Boring, braindead, and joyless
I couldn't bring myself to finish Legendary Starfy. It was developed by TOSE, which had worked on the surprisingly competent Super Princess Peach, and it sort of reminded me of Kirby, so I thought it might be good. Despite several Starfy games on the GBA that never saw release outside of Japan, we finally got a remake on DS, but it seems this is one that was better left overseas.
Presentation
The graphics are nice and colorful, and are easily the game's best asset, even if they lack imagination. A bunny wearing a spacesuit and an orange clam are Starfy's two companions, but they're not as cute or funny as they probably should be. Don't expect the charm associated with Nintendo's more prominent franchises.
The addition of 3D backgrounds doesn't really add much to the presentation, since you are limited to a 2D plane - this is not a 2.5D game (like Klonoa).
This is clearly aimed at very young players, but there's a surprising amount of reading to be done. And it seems as though the simple comic-book style cut scenes are actually stored as movie files, since I noticed some compression artifacts on them, which is weird since they are just still images with the odd pan and zoom.
Game Play
But the biggest problem of all is that the game simply isn't very fun. It's hard to call this a true platform game because Starfy spends most of his time swimming. There isn't much jumping to be done in most stages. The resulting levels are devoid of much action, and often have simple puzzle sections where Starfy has to push around blocks - which he does VERY SLOWLY.
Additionally, if he does his spin attack too much, he gets dizzy and can't move for a short period, which further slows things down (this is because without a penalty, players could simply spin attack their way through most of the game).
Conclusion
In the final analysis, Starfy is just an uninspired kid's game that is only slightly better than the licensed crap (based on cartoons and toy lines) that is regularly shoveled onto the DS. Seasoned gamers will find nothing of interest here, even if they are fans of cute games like Kirby.
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