Amazing Island

I had very very low expectations with this game, I only paid $5 for it and only read bad reviews. The game was actually alot worse than my low expectations. I was hoping I would be surprised with a good story or a fun minigame or two, nope. None of those came true. The only good thing about this is the monster building thing, but it's slow and boring and I hate creating my own characters in games.

The minigames were repetitive and most of them hurt my hand afterwards. The boss fights where all variations of the same fight. The final boss was actually kinda cool and challenging, but once you get how to do it, you can beat him in a snap. The game is simple overall, but you'll need a little trail and error to get over a few bumps. The real challenge in the game is to get high scores and to collect all the items, I don't have the patience to do that with this game.


----------Battle System----------
Amazing Island's "Battle System" is a collection of about 28 Mario Party styled minigames, and most of them are variations of other minigames in this game. There's not a ton of variety or originality hidden within the games. You're either tapping the A button a bunch of times, or you're timing the A button, or dodging / flying through something. After you complete a course you fight a boss battle. Every boss battle is exactly the same, but a little more difficult each time. After you defeat a boss you unlock a new monster making skill (aka a Vision Orb) and free the people they captured. Before each minigame they give you an option of using a potion to boost your Power, Mental, Speed and such. This is kinda useful if you're not very good at the game or if you're trying to break a record.

The only thing in the game with a little bit of depth is collecting items in the game and then using them to create monsters. There's 3 chests in the game you can win after a minigame. A gold chest will give you an awesome item, a blue chest will give you a good item, and a green chest will give you a potion or something weak like that. You also gain money after each match, so you can go to any of the 3 shops and buy items aswell. They restock after so long too, so there's alot of things you can buy. I only got about 40% of the items before beating the game, so there's plenty to do afterwards.

The game doesn't start you off with many items to create a decent monster, so I had to use a preset one for most of the game. Once you start to get a good batch of items you can create a good monster. Even though the items do have an affect on the power, speed, etc of the monster, I don't think they tell you while you're creating it, so you have to make a total guess and hope for the best. You can check your monsters stats after you create him, if you don't like it you can start over, if you do like it you can save him at the Mayors house.

The coolest thing about this game is the preset monsters. You can win them if you get a gold chest, but they start you off with one. If you hook up your GBA to your Gamecube you can play a short turn based RPG styled card battle game, it's pretty simple and faceless, but you can win items from it, so if you're a completest this should be fun.


----------Characters / Story----------
You get to pick between a boy or girl at the start, and then you're sucked into a book to stop the Evilings that capture the Island dwellers. You have some gift to create monsters, you do that and then pit them against the Evilings in minigames. That sums up the whole thing. There's not alot of dialog, although you can talk to anyone on the stage, they might say something a bit useful, but nothing satisfying. The main "playable" characters are voiceless silent heroes, so they're pretty much useless.


----------Graphics----------
The graphics are terrible, it's in a similar fashion of Evolution Worlds, but alot worse. Some minigames reuse the same backgrounds or even the same minigame repackaged, and there's only 28 of them, so that's very weak. Mario Party games atleast come with 80 or so minigames and they rarely reuse the same graphics for them. The most positive thing I can thing of is the characters are cute.

----------Sound----------
The only voice over in the game is a Sega style disembodied voice that appears after you win or lose a minigame. The music is annoying and forgettable.

----------World Map----------
The adventuring part of the game is in a 3rd person view, where you walk around a small island. This island (overall) features 3 shops, 4 warp birds, a totem pole, a mayors hut and a cave to create your monsters. To save your game you have to talk to the Mayor in the game.

The World map is shown before you enter a minigame. You hop along the island completely the minigames in a linear fashion. There's 3 stages in the game, Beginner, Intermediate, and Advance Course. Once you reach the Intermediate Course you'll encounter different routes within the stages, so you'll have to play the Intermediate course twice, and Advanced Course 4 times to complete the game. After you beat a stage within the course you free more people in the game. When you complete a course you unlock new areas on the island.

----------Time to Complete Game (first run through)----------
The time is not recorded, but the "main quest" can be finished in a couple hours. After the credits you can save your game and keep playing getting all the items you missed and continuing beating your past scores and making monsters.