Planet Crashers Review

The very existence of Planet Crashers for the Nintendo 3DS is a positive thing for the portable. Given how quickly digitally downloaded games are muscling in on territory that was previously occupied exclusively by retail, it’s good to see a solid role-playing game hit the Nintendo 3DS eShop.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your outlook), Planet Crashers is exactly that: Solid. Unremarkable. It tries to be different, and it admittedly succeeds in some ways, but it won’t keep serious RPG fans interested for long. Given the stable of talent at the Renegade Kid studio (they’re the good folks behind Mutant Mudds), Planet Crashers’ tepid gameplay is a bit of a downer.

Developer/Publisher: Renegade Kid
Genre: Role-Playing (RPG)
ESRB Rating: E10+
Compatible With: Nintendo 3DS
Price: $9.99 USD

GOOD: Goofy settings. Good sense of humor. Fun dialogue. Great battle animations.

BAD: Repetitive music. Quests make up most of the game, but are often uninteresting. Very little information supplied on how to advance.

When you begin playing Planet Crashers, you get to create your own avatar (though your customization options are a bit limited). When you’re done dressing up, you’re thrust onto the tiny planet of “Lushie Greenie,” a tame world inhabited by other kids your age. As a recent graduate of the esteemed Planet Crashers Academy, it’s your job to take out a villain who aspires to blow up the sun. You roll up your sleeves and begin your journey.

Lushie Greenie isn’t the only planet in the galaxy. As you gain levels, you’re permitted to move on. Each planet has several dungeons with varying danger levels. Most of your time in Planet Crashers is spent in these dungeons, where you complete quest after quest after quest. You’re in for a slow ride. Luckily, that fellow who’s jonesing to explode the sun isn’t in a huge hurry.

Indeed, Planet Crashers has some pacing issues, not the least of which is the game’s agonizingly slow start. Planet Crashers was supposedly developed with casual gamers in mind, but even veterans will be left to stagger around as they wonder what the heck they’re supposed to do next. There’s no tutorial, and barely any in-game instruction. While it’s true that modern games are bad about hand-holding, ripping out tutorials isn’t the solution, especially if your game is designed for less experienced players.

Picking up quests—-a core part of the Planet Crashers experience—-is also a little confusing. Some of your quests come to you via message board, and others are delivered by the planets’ inhabitants themselves. When you accept a quest, you don’t automatically engage in it. Instead, your requests are queued up, and you must select them from your in-game menu. It’s a seemingly unnecessary step, especially if you’re used to the more streamlined quest menus that are in other role-playing games.

Worse, you can only take one quest at a time, and you often need to travel all the way back to the dungeon’s entrance and the quest-giver before you can start another. Finishing quests earns you valuable experience and weapons, both of which are necessary for progression. By the way, you level up with every 300 experience points that you earn (as opposed to the traditional RPG means of leveling up by earning an increasing number of experience points), a little factoid that’s not presented anywhere in the game.

Whereas Planet Crashers’ quests feel haphazard and detached from the game’s main story, the battles are pretty fun. When you meet an opponent in one of the game’s dungeons, each of you takes turns breaking out crazy wrestling moves, and/or whacking one another with odd weapons like mallets, pencils, and petrified bananas. You have numerous skills at your disposal (you can earn more as you finish quests), and you can increase the damage you deliver via timed button presses. The battles aren’t as engaging or as complex as what you’d find in a game like Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story, but they’re still satisfying to run through. Thankfully, it’s not hard to avoid enemies in dungeons-—a good option to have, since most enemies don’t offer up a lot of experience points.

Planet Crashers’ polygon-based graphics are bright and colorful, and the planets themselves are interesting, if not a little whacked-out. The dungeons are largely dull and featureless, however, a fact you can’t help but notice when you take on quests that sound wacky, but wind up being of the fetch-and-carry breed.

The enemies’ animations are a lot of fun to watch, however, as your adversaries grab you by the ankles, spin you around, slam you on the ground, and otherwise find creative ways to put the hurt on you. The characters on each planet merrily skip as they move, an admittedly charming little bit of animation.

The tunes in Planet Crashers are catchy, but there isn’t much variety going on. You’ll want to turn down the sound before long.

Planet Crashers honestly tries to be wacky and different, but even the most whimsical setting is worthless if the game isn’t much fun to play. Planet Crashers’ premise and instructions are too vague for newbies to pick up on, and seasoned RPG players won’t remain interested in the game’s lackluster quests for very long.

All that said, Renegade Kid is unquestionably talented. The Planet Crashers universe has potential, and it would be awesome to see the studio pick itself up, address its mistakes, and try again.

Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.