A monstrous adventure also happens to be one of the cutest adventures.
“Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure,” which I’ll call “Gurumin” for simplicity, originally released for the PC in 2004 in Japan, 2007 on the PlayStation Portable to English audiences for the first time, and on Steam and GOG.com in 2015. “Gurumin 3D” was released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016 for $19.99CDN and is the most recent release of the game.
There are also four “Gurumin” 3DS home themes, which I got for free during the holiday promotion without realizing there was a promotion. Sometimes life throws a good bone.
“Gurumin” was developed by “Nihon Falcom Corporation,” which is more well-known for their “Ys” series. They also developed “Zwei: The Arges Adventures,” which I’ve reviewed before.
When I got "Gurumin back in the day, I didn’t have any fancy reason for getting “Gurumin." I was browsing the Steam Store by new releases with the anime tag (which if you've read my reviews before, this shouldn't be too surprising), found “Gurumin” ten or more days after it released on Steam, thought it looked interesting, and I bought it.
I went into this game as blind as a bat back in 2015... Which aren’t actually blind, b-but you get what I mean.
Alarming Levels of Charm and Adorableness
“Gurumin” is about a girl named Parin, although you can name her whatever. I've named her Parley, Lissa, and for my playthrough for this review, Peach.
I'm not dead, but my sense of humour sure is. I’ll just call her Parin for this review for simplicity, even if she goes by different names in my playthroughs.
Parin comes to live in the mining town Tiese Town, only to find out there are only adults that occupy it. This makes things extremely boring for Parin, until she befriends some monsters that are invisible to the eyes of adults.
Later, the Phantom Prince, who leads the phantoms that cause trouble for the monsters, kidnaps some of Parin's monster friends. It's up to Parin to save them and stop the prince.
The world and story is simple, but also beautifully charming. Enemies having comedic cutscenes in levels and the cel shaded visuals are just a few examples of the charm of "Gurumin."
Every characters is likeable. Chucky with this misunderstandings and child-like behaviour, Pino with how flipping adorable and sweet she is, Pierre with being French, and more.
The Phantom Prince, Parin, and Motoro are easily the best characters for how entertaining they are with their dialogue, humourous antics, and etc.. They're also the best because when things do get serious or emotional, you can genuinely feel for them.
However, despite having fitting voices, the voice-acting doesn't always convey the right tone. This makes cutscenes awkward sometimes.
However, the voice-acting doesn't hold back the comedy. The jokes add to the entertainment value of cutscenes a lot and get a good laugh out of me.
Puku, Pino's brother, just straight up walked out of his cell like it was nothing. Even as an adult, this is still too good.
The interesting world translates into gameplay well as the accessibility of levels depends on the Monster's happiness. When the monsters are kidnapped, the monster world is mostly covered in black mist, representing the monsters' negative emotions. It's only when their valuables are returned that the black mist is lifted little by little.
This is just a fancy way of explaining of how levels are unlocked, but it's done so well that it doesn't feel like that while playing. Even if we ignore the charming aspects of the story, characters, and world, they're still all well-executed. It's nothing mind-blowing, but it helps to create a small world that feels alive.
However, there is one hole in the well-executed story, Cylinder.
Cylinder is the exact opposite of charming and adorable. He's a good guy deep down, as the game tries to communicate, but his uncomfortable and borderline pedophilic attempts to date Parin ruin any redeeming factors for Cylinder.
However, Cylinder is only one bad character in a cast of good characters. Which may or may not make him worse, since bad characters can tend to have a large radiation zone.
You Know the Drill
"Gurumin" is about Parin using her drill to defeat phantoms. Her objective in levels is t reach the end, which means exploring and fighting her way through.
“Gurumin” is a combat-oriented platformer, as enemies are frequent and halt progress. Parin can fight phantoms by locking onto enemies when airborne to launch at them, use basic attacks, and use special moves that are vital to dealing the most damage.
However, enemies can dodge and use special abilities just like Parin. In a way, the playing field is even with the enemies, which is really cool. I'd feel bad for my enemies if I didn't defeat them fairly, I have a very selective remorse.
Parin's damage amount depends on her Drill Power, the bar at the top middle of the HUD. The more Drill Power Parin has, the more damage and special attacks she can do. Drill Power is filled up by hitting enemies/breakable objects, but goes down when Parin herself is hit.
When Drill Power is filled up, Parin can shoot a projectile when she attacks normally. This provides a nice reward for keeping your Drill Power up, alongside a new combat option.
The bar below the Drill Power bar is how Parin does critical hits. When the notes reach the middle of the bar, if Parin attacks when the notes connect in the middle, Parin's attacks will be critical attacks.
The most important special moves are the Forward Slash, Pretty Missile Kick, and Dragon Flame. These are activated when Parin circles around with the the dash, the dash normally being used to dodge attacks, and then attack.
These moves provide the most damage while giving invincibility. That’s not to say other special moves aren’t helpful, but these are the most vital.
However, Parin can't only use special moves, some enemies wear armour that make them immune to all damage. Parin must do a charged attack to drill off the armour. If Parin charges an attack long enough, she will launch forward instead of drilling in place.
You think that's a lot of strategy? Wait, until you hear about headgear and elemental types.
Parin wears headgear to make her more stylish and give benefits/stat boosts, such as more damage, more defence, immunity to damage types like water, etc..
Yeah, for some reason Parin takes damage from being in water as if it's lava, which is really confusing. Last time I checked, lava isn't blue.
Headgear can be upgraded and a total of four times to give more benefits. To upgrade headgear, Parin must pick up junk, such as dropped armour. One girl's garbage is the same girl's treasure.
For elemental weapons, there are three you can pick up in total to do more damage to enemies and give status effects. Some enemies can be dealt more or less damage depending on their elemental weaknesses and strengths.
The combat is excellently well done. It’s fun, engaging, well-designed with its mechanics. The progression of special moves and elemental weapons feels natural and you're rewarded for strategizing.
The combat also makes for amazing bosses that test Parin's combat abilities. They're a test to make sure the player knows what they're doing and that they're doing it properly.
...Until Cream.
Cream is easily beaten by spamming special attacks, which leave little opening for Parin to be damaged, a trend that carries over to the nearly the rest of the bosses after her. The later bosses aren't bad, just too easy. There is one exception to this, but I need to create suspense so... suspenseful noises.
I Want to be... Where the Treasure Chests Are...
I did mention before that “Gurumin” is a platformer, and there sure is platforming to be had, although none of it is particularly tricky. Most platforming obstacles are straightforward.
Parin has no momentum, going full speed when she starts moving. So there is no build-up required to pass obstacles, which I like.
Some platforming obstacles are tricky. Although, sometimes it's tricky because Parin has no shadow to indicate where she'll land.
This made my confidence with doing jumps correctly at first. However, it's possible to get used to and I do have a better understanding of Parin's jump mechanics now. Thankfully, the punishment for missing a jump is only severe on higher difficulties.
Oh yeah, Parin can swim. Although, the only thing worth mentioning is that Parin moves up underwater by moving, but will slowly descend into the water and deeper if she does nothing. Don't worry, there's no oxygen system, so going underwater is perfectly fine.
There is also wall-running, which is completely pointless. All gaps can be traversed by swimming or jumping, so it's never useful.
With these platforming abilities that no child would realistically have, Parin can explore levels to find stuff to break for cash to buy consumable items and new headgear in the hub world. Oh, and also complete the levels, but most importantly, money and fashion necessities.
However, if you want to be cool, you’ll focus on finding treasure chests, which have goodies inside. Sometimes they’ll have healing items, items that restore or protect Drill Power, special items for unlocking side-quests, and Mystery Bags.
Mystery Bags have a randomized item inside, such as healing items, but there are unique items like headgear inside and side quest items inside. As long as you go for all of the Mystery Bags, all the unique times only found in them will be obtainable in one playthrough.
However, there is a limit to how much Parin can carry of one item type. Most of the time she can only carry three of one item. If your inventory for one item is full, you won't pick it up if it's in a treasure chest, nor will the game tell you what the item is. For Mystery Bags, the item is sold for $100 to Pamela. Parin is being robbed in broad daylight.
Unethical Mystery Bag practices aside, there are also presents to find, which function the same as treasure chests. The difference being they contain unique headgear like Mystery Bags but mostly Platinum Medals, the latter being tradeable for special parts.
However, these presents are difficult to find and require going into spots you normally wouldn’t go to. Which means using advanced exploration techniques.
I swear this works five per cent of the time.
While the platforming could’ve been better, I love the inclusion of chests with their treasures and the Mystery Bags. They make for new discoveries and give great incentive to explore the levels.
Control
Overall, Parin controls extremely well. Her movement is tight, her special moves are fun and great to pull off, her attacks flow beautifully, and inputs are responsive with no delay.
Although, I should say that you’ll have a better experience using a controller, as it can be finnicky to play on keyboard when you don’t have an analog stick. Even if the default controller mapping is weird.
The defaults for the controller (Xbox Controller in my case) are: A = attack, X = Dash, B = Jump. If you’ve played any game with a controller, you’ll know that control scheme is quite unorthodox.
And yes, I am filming vertically. I've already accepted my ban from Heaven's exclusive bouncy castle.
Thankfully, you can change the control mapping, to say, make the jump button A. However, this means using A to close menus instead of B normally.
There's nothing you can do to change menu navigation specifically, so you just have to get used to it. Which I did, but it's still a bit awkward.
Is it really a Good Ending if My Sanity is Gone? (True Final Boss Spoilers, no Story Spoilers)
"Gurumin" has a bad ending and good ending. When the good ending is achieved, the player can access New Game+ by making a save file with cleared save data.
If the player accesses cleared save data, they can start a new game with all of their upgrades from their previous playthroughs(s). However, their health reverts back to the default. All special attacks and headgear must be rebought/reobtained too.
This is rewarding as you get to annihilate enemies early. This also helps a lot on the tougher difficulties as you get defence and attack boosts with headgear early.
To get the good ending, you must beat all the extra levels. Which in themselves are awesome, as they’re harder versions of the main story levels but flipped.
For example, one main story level starts with a minecart section, so the harder version ends with a minecart section. They also have slight puzzles you must do to access the levels. If you get stuck, hints ae purchaseable.
Then you get to the true final boss, the last obstacle from getting the good ending... Black Bean...
He might not look like much, but the final boss is a cakewalk in comparison to Black Bean. When I first fought Black Bean in 2015, it took me 30 minutes to beat him on both Normal and Hard mode. 30 MINUTES!
WITH KEYBOARD CONTROLS!
He fights the player while leaving harmful energy balls on the ground, spawns clones (which have their own health bars), an attack that covers the whole arena, and more. This is him being merciful.
In the second phase his defense increases, him and his clones use new insanely powerful attacks at once, Black Bean uses a nebula that covers the whole arena that you must time a special attack perfectly to not be damaged by, and more.
Black Bean is insanely tough in the good way, and is the perfect way to test the player's sills and reflexes... If he were optional. As a mandatory boss to get the good ending, he's a frustrating difficulty spike that shouldn't be mandatory.
A Completionist Nightmare
Trying to get the completionist awards in this game is something I simply can’t recommend. Both because of the time investment and because the rewards just aren’t worth it.
Some of them are perfectly fine, such as the desktop wallpapers. You get those by completing side-quests and they’re awesome.
Or the costumes that you get for doing special things, completing playthroughs on different difficulties, etc.. A few even have special benefits that increase your stats.
Maid Parin is the most based Parin.
However, the ones that may drive people to insanity are unlocking PonPon as a playable character and the Boss Rush. To unlock them, you must beat the game on Normal, Beginner, Hard, and Happy.
While the rewards sound great in concept, they’re not well executed. PonPon has unique voice-lines, but cannot wear headgear. This means no attack buffs, no defence buffs, and no immunity to water/gas/trap damage.
These lack of immunities means some damage is outright unavoidable, as some levels are built with having water damage immunity in mind. That's not fair.
If there was a tradeoff, like PonPon having better stats, I’d understand. However, no, Parin and PonPon are the exact same, PonPon just can’t equip headgear,. This breaks any reason to use PonPon.
The Boss Rush also isn’t all that exciting when you’ve fought every boss at least four times by the time it's unlocked. Like... Yay, I get to fight Bob for the fifth time?
Bosses are also easy to go back to since bosses have their own levels dedicated to them. I fail to see why the boss rush takes so many playthroughs to unlock.
The Boss Rush is only good for getting other costumes. Although, the costumes you unlock from the boss rush aren't my cup of tea.
This is assuming you won’t be tired out from the game after four playthroughs. When I played this game back in 2015, I was beyond tired of the game by the time I unlocked the Boss Rush and PonPon. When I played the Boss Rush when I first unlocked it, I was just bored the entire time.
As for getting all of the costumes... You need to do a total of eight playthroughs, as Boss Rush isn’t unlocked in previous playthroughs. Four costumes are only available in Boss Rush (one can be unlocked on Normal or Beginner mode). Once or twice for Beginner, once or twice for Normal, Hard and Happy twice, and Crazy, the highest difficulty, once.
However, even if you ignore the Boss Rush and only do five playthroughs to only get all the achievements, bad news,the achievements for S ranking the difficulties are poorly designed. The S+ achievements require getting a S Rank in every level, which you can get by breaking every jar, opening every chest, and defeating every enemy.
Time doesn't seem to be important unless you're aiming for S+++ rankings. However, you only need to set a S+++ rank once for an achievement.
Some of these can be tricky, such as Egg Caverns Ruby Line, with three chests in hard-to-reach spots. They require launching towards the enemy from the air and using the height gained from the attack to reach these chests.
Alternatively you can wall run next to the platforms and hope for the best, but please don't actually do this. Maybe I'm bad with wall running, but this felt like it was luck-based, not skill-based.
However, outside of a few questionable chest placements, S-Ranking levels is fun experience that’s satisfying to pull off. There are also gold medals to get from the mini-games that are in mandatory in the story if you reach a certain score. Mastering these mini-games is a ton of fun.
However, that's no the problem with the achievements, the problem is that it's easy to soft-lock yourself from getting it. You see, the achievements for the S-Ranking every level only unlocks if you’ve S-Ranked every level and THEN beat Black Bean for the first time.
If you beat Black Bean before you S-Rank every level and save over your save file after he's beaten, the achievement is soft-locked in that save file. Even if you beat Black Bean again, the achievement still won't unlock.
The ending of the game doesn't play after Black Bean is beaten, you still need to beat the story's final boss to see the good ending. It’s not a broken achievement, its logic is broken. Nothing in the game indicates you should S-Rank every level before fighting Black Bean.
I wouldn’t mind if the achievements weren’t the only incentive reward-wise to S-Rank every level. This isn’t the case in the PSP version where there are costumes to unlock when you buy all the headgear only purchasable with Gold Medals.
Credit for all screenshots in the gallery: RiderKnight548
However, if you softlock the achievement and play the PC version, you get nothing... Nothing but wasted time. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
“Gurumin” is one of those games that’s amazing in so many ways, but for the love of all things that are drilly, do NOT try to 100 per cent the game if having a soul is one of your hobbies.
It’s My Theme Tonight!
Throughout all the flawed moments, and even downright frustrating ones, one thing that always stays consistently amazing is the soundtrack. I can’t gush about it enough; the soundtrack is extremely funky blending a good number of genres and nailing every single one.
From orchestral, to rock, techno/synth, jazz, mixing in chiptune, animal noises, etc.. Every two levels and every boss all have unique music.
Some of my favourites (going by their names on the iTunes album) are: Go back the Way You just came just now, Rainbow-colored OBAKE cannot Swim, Strange OBAKE Egg, Paean of Revenge, Soaring into the Sad blue Sky, Samurai Drill, and more. And that opening and its theme are just perfect.
I can’t say the sound is perfect, such as how there’s a spring noise whenever Parin jumps, and yeah that’s annoying, but the soundtrack is God-Like. It’s easily one of my favourite video game soundtracks of all time.
Overall (A)
In my heart, “Gurumin” will always be a S tier game. It as a charming world and characters, fantastic visuals, phenomenal soundtrack, fantastic controls and levels, and addicting combat and platforming.
However, being objective... The tutorials could be better, the true final boss is a huge difficulty spike that feels unnatural, special moves are too overpowered, trying to 100 per cent complete this game is an absolute nightmare, and the voice-acting could’ve used some more work.
Objectively, I think “Gurumin” is an A, but I’m still in love with this game a lot despite its problems. It just has this charm that keeps me praising and loving it despite its critical flaws.
I recommend the Steam release given its $10.99CDN price tag and the often sales on Steam. However, from what I've seen, the 3DS port is a viable version, if pricier.
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