Stickman: Far East Battle

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Stickman: Far East Battle is an Arcade-style game released on Nintendo Switch in 2021. In this game, players take the role of a stick figure standing in place on the left and aiming and throwing spears at other attacking stick figures coming from the right.

Before going on, I feel it’s important to point out that this game can only be played in handheld mode and does not support docked play. This despite the fact that this game doesn’t require or even use the Nintendo Switch’s touchscreen features, making this restriction completely arbitrary.

As you might expect from a game using stick figure characters, this game uses simple 2D visuals for its characters and backgrounds. To justify the theme, the game’s backgrounds generally have a feudal Japanese theme to them, though the characters themselves often feature anachronistic elements like horned Viking helmets and the like. This is backed by a repetitive synthesized acoustic soundtrack seemingly designed to also imply the sort of Japanese setting this game is aiming for.

When it comes to the gameplay, this game would be a pretty standard take on the classic formula of games where the central concept is judging the angle of your throw to ensure the trajectory hits enemies, but Stickman: Far East Battle bungles this gameplay with terrible controls that reduce your throw distance to virtually nothing whenever you adjust backwards, only returning to normal once you adjust forwards again, meaning that fine-tuning your shot becomes extremely frustrating.

Add to this enemies that are bullet sponges, enemies that teleport around requiring constant aiming adjustment, and an upgrade system where players are limited both by their level and by in-game currency in a way that’s needlessly tedious, and you have a recipe for an infuriating experience.

In the end, Stickman: Far East Battle takes a pretty standard gameplay formula and thoroughly ruins it with its terrible controls, stymied upgrade progression, and pointless requirement to play in handheld mode. Don’t bother with this one.

tl;dr – Stickman: Far East Battle is an Arcade-style game where players control a stick figure throwing spears at attacking stick figures. Unfortunately, the controls are terrible, the game hobbles progression in frustrating ways, and the game will not play in docked mode for no good reason. Skip this game.

Grade: D

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