With the release of the fan-made translation patch for Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love, I decided to finally give the game a try, eight and a half years after its release in Japan in August 2009. I did like the the predecessor, Freshly Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, which was also made by Vanpool, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt instead of simply ignoring or mindlessly hating it without ever giving it a try.
However, a big part of the reason, why I liked the first Tingle game in the first place was the fact that underneath the silly Tingle cover was an Action Adventure game akin to the Zelda series. The fighting was different, but otherwise it had an overworld, dungeons, a town, interactions, puzzles and most of the things that you would expect from a Zelda. Pair it with some crazy humor and you get a fairly nice game - nothing on the quality of the main Zelda series, but still enjoyable for what it was.
Now, with Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love they basically threw all of this overboard to create a Point'n'Click Adventure similar to Monkey Island, but certainly not as great. I've never been a fan of the genre, probably because I basically grew up with Zelda and need Action in my Adventure. And Balloon Trip of Love plays quite slowly, a little too slow for my taste. You have to pixel-hunt for any interactions and investigate through the various screens for how to proceed. And this requires a good amount of patience.
The game also seems to be very linear. You play this on a page-by-page basis, where every page includes a small area with multiple screens and gets divided into individual chapters... (Shouldn't this be the other way around?) There is usually only the one solution for a chapter and figuring it out sometimes may take a while. I think, later in the game you will be able to travel to previous pages, probably by balloon, but early on you just follow the given set of events through them.
Still, I did like the classic Point'n'Click Adventure style in the beginning and the humor is similar to the first game. Tingle gets accompanied by a scarecrow (Kakashi), a female robot (Buriki) and a lion (who's simply called "Lion"), which is based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Kakashi can use his straw for various things and crawl in small holes, Buriki can analyze and kick things, while the Lion has super strength and can talk to animals. You also get various other items including a Bottle and a Slingshot for additional interactions on the screen. But the Bottle seems mostly for carrying water and it's not like in the first game, where you can have up to 23 bottles with many different contents. The Slingshot can be fun, though, because it lets you shoot anything on the screen for funny reactions...
There's also a strange "hero" with a red cape, who rides on a horse, which he calls via an Ocarina and Epona's Song, and who puts obstacles into Tingle's way to meet the beautiful Princess. It's kind of funny and Tingle also got to ride his own train four months before Link could, even on the same Nintendo system:
The train brings you to Page 6 and this is where my journey currently has ended. It introduces the "love push" system, which basically brings back the worst feature of the first game: the bargaining. It's not exactly the same, but probably more annoying. Women won't talk to Tingle in this game, because he looks like (and is) a pervert. So, you have to feed them with presents until they like you... (That's racist. Ding.)
Tingle also takes notes about all women, where he doesn't discriminate. Young or old, large or small, pretty or ugly. It doesn't matter, because Tingle wants all their love, where especially the underage girls feel somewhat problematic in the sense of Pedo-Tingle. It's probably harmless, but it's still weird at first and you have to do this with seemingly all the women in the game in order to proceed, whether you want to or not...
The "love push" system itself doesn't seem as bad as the bargaining from Rupeeland on first glance, but it still involves lots of trial and error, where so far no guides for the inofficial English version exist. You have to give a woman presents and then figure out the right one from her reactions. There are at least a hundred different possible presents in the game, which you have to buy from Rupees, which you can collect in the areas by performing certain (slow) tasks like kicking trees or looking under rocks.
It does remind me of building friendships in Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball (and yes, I've played that game), but the difference is that the females here are mostly ugly and you don't get any clues what you should give them at first. I did try to find presents, which might match the person, but they usually hated me for it. But then you see, what categories they might like and you can try to find a fitting present based on that. So, it really just seems to be trial and error, where you have to grind for the necessary Rupees in order to effort all those presents. At least there isn't a time limit, at least not yet...
Anyway, I couldn't muster enough motivation to continue from there, even though I would like to see, how Tingle gets the Princess in the end. I might continue this game at a later point, but for now I had enough of it.
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