The game that makes me ask "why?" It's a licensed anime game not made in Japan and it's not even a tie in for a brand new Space Adventure Cobra adaptation. The brand itself has a cult following outside of Japan and the series itself hasn't really gotten a resurgance of any kind. I did check this out since I've been curious in checking out the anime for a long while and this game was a convienent enough excuse to jump into it's world without actually watching it. The game also has an english dub and the anime doesn't have a proper one so it gave me more an excuse to try this game out first.
As a whole, it's on the "average" side. It does have the potential to be more interesting than it actually is.
One thing noticeable right away especially if you have played them is that the controls and abilites are almost shot for shot the recent 2D Metroids made by MercurySteam. Being able to precisely aim in any direction, the way cobra moves while firing his canon, the slide, a charge shot, Cobra having missile and super missile equivilant. There's also the way dashing implement like in the recent Prince of Persia the Lost Crown. There's also a super attack like The Prince has in that game.
On paper, this would make The Awakening a very deriviative game but the one thing that prevents it from being that it's not a metroidvania at all. The exploration is optional rather than manadatory and it's mainly there for health and "missile" upgrades. In a sense, you could say there's elements of Contra and Metal Slug here too. Cobra has a melee attack like in the latter game too.
All of this together could make for a bizarrely unique title. Metroid and Prince of Persia's controls with linear design of Contra and Metal Slug? Sounds like a fun time and it is but the thing that holds it back is the lack of polish and lots of reuse of enemies and content.
An example of how unpolished the game is that the anime FMV sequences didn't play at all during my playthrough which made for weird moments where I missed the context while playing the game and had to watch them later on Youtube
Platforming for the most part can feel fine but there are bizarre moments weird collision detection.
The thing that really lets the game down is just how samey much of the game can be. At first, The Awakening can feel really good with how you have Metroid's controls as a run and gun shooter. Shooting enemies while dashing and quickly avoiding obstacles can feel make you feel the empowerment that being a space pirate on the run can bring you.
You got regular enemies, red and blue shielded enemies, larger enemies, drones, animal life. All of them do kind of require different tactics like regular enemies are threatning in number, red shielded enemies need their defenses taken out by Cobra's revolver, blue shielded need to be attacked by melee attacks. It can feel very involving until the realization that's all there is to the enemy encounters and much of the game is going through these same enemies. Enemies also give little health drops on normal and due to how many of them are shooting at you, it's easy to die quickly.
Also, you better hope that Cobra's revolver hits the red shield enemies the moment you get your line of on him because if you miss, there's a lengthy cooldown time and you might still be getting shot at while it's happening.
The puzzles have you do the same process and pressing switches and doing Psycho Gun drawing puzzles over and over.
The mini bosses is what really lets the game down. You fight the same drone and snake enemy multiple times through the campaign and the only way to damage them is is doing a drawing puzzle with the analog stick with the psycho gun. This could be easier with mouse but the real challenge of these fights is to get the analog stick right where you want it to draw the symbol to damage it. Take too long and you miss your chance. Due to this these fights can just drag on and it feels like luck if you can even damage them.
One great thing about the game is that easy mode is doable and it checkpoints often. The only really hard part is the boss at Mission 11-2.
Overall, Space Adventure The Awakening's existence raises quite a number of questions and there's some design ideas here that could potentially have the game rise above them but instead it's more of a game that could rather than a game that the devs pulled all the stops for because they had no big name to cash in off of.
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