Kemono Heroes Nintendo Switch Review 7.5/10 "hectic swipey-swipey action!" 🦊 @MadGearGames @JanduSoft #GameDev #IndieGame

From the developers that brought us A Hole New World – an 8-bit styled title - comes Kemono Heroes, now making the leap to a 16-bit style, complete with chunky pixels, parallax scrolling, and a lot of weapon-based swipey-swipey action. Good!

Playable with up to four players in co-op, Kemono Heroes has a mystical Eastern vibe in which the main characters are anthropomorphic animals, each with their own special skills, although the main attack of each is a ‘Strider’-esque swipe of their blade - a little nod to one of its influences. 

You’ll find yourself making your way through four worlds comprising of three stages each, taking down the encroaching threat though the medium of cartoon violence. The high energy music suits the landscapes that you will pass through, and there is rarely a nano second in which you aren’t taking down enemies or traversing the 2D plains, keeping the sense of kineticism high. 

Whilst this is a straightforward title in terms of its genre, the variety on offer in the controls means that there are ways to strategise and mix up just how you take down your foes, with character-specific power attacks also available.

SUMMARY
There’s a lot to love here, with the only drawbacks really being that Kemono Heroes feels like it could get slightly lost in the shuffle due to perhaps not carving out enough of an identity in such a rich genre, and the fact that with three or more players, things get so hectic on screen that it’s hard to keep track of who is doing what, especially with the animations being so busy and satisfying – a boon in single player mode, but a little too over the top in co-op. 

That said, these are relatively minor quibbles, and in the end, Kemono Heroes is a fun game to blast through with friends, just be prepared to help each other up when things get a bit bonkers!

7.5/10

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