peons. At least in this game the enemies with shields are a lot easier to deal with since they are slower to block attacks. The part where the fighting starts to fall apart is some of the later bosses. The limited range of her attacks makes it real easy to get hit by a large enemy. Getting close to them turns into a annoying affair. For example one Boss spends 80% of the fight out of the range of any attack and when he does come in range if you don’t time it right you’ll have to wait for him to come back down.
Not every boss may be very fun to fight but that doesn’t mean getting to him wasn’t fun. 4 worlds must be traversed to collect the macguffins. Each one is set up in a similar way. First the player must explore the area to find the items needed to unlock the dungeon. Getting those items can require a few different tactics. For example Tarrant will need to use the Harmoizer. Which is a music based item that lets her speak the language of the world she is in. Yup everyone sings in this fantasy land. It isn’t compete when she first finds it thus leading to a bit of scouring the land to find the key stones to compete it. Then once the right words are found she will be able to open doors, melt ice and even cause plants to create platforms. Getting past each of the guardians is the next task which is either done by saying the right word or having the correct item to give to the guardian.
Once in a dungeon the puzzles continue with each one having a new ability that must be acquired. They are all fairly obvious abilities like being able to double jump. The game is real good at leading the player through a dungeon without making the puzzles to hard to figure out. Although they do tend to rely a bit too much on making Tarrant run to one part only to show her a word that must be used to unlock a door. If it didn’t happen so often it wouldn’t have been an issue. I’m sure it isn’t a surprise that each dungeon ends with a boss. Not much else to say about the bosses other than them being my least favorite part of the game.
Instead this game does a good job of actually making me want to find items. Which might have just be because this game has a metric ton of collectibles. Most of them are useful like getting health upgrades or gems to buy stuff from a shop. Other times the effort to get said item is a bit much for the reward and in some cases I don’t even know why I was collecting them. Like the fireflies which are found by repeating a tone in 50 different areas. Still this was the only one I did not think was worth finishing. I did actually collect almost everything else just because it felt good to get more stuff.
Overall I have mixed feelings about this game. Running around exploring an area and competing puzzles was worth my time. In general the movement in this game feels really good with it being fun to just jump around. Yet the bosses that must be beaten were a letdown and it has a bit to many puzzles with the same gimmick. The limited attack range was kinda annoying too. Even with the flaws I do think this is a game worth playing if you haven’t gotten tired of pixel based action/adventure games.