iTuesday Review: Straw Hat Legacy for iPhone

In Straw Hat Legacy for iPhone you take control of Yuki as she trains in the “art of swift movement and dodging”. The game is a side-scroller in which you are always moving. The object is to jump over or change lanes to avoid obstacles. It’s fast paced and requires your constant attention It’s the type of game that’s easy to pick up and play, but hard to put down.

To control Yuki you tap the screen to jump, and swipe up or down to move in that direction. Because you need to react quickly, there were a few times when a swipe registered as a tap. This is pretty annoying, but it still beats the alternative, which would be an onscreen control pad.

As Yuki you’ll run through three different areas (see the gameplay video above).  The first area is really easy. You’re just jumping over rocks and rivers. You probably won’t even need to change lanes. The second area is when things get challenging. You’ll be running across the rooftops jumping across gaps in the roofs. This is where you’re really going to need to be alert. Some rooftops are too far to jump across so you’ll need to switch lanes quick.

I did find one problem with this area. Sometimes all you can see is that multiple gaps in the roofs are coming up, but you don’t have enough time to see which path contains the jumpable gap. This is extremely frustrating, especially because if you miss its back to the start for you. The obstacles are randomly generated, which makes the game very re-playable, but it also means sometimes you don’t have time to react. There was also one time that I’m fairly certain I got screwed when all of the paths contained un-jumpable gaps at the same time.

In the third area you are running across bridges, jumping over gaps. It’s very similar to the second area, but things have sped up. Truthfully, I wasn’t able to get very far into this area.  The game is the kind of game where you get better each time you play, so I’m sure players who are able to commit more time than I had will be able to get further than I did.

Straw Hat Legacy is a pretty fun game for anyone interested in killing some time. Time killing games are actually amongst my favorite iPhone games because they don’t require any kind of commitment. Just take your phone out and play till you’re done. Eventually all time killing games run their course, and it’s on to the next one.  With that being said, I don’t see Straw Hat Legacy as having a very long lifespan on your phone. Its addictive, has great music and graphics and fairly easy to play, but there’s not a whole lot to it. There are only three different areas and the first one is almost too easy. This is still the initial release of the game. The developers have said that they plan to “continue to develop the storyline with updates and sequels unfolding the intriguing plot”. Once that happens it will definitely add more value to the game.

Straw Hat Legacy for iPhone is available for $.99 via the App Store. There is also a HD version for $2.99 that runs on both iPhone and iPad. $.99 is not a bad price for the game. $2.99 is a little pricey, so I would recommend that iPad owners wait for the price to go down.

Final Rating: 6.7/10

CBR Break Down:
Console Played On: iPhone 4
Approximate Time to Completion: N/A
Price Bought at: N/A Review copy provided by Evil Eggplant Studios
Recommend Purchase Price: $.99