A common phrase is, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but what happens when the line is crossed and imitation becomes copying? Nokideriko The Magical World, is a 2d/3d platformer, where you go around an island and work on saving it from invading pirates and find treasure. This game is heavily inspired by Donkey Kong Country and Crash Bandicoot and the characters even make some comments referencing them.

The game’s controls are very responsive and have little to no problems when playing the game. While playing the game, you will fight many different reptile based enemies that can be defeated by either jumping or sliding into them. Some of the enemies can only be jumped on and some can only be slid into. Every level has an array of collectables from coins and diamonds. You can even collect letters that spell out Niko and they are hidden in different areas across the levels. As you play through the game, you will definitely see similarities between this, Donkey Kong Country, and Crash Bandicoot.

You play as a mongoose named Niko and his friend Luna, a pair of treasure hunters who discovered an ancient relic before it was taken by the villains of the game. You will be traveling throughout the island in the hopes of retrieving the treasure and saving the island. This game definitely has its charm but feels like it needs more in order to really stand out and not be compared to other games of the same genre.

The game play itself plays fine, although there are some minor issues. There are two ways to move the character but only one way to navigate the menus, and it can be confusing if you are used to only moving the character one specific way. The treasures in the levels don’t play to much of an important role except unlocking collectables to view in the collectables menu. When you collect all the letters in the world, you unlock bonus levels that are much harder than any previous one played in the world. There are even chase levels that play exactly like the same kind of levels in Crash Bandicoot. These levels are very action impacted as you have to pay attention in order to make sure you don’t run into a wall while being chased. The big issue is that this game feels soulless and dosen’t have enough to set it apart.

When I play the game, I can’t help but feel there isn’t any soul in it. There are cutscenes, and while they look good, there is no voice acting or any type of sound effects, making it feel boring, despite there being action going on. The game does contain voice acting and while it’s decent at best, it’s only used during certain places on the map and it only lasts a few seconds. It makes more sense to have the voice acting during the cutscene in between worlds. When I fight the bosses of each world, they do have good designs and the boss fights are interesting. However, I don’t feel satisfied when I beat them. When you deal the finishing blow, there isn’t an animation of the boss being defeated, it just goes to a cutscene and like I stated earlier, without voice acting or good sound effect, I don’t feel like i accomplished anything, despite beating such a difficult yet fun challenge. When you run out of health the character just slumps over and shakes his head, while in other games when you die a special animation is played which adds more character to the game and sometimes is funny and gets a laugh out of me. Some games even have different animations depending on how you died but this game only has basic and uninteresting death animations. Not to mention there isn’t a life system, but that isn’t always a bad thing especially in hard games. I also notice that the checkpoint system doesn’t work like it should. While it does work, there is an invisible checkpoint during certain areas that ends up making the game too easy and with these types of games you don’t want to affect the difficulty too much.

In conclusion, Nikoderiko The Magical World is a decent game that is missing its own identity. It takes a lot of inspiration from games like Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot, but does not add enough to make it stand out in the crowd of other platformers.. If the game had put more effort into the cutscenes and character animations, it would be on the right track to being one of the great platformers out there.

Score: 6 out of 10

Reviewed on PlayStation 5