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Awww... Cute! Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure is a great little action adventure with cuteness and charm to spare. Filled with monsters, dungeons, puzzles, traps, and a young girl with a big drill, Gurumin is just plain fun.
When Purin's parents decide she needs a more stable life than their archeological travels can provide, they send her off to live with her grandfather in a remote mining town. While there are no kids to play with, Purin quickly finds that there's a village of friendly monsters connected to the town, invisible to all but her. She soon befriends the lot, and then disaster strikes when the monster village is destroyed and its inhabitants are captured by the returning Phantom Prince and his henchmen. Pulling the legendary drill from the monument in the center of the village, Purin takes off after her missing friends.
Gurumin is pure fun action-adventuring from start to finish
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Once she leaves the village, Purin discovers that the world is covered in dark purplish clouds. There's one area open to explore on the obscured world map, and as she rescues her friends and helps rebuild the village, more and more places appear from the mists. New dungeons are most common, of course, but there are also the houses of friendly monsters who live apart from the village and a small handful of peaceful areas where elemental power-ups for the drill are hidden.
The drill is Purin's only means of offense, seeing as she's probably too young to know magic. The basic three-hit combo is built-in, but more moves are available for a reasonable price from one of the human townsfolk. For such a young girl, Purin is a dervish in combat, linking regular attacks to spins, jumps, dodges, throws, range attacks, and charge moves. The charge is particularly useful, good for drilling through cracked dungeon walls and other objects, not to mention monster armor. Destroying a monster's armor turns into junk, which is then collected and used to upgrade Purin's accessories.
This being a Japanese game and Purin being a young girl, Falcom couldn't resist giving her lots of stuff to change into. There are several unlockable costumes earned by putting serious hours into the game, but the headgear shows up immediately and acts as a combination armor and accessory. When first found, the hats start off at level 1 with only a single basic effect, but a quick series of upgrades not only increases the power of the ability but adds armor and even attack bonuses. There's a huge variety of headgear to find, from the vampire hat that regenerates a little HP with every critical hit to the ribbon that negates trap damage, but it's the cat ears that quickly become the most useful. Not only do they add a readout saying how many chests and destructible pots are left in the area, but the icon starts flashing when Purin gets near them.
This is important because the dungeons are graded on completion based on monsters killed and treasure found. The dungeons are filled with traps, hidden areas, and simple puzzles, but finding everything without a bit of help would become obnoxious pretty quickly. Cleaning out the dungeons can still be challenging, though, because knowing there's a chest nearby and how to access it are two different things entirely, plus you're on your own for finding and dispatching all the monsters. Still, a bit of exploration will turn up everything eventually, earning an S rank for the dungeon and an all-important gold medal. While there's nothing technically wrong with just completing an area, earning a silver or bronze medal that can be sold for some quick cash, the gold medals can be traded for new hats with new abilities, and who can pass that up?
While Gurumin is a fun romp, it is marred a bit by technical limitations. Load times are slightly too long, character animations can be very jerky, polygon dropout is common, and the camera isn't happy in some of the tighter dungeon areas. While everything is bright, colorful, and nicely detailed, it feels like the PSP is being pushed a little harder than it's happy with when a monster or bit of scenery is drawn in just a few feet away. While there's nothing there that breaks the game, Gurumin is crying out for at least a PS2 version and the extra horsepower it would bring.
For better or worse, though, it's on the PSP, and even with the technical limitations that brings (having a camera stick would free up a shoulder button for enemy lock-on, for example) Gurumin is still an easy recommendation. It's bright, funny, charming, cute, and just plain likable. Even the voice acting is good. The clever dungeon layouts are supported by solid controls, and the combat, despite being a bit easy, is quick with a good variety of moves to choose from. Gurumin is pure fun action-adventuring from start to finish.
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