I got Hello Kitty Island Adventure back in March and I have to say I was not that impressed. I even tried to make a blog post at the time but I felt it was just very negative and not accomplishing much, so I’ve decided to give it a second chance. i.e. I played the game a few times in March, wasn’t a fan and haven’t played it since. Until last night when I picked it up again and now I want to keep playing lol.
So I’m going to give it another shot at writing my first impressions. A lot of what I thought in March still stands but I’m now more intrigued to keep going compared to before.
The first thing to point out is I find the game overall a bit clunky. The way the character moves, the controls, the menu navigation. It’s not my fave, and it really put me off in the beginning. Like do I really want to be navigating through every single collection menu to clear the red dot everytime I pick up a new item? No. But I try my best to ignore it and try to clear a bunch of them in one go lol. The same goes with achievements. It’s just annoying to have to manually clear them otherwise the red dot does not go away.
I also think it’s hard to get used to new controls in general, like X to gift items, Y to use tools. These are not common controls for me on Nintendo Switch and so it’s taking some time to get used to. Also switching tools is not the best, but I think maybe it’s just something I need to adapt to.
Another thing for me in the beginning was that the screen is often too crowded and the tool you have activated in the right hand corner of the screen I think is larger than it needs to be. I am wondering if this issue would be resolved a bit of I was playing on the TV, but since I mostly play my Switch handheld, it’s annoying when your screen is filled with things which you can’t remove.
The last negative thing is that the camera controls suck. Which I am disappointed about considering the camera controls we have for Animal Crossing New Horizons and Infinity Nikki. This is such a let down, the controls are quite basic but I also have not found a way to remove my character from the photos which is annoying because I don’t always want my person in the photos when I am doing the gudetama requests. So yeah not a fan.
It’s safe to say this is not my favourite game ever. But when I picked it up again last night I liked wondering around a bit and picking up all the collectables. The map for the island is giant and so I haven’t even unlocked all of the areas. I think this is a big plus because it would not be that interesting if the map was tiny like Animal Crossing sized. That being said I can see myself getting lost quite a lot but it’s early days.
I do wish there was maybe a little more guidance in what to be doing in the beginning, but I suppose it’s up to you what way you tackle quests, a lot of them are locked behind friendship level etc which is fine but I am interested to see what we can uncover about the island. I do wish quests which unlocked new tools etc were more obviously labelled so you can prioritize them but I know if I keep playing I will get them eventually.
I am willing to give the game a second chance because I know there is a lot packed into it, based on seeing people play online I know I have only scratched the surface and while I have a lot of issues with it it’s not unplayable. I’m sure I can deal with the clunkiness and stuff as we go along, it’s just how it is.
I do believe if I had gotten this when I was 13 I would have liked it immediately, but it’s taking me some time to warm up to the game now. But those are all my first impressions. Mostly negative lol but like I said I am pushing past my initial thoughts to dive deeper, I think there is a lot of storytelling in this game and lots to unlock despite the initial teething issues of settling into a new game.
So that’s where we are, I only played for an hour or so last night but I already want to dive back in for more, I think I will be able to give much better thoughts once I’ve gotten in to more of the actual gameplay aside from the wandering around and gathering materials. I haven’t really done a lot of swimming or anything yet because again, the map is huge and so I don’t want to get stranded lol but yeah looking forward to continuing on.
I don’t know if I will do an updated blog post but I’ll probably post pictures of gameplay and things on Bluesky if you are interested. I guess if anything I am glad I haven’t written the game off completely because I think I will enjoy it now I’ve gotten past my initial struggles.
So if you were to take anything from this post it’s that you can always give games a second chance lol even if initially it puts you off completely.
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