Pokémon Rumble World (3DS)
Nintendo is going hog wild lately with the free-to-play games, especially when it involves Pokemon. First we had Pokemon Shuffle, now this. In Pokemon Rumble World, you visit the Kingdom of Toys and meet the King. He’s jealous because an evil magician has more toy Pokemon than he does, so he commissions you to battle and collect toy Pokemon to show the magician who the real toy master is. Pokemon Rumble World is a top-down action game that plays similarly to Gauntlet, and you can download it for free on the 3DS eShop.
In the main game, you’ll travel to areas in a top-down fashion, attacking waves of toy Pokemon with your own. Defeated monsters will usually give you money, but sometimes you’ll befriend a defeated Pokemon and they’ll join your team. At the end of the level you’ll fight a boss. Run out of energy and it’s Game Over. But if you are quick, you can switch out your Pokemon with another one on your team. But it’ll take a few seconds to wind them up (they are toys after all), so make sure your other Pokemon is out of harm’s way. Knowing the different Pokemons’ weaknesses and strengths is the key to success.
While it’s true the game is free-to-play, there is a catch. In order to travel to new areas, you’ll have to buy Hot Air Balloons with Poke-Diamonds. While you can earn these diamonds by doing specific things in the game, after a while the easiest way to get diamonds is to buy them with real money. You use Poke-Diamonds for other things, too. You can purchase items that can help you carry more Pokemon, allow you to continue, or fill up your hot air balloons faster so you can play stages sooner.
Every so often you’ll trigger a boss stage, where you will have to defeat the evil magician’s Pokemon, fend off bandits, etc. These stages play similarly to the regular ones, except you can play them at any time, and even earn a few diamonds in the process. But they are pretty hard! You can also earn diamonds via StreetPass. People you tag will show up in the game, and if you rescue them in a stage, they’ll travel with you for the rest of it, supporting you with items and giving you a few diamonds in return.
And that’s really all there is to it. After a while I got to a point where it would take a long time to get more diamonds without buying them, so I stopped playing. What gets me is that this game plays almost EXACTLY like Pokemon Rumble Blast, a cartridge game that came out on the 3DS early in its life cycle. So I’d recommend getting that instead. There are also Pokemon Rumble games to download on the Wii and Wii U. The Wii U game even used real life Pokemon toys that you scan similar to Amiibo (and I’ve heard those figures are even HARDER to find!). But yeah, aside from new Pokemon and Mega Evolutions and different ways of using StreetPass, Pokemon Rumble World is exactly like Pokemon Rumble Blast, so I recommend getting that instead. Nintendo handled the free-to-play stuff way better in Pokemon Shuffle.
Kid Factor:
Pokemon Rumble World is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Comic Mischief. While you do hit other Pokemon with blasts of fire, ice, and other attacks, they just disappear when defeated. And they’re all toys anyway so nobody gets hurt. I’d be OK with any kid playing this game, but reading skill is still needed for the text, and parental supervision is recommended for the in-game purchases.
June 26th, 2015 at 2:48 am
Stuff like this is why being a parent in the 21st century seems so scary to me.