One of the more amusing things I’ve noticed this generation has been a pretty wide variety of games getting remakes, remasters, or re-releases that I apparently missed the first time. Sure, some were from other platforms, never made it out of Japan, or just aren’t what I’d consider my normal cup of tea, but it’s always wild to get a reminder of just how many games get made every year, even before digital storefronts officially opened the floodgates.

One such game was apparently Bubble Ghost, a game from much earlier days that I do recall seeing, but just never happened to run into. With this remake, it has gotten a proper visual overhaul, a touching storyline added, and quite a bit more overall complexity as far as I can tell… but in general those should all be wins if you’re up to the challenge. In particular, I’ll admit that the story threads did give me some motivation to keep going, as it’s somehow a bit of a love story but handled in a way that felt earnest instead of sappy.

In terms of play, it’s absolutely its own thing, for better or worse. Your goal, on the surface, would seem to be pretty simple in principle, and that’s to successfully blow a bubble around from room to room. It’s a shame that the spaces you’ll need to go through are simply full of surfaces, and what end up being traps, that will all gladly pop it if you even hardly graze them. Aside from the fact that your bubble is so rightfully fragile, your means of moving it and trying to be precise about it are what really crank up the challenge. You’ll need to position and angle yourself carefully, which can be hard to begin with, but blowing the bubble around is really where the frustrations can set in. Your proximity, how long you blow, and whether you try to move around while blowing will all have an impact on how it moves forward, and especially in spots where you must be precise it’s really easy to go under or over and have to go back to your last checkpoint. When you then throw in boss battles that will really test your skills, it can be a lot at times.

While I applaud titles that simply play differently than the competition, I’ll admit that the game struggles to try to help find a balance between being tough and being cruel. Most of the time I felt like success was reasonably within my grasp, and my planning and execution were the things that were in the way. Unfortunately, there are some sections where it isn’t quite as fair, with either extra long or tough stretches between checkpoints, or areas that were perhaps just a bit too demanding considering the fact that the controls are workable to a point but still a bit cumbersome by their nature. That makes this a game that’s easy to recommend if you appreciate a challenge and games that do things their own way, but harder to give a thumbs up to for people who aren’t quite as capable or patient.