Trouserheart is a short little game centered around a king who has his trousers stolen. The premise is that basic, and the game reflects it. After a 5-second introductory cutscene, we’re left to our devices to figure out where to go or what to do. The majority of the game takes place out in the kingdom and beyond, where we must go to retrieve our pants, fighting monsters along the way who want to kill their own king for whatever reason. The storyline feels like it tries to be reserved and cute, but really it just comes off as unpolished and rushed. The enemies have no coherence to them, with the player fighting tentacles, stone golems, and vampires sometimes together at the same time with no real explanation storywise.
Many of the mechanics are easy to figure out – left control stick to move, pretty much any other button to attack – but some things are just strange for no apparent reason – the menu can only be traversed using the D-pad, the map only takes left and right as inputs, the “Reset Game” button is higher in the menu than the “Quit to Menu” button. The way this game plays makes it feel rushed, which is probably likely considering how basic the base game is. There were times when I would just walk up to what was supposed to be an extremely hard enemy and just hold the attack button. The enemy drop rates are skewed to the point where I didn’t need to worry about my health because they dropped extra health so quickly. It was so disappointingly easy that I didn’t die a single time on casual mode even without grinding. That being said, after beating the game, I replayed it on hardcore mode and it was exactly the same but the enemies did more damage. This did force me to rethink some strategies, but it wasn’t too much harder since I already knew the enemy attack patterns. I do wish not only hardcore mode, but the game as a whole were more challenging, because a lot of times it felt like I was just trudging through. The updates for hardcore mode and permanent death seem like they were an attempt to make an overly easy game more challenging, but I don’t think it worked. If the developers want to increase the difficulty of their game, they’re going to have to do more than just change a few attack values.
This game on the whole feels like a chore. There are achievements, but they’re mostly for just beating the story and for grinding. The gameplay is annoyingly easy, even in hardcore mode (although I must say the final phase of the final boss felt overly challenging, and I loved it). This feels like a free game that I would delete after one level. That being said, I wouldn’t recommend buying it. There are many games for less that are much better than this one, and for the low amount of fun and entertainment I got from this game, it’s not worth the price tag.
Score: 5/10
Trouserheart is available for the Nintendo Switch via the eShop.
Nintendo Switch Review
I am an aspiring game designer looking to explore the philosophy behind game creation. Some of my favorite games include Overwatch, Super Smash Bros, Portal, and Beat Saber.
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