{"id":22399,"date":"2022-07-01T00:01:44","date_gmt":"2022-07-01T00:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=22399"},"modified":"2022-06-19T12:41:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-19T12:41:44","slug":"pocky-and-rocky-reshrined-switch-ps4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/01\/pocky-and-rocky-reshrined-switch-ps4\/","title":{"rendered":"Pocky and Rocky Reshrined (Switch, PS4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of the Super Nintendo\u2019s many hidden gems was Pocky and Rocky. \u00a0It was a two player co\u2014operative 2-D shooter with a unique theme.\u00a0 The game had a Japanese myths and folklore motif.\u00a0 Player one was Pocky, a Japanese shrine maiden who threw cards, and player two was Rocky, a leaf throwing tanuki. \u00a0It\u2019s actually a sequel to a Japan only arcade game from Taito called Kiki Kaikai, and has spawned a couple of sequels and many cameos over the years.\u00a0 And now they\u2019re back in a whole new game!\u00a0 Pocky and Rocky Reshrined is available on Switch and PS4, but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll travel to eight 2-D stages and defeat all manner of Japanese goblins and monsters.\u00a0 Hold down the fire button to continuously toss projectiles.\u00a0 Another button lets you use a short range attack that can also swat away bullets.\u00a0 You can also dash out of the way quickly with another button, and you can do a limited screen clearing attack as well.\u00a0 By holding down some buttons or pressing them repeatedly, you can perform other moves, too.\u00a0 In the single player story mode, you start out as Pocky the shrine maiden and then Rocky the tanuki, but after that you\u2019ll play as a bunch of new characters, too. \u00a0Including a super cool goddess or a demon samurai and more.\u00a0 Along the way you can shoot open boxes that have power-ups or healing items inside.<\/p>\n

At first the game feels like just a reboot or remake, since the first two stages are nearly exactly like the original SNES game.\u00a0 But since this is on more powerful hardware, enemies throw more things at you and there are a few surprises here and there.\u00a0 But once you get to the third level and start playing as new characters, everything after that is different.\u00a0 One complaint I have about a lot of games is that they are just too hard.\u00a0 This game is also very hard, but it\u2019s the good kind of hard where you get a little further each time.\u00a0 Checkpoints and unlimited continues help, too.\u00a0 The best part of this game has to be the 2-D sprite based graphics.\u00a0 Sometimes I just want to stop and admire them while playing, like all the scattered leaves on the pavement of the first stage temple.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the game has some problems that knock it down a few pegs.\u00a0 And it mainly has to do with how you unlock things.\u00a0 When you start, you can only do the single player mode on normal or hard difficulty.\u00a0 In order to unlock the two player option, you must beat the story mode or get 10,000 coins from defeated enemies.\u00a0 And in order to unlock the easy mode, you have to get 3,000 coins, which I haven\u2019t even done yet.\u00a0 I can kind of understand why they did this, so you can play through story mode and get introduced to all the characters and moves.\u00a0 But the original Pocky and Rocky game had the two player mode from the outset and is what the game is mostly known for.\u00a0 So having to unlock basic features like that here is very annoying.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pocky & Rocky Reshrined is rated E-10 with an ESRB descriptor of Fantasy Violence.\u00a0 Enemies just disappear in a puff of smoke when defeated, and players can have cartoony animations like getting flattened or turning into an angel.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for the text, and younger gamers may find it too difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the Super Nintendo\u2019s many hidden gems was Pocky and Rocky. \u00a0It was a two player co\u2014operative 2-D shooter with a unique theme.\u00a0 The game had a Japanese myths and folklore motif.\u00a0 Player one was Pocky, a Japanese shrine maiden who threw cards, and player two was Rocky, a leaf throwing tanuki. \u00a0It\u2019s actually […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22389,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22399"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22401,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22399\/revisions\/22401"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}