When you get to the end, you engage in a boss battle rhythm minigame: by moving left or right and timing your staff swing with glowing orbs or beams launched by your opponent, you gradually whittle down their health meter. Even though the dungeons aren’t overly difficult, and losing all of your health doesn’t send you back very far, they just aren’t all that enjoyable to complete. The dungeons, and both the game and I use the term loosely, involve traversing a fairly linear path while avoiding ghosts, the primary enemy type, and navigating narrow platforms. Another involves taking photographs of statues, but the instructions are vague, and there’s multiple steps involved in producing pictures that the requisite NPC will actually accept. One involves finding a set of baby bunnies within a set time limit, and if the time limit expires, all of your progress is lost and you need to start over again. Coloured gates block off parts of Spica Island, and so you sometimes have to engage in side-quests in order to collect the keys that will let you advance alas, these are more frustrating than fun. However, the lack of a map coupled with the similar-looking locales take away from the enjoyment of seeking out new areas. As you progress through the story, you earn new abilities that allow you to explore more of the island. Dungeons that you enter to collect the star fragments add a touch of variety, but even these are fairly plain. The same grass, hills, trees, mountains, and water are visible nearly everywhere you go. Spica Island makes for a forgettable backdrop (forgive the pun).
The primary objective, as is the case with so many amnesiac protagonists, is the recovery of Annika’s memories, and so Giraffe helps you to collect three star fragments that will hopefully help Annika remember. Comic-book style panels provide backstory and showcase charming interactions between the characters, and these are a definite highlight. In fact, for much of the game, Giraffe will simply lead you where you need to go at other times, you are left with few hints about your next objective or what to do next. After exploring a small house, you meet a boy outside named Giraffe, who knows you and functions almost like a guide. You play as Annika, a girl with cat ears, who wakes up on Spica Island with her memories essentially gone. While that sense of discovery and stumbling upon the next objective add some enjoyment to the proceedings, the minute-to-minute experience is bogged down by a number of questionable design choices. This third-person adventure involves exploring a mysterious island, solving puzzles, and even completing rhythm-based battles, but ultimately, much of the core gameplay is shallow and boring.
It’s not long into NIS America-published Giraffe and Annika that you figure out what the game has in store for you.
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