It's finally over... Time for my Jet Force Gemini review/impressions!
This is how the title screen looks when the game first greets you!
So, what is this game about?
Jet Force Gemini is a third person shooter where you play as members of a galactic police team that's trying to save the universe from an evil dictator called Mizar. Gameplay has 2 "modes", a free roaming mode where you can move and jump but can't aim and an aiming mode (activated by holding R) where you can aim but your movement is limited to 4 directions (forwards, backwards, left and right). Remember that this is a game before dual sticks or gyro were a thing, so the somewhat unusual controls are kinda expected...
Sadly, the controls aren't just "unusual", they're plain bad. In the "aiming" mode, you aim with the control stick and move with the C buttons, which is fairly odd. However, the main issue really is the aiming itself. I don't know if I should blame NSO or the joycons for this but the aiming is simply really inaccurate, any stick movement results in huge movements of your crosshair, which makes aiming very hard. I really can't overstate how frustrating it's to try to simply lightly move your aim to try to hit an enemy in this game. Even, as I played through the game I found it simpler to move my entire character rather than the aim thanks to how bad the controls are.
Anyway, moving on from the controls...
Jet Force Gemini features 3 playable characters: Juno, Vela and Lupus. At the beginning of the game you can only use Juno but you eventually unlock all 3. They play almost the same but Juno can walk in lava, Vela can swim underwater and Lupus has a jetpack-ish ability that he can use to float for a bit. During the first half of the game, each of the 3 characters follows a separate story that shows their journey to reach the lair of the main villain.
Game features several weapons, although several of them you'll barely ever use. In fact, since the aiming controls are so bad the most accurate weapon ends up being the weapon the game itself calls inaccurate, the Machine Gun. There's also Homing Missiles that are basically mandatory to beat the final boss.
Every once in a while you'll encounter a boss battle. They are locked to the aiming mode, which as you can imagine makes them an absolute delight to play... Luckily, there's only like 4 of them in the entire game.
Jet Force Gemini is a fairly long game. After the 3 main characters meet in the main villain's lair, plot shenanigans happen and the second half of the game begins. For this half, the team gets new armors and the ability to use a jetpack, which is kinda cool!
What is not kinda cool though is that second half is basically a huge backtracking section. Here, the game asks you to explore almost every level you had already cleared to find parts for your spaceship but also to rescue Tribals, NPCs that are scattered throughout each level that you must rescue to be able to reach the final boss. Main issue of this entire section is that to get all Tribals and spaceship parts you'll have to play through almost every single level of the game again and, for some levels, more than once since there are sections that only specific characters can reach (thanks to their unique abilities). I strongly recommend using a guide here unless you want to spend an eternity doing this...
Eventually, however, you'll collect everything, defeat Mizar and save the galaxy! After you do so, the title screen changes to a cool one featuring the entire team.
It seems I've been shitting on the game a fair bit, so for my last section of the review I left some screenshots that showcase how good the game looks!
There's some neat effects and environment design in Jet Force Gemini, which is easily the game's strongest aspect. Music is also pretty good!
Anyway, that's it for JFG! I wish I could say I enjoyed the game more, but the truth is that between the bad controls and how long/tedious the second half I ended up feeling pretty "meh" by it. If the game had just been the first half I'd be much more positive on it but oh well... It's not a completely awful game but I can't really recommend it too much.
For those curious, playthrough was 21 hours and 49 minutes, the current record for the Exploring NSO project!
I already rolled the next game, I'll post about it tomorrow but I think it's a fun one!