Sudoku by Nikoli

Genre: Sudoku Puzzle

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless)

.

Review:

The name Nikoli may not mean much to American gamers, but the company has had a massive impact on the world of Puzzle games. Founded in 1980, Nikoli is a Japanese magazine publisher, and they have made a name for themselves for popularizing a wide variety of logic puzzles. The most noteworthy of these is undoubtedly sudoku, which Nikoli helped to flourish in popularity in Japan, which then in turn spread worldwide. However, the company has published dozens of different types of puzzles, many of which have become popular in their own right as well, such as numberlink.

As a result of this powerful impact the company has had on the world of Puzzle games, numerous Puzzle game releases on the PlayStation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch bear Nikoli’s name. Sudoku by Nikoli, released on Nintendo 3DS in 2012, is a $5 release that has players tackling 50 puzzles of various difficulty levels in the style of game that Nikoli is most famous for.

For those who have yet to try their hand at Sudoku, the simple premise is that players are provided a grid divided into 3×3 fields, with each field further divided into 3×3 squares. The grid already has some numbers filled in, and players must fill in the rest of the grid while following these simple rules: each row and column must include the numbers 1-9 with none repeating, and each 3×3 field must also contain the numbers 1-9 with none repeating. Players solve this puzzle largely using a process of elimination – once you know what numbers can’t be in a square, you can narrow it down to what must be there.

Compared to other versions of Sudoku, the one present here is surprisingly lackluster, with some flaws that really stand out. For one thing, a common feature in Sudoku videogames is the ability to add “notes” to a square to mark what numbers can (or can’t) fit there, and while Nikoli’s Pencil Puzzle does allow you to do this, you can only do it for four numbers per square, not the full nine. This may seem nitpicky to casual players, but more experienced players will know it’s a pretty glaring omission.

In addition, this may be personal preference, but I found the control layout here to be unnecessarily cumbersome, and I repeatedly entered numbers into fields or deleted them unintentionally due to this.

However, the flaws here extend beyond the gameplay to the features and presentation.

All of this game’s puzzles are presented with simple, clean visuals on the bottom screen, with a top screen showing a completely-unnecessary zoomed-in view of the puzzle. This is decent enough, but terribly bland. However, making things worse is the game’s soundtrack, which plays extremely repetitive music that becomes very annoying very quickly.

This game can’t even be bothered to provide players with an interactive tutorial, instead only offering a non-interactive “tutorial” that explains the rules and basic strategies of the game but doesn’t really work to ensure that players understand those rules. There is at the very least a 4-player competitive mode here, but I’m not sure I’d want to rope in three other people to play this bland and not especially well-made Sudoku game.

In the end, while Nikoli may be famous for helping to bring Sudoku to the world… well, the world has Sudoku now, and it has been done better in countless other games you can find elsewhere, including on the Nintendo 3DS. And while this game is still Sudoku at its core, players who are looking for a great Sudoku game on Nintendo 3DS should really pick another Sudoku game.

tl;dr – Sudoku by Nikoli is a version of the standard Sudoku Puzzle that offers players 50 puzzles for $5. Unfortunately, the lack of multiple features and an extremely lacking presentation make this a game that even Sudoku fans will likely want to skip, as there are numerous better options out there.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}