Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey has possibly the longest and most unwieldy title of any game on the eShop. With the game not being shy of its manga roots as well …
Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey has possibly the longest and most unwieldy title of any game on the eShop. With the game not being shy of its manga roots as well does this wacky little adventure deserve your attention?
As the title suggests, you play as 5 year old Shin Chan (Shinnosuke), a witty and adventurous young boy who travels with his family to a little village in Kumamoto.Â
Once you arrive you bump into an elusive scientist, who offers you one of his latest inventions – a camera. This camera is special though, as it comes with the power to instantly sketch your photos into a scrapbook – which Shin Chan decides to use to save his holiday memories. After getting acquainted with the village, Shin Chan finds himself reporting to the local newspaper after a number of strange events start to happen around the village.
The game does extremely well at bringing you into its story, whether you’ve seen the manga series or not. With its unique Japanese humour and beautiful art style – that runs perfectly on Switch – Shin Chan has effortlessly relaxing gameplay that gets its hooks into you quickly.
Most of Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey is spent exploring the village – where you can meet new people, run errands for the local shops, catch bugs, and do a spot of fishing.
Everything you do is recorded in a scrapbook, which is used to log everything from objectives, items and events throughout your holiday. You can then log the daily events at the local newspaper, with the goal to make the publication a success. And win a date with the local college beauty Yoshiko.Â
Story missions usually find you looking around town, and they get increasingly bonkers the further you progress. Although gameplay is very simple – usually a case of just collecting things and dropping them off, or following a character around the map – there is something relaxing and intriguing about the gameplay loops that stops it from ever feeling stale or dull.
On a visual and performance note Shin Chan is impressive. With beautiful hand painted backgrounds and amazing animations, all while running buttery smooth handheld or docked – it’s a real treat for the eyes.
The same goes for the sound design and writing. All characters speak in Japanese which gives it a sense of authenticity, with the English text being hilarious to boot. Basically – if you’re a fan of Japanese humour you’ll love Shin Chan.
There are a few slight annoyances with Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey though. For one it uses a fixed camera style akin to the original Resident Evil games.
This can sometimes be frustrating as it often points you in the wrong direction after you move through each screen – which gets increasingly annoying as Shin Chan loses energy passing through them – which will in turn can end up sending you back to your parents.
We also found that a lot of the bugs and fish you can catch – especially in portable play- were very hard to spot. We often had to squint or just aimlessly swing the net to catch anything.Â
Apart from these niggles though, Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey surprised us. It mixes a wacky story with simple and relaxing gameplay that had us hooked. The gorgeous visuals and witty writing adds to the package.
If you are a fan of Japanese humour or simply looking for something a little different in you game library Shin Chan Me And The Professor On Summer Vacation: The Endless Seven Day Journey is well worth investigating.Â
