Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King | Nintendo Switch | Review

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When Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King first came to our attention earlier in the year, we immediately thought Castle Pixel’s homage to the top-down Zelda games of the past would be a natural fit for the Switch. As it turns out, Nintendo agree, snapping up the retro inspired action-adventure as a console exclusive.

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by Liam
​Andrews

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​@liam_andrews5

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Developer: Castle Pixel
Publisher: FDG Entertainment
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC
Players: 1

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In case you missed our previous take, Blossom Tales is a game set in a fantasy Kingdom in which the protagonist, Lily, a newly appointed Knight of the Rose, must defeat the evil wizard Crocus who has placed a curse on the King in a bid to seize power for himself.
 
The game basically plays out as an ode to the classic Zelda title A Link to the Past (retro visuals and all) with Lily tasked with collecting the ingredients needed to wake the King from a number of dungeons, each of which feature various puzzles, enemies and unique settings, from a zombie infested mountain peak to Orc ridden wastelands.
 
Despite its obvious inspiration, Blossom Tales has enough character, charm and unique features that help set it apart from the source material. Genre staples such as the bow, boomerang and bombs all draw their power from a green meter at the top of the screen rather than a limited pool of ammunition, and the game’s narrator, an elderly Grandpa, is able to introduce new obstacles on the fly at certain points depending on how his Grandkids think Lily’s adventure should pan out.

The lack of an open mission tab means side quests can easily end up forgotten, but exploring the different lands and stumbling upon new challenges and hidden secrets is arguably part of the fun, and the rewards offered for completing them aren’t essential to the core gameplay or story, at least the ones we came across anyway.

Blossom Tales is an easy recommendation on Switch; a charming, colourful, and, most importantly, fun, title that feels right at home on a Nintendo system.

So, how does it fare on Switch? Having originally played Blossom Tales on a basic laptop that, while capable of running the game, probably wasn’t the optimal platform to best enjoy it on, reliving Lily’s adventure on Nintendo’s hybrid console was an absolute blast, particularly in handheld mode, where we spent the majority of our playthrough.
 
Seeing Blossom Tale’s world brought to life in the palm of your hands looks and feels great; colours are bright and punchy, and, despite the game’s tendency to pack the screen with large numbers of enemies at the same time, the Switch version puts in a decent performance, holding a steady framerate in all but the most chaotic of boss fights. Despite an impressive console debut there were some slight, platform-specific issues that cropped up during our time with the game.
 
The HD rumble, an exclusive feature for the Switch version, didn’t really feel like it added much to gameplay and became noticeably irritating after a while due to its intensity, while the default button layout also felt like it could have been better optimised, with the Y and A buttons feeling much better suited for item use than the standard setup which saw X and B allocated the task.

These were both minor issues, however, easily solved with a bit of tweaking in the menus and didn’t detract from the overall experience in any meaningful way, plus the boons of the Switch, particularly flexibility, means it still feels like the best way to enjoy the game.
 
Being able to pick up and play at any time, almost anywhere, is something that no other platform can offer, and Blossom Tales isn’t a title that’s taxing on the Switch’s battery, meaning it’s possible to leave it in sleep mode, walk away for a few hours, and return to find there’s still plenty of game time left in your console.
 
Clocking in at around 15 hours to complete, and with a price tag of just £13.49 / €14.99 / $14.99, Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is an easy recommendation on Switch; a charming, colourful, and, most importantly, fun, title that feels right at home on a Nintendo system.
 
Pros

• Classic Zelda-esque gameplay, but with a few unique twists
• Charming visual presentation and characters
• Catchy soundtrack
• Feels perfectly suited for the Switch

 
Cons

• HD rumble is too intense
• Default button optimisation could have been better
• No quest management menu

9/10