Every so often a game that no ones never ever heard of drops without warning and surprises everyone. Kamiko is absolutely one of those games. I follow the games industry pretty closely and stay up to date with whats coming out and I never once saw Kamiko mentioned until it released. Part of that could be because, as of this review, Kamiko is a Japanese Eshop exclusive for the Nintendo Switch. Thanks to Nintendo finally dropping region restrictions it’s incredibly easy to download Kamiko from the Japanese Eshop and thanks to Nintendo’s implementation of region settings Kamiko even plays in English!

Paying homage

Kamiko is a great 8bit throwback. The music, graphics and gameplay bring me right back to playing The Legend of Zelda on my NES as a kid. The graphics are great and have a real Hyper Light Drifter vibe to them which I really dig.The music is very “8bit” but I would say its more Famicom-Disk-System-with-the-extra-channels 8bit.

The main thing that reminds me of the 8 bit days is the translation. It’s so bad it fits right at home with every other game we got in the 80’s. It’s so bad it’s good. Look at this during the intro!

I don’t even know what they are trying to tell me but it doesn’t matter!

Girl power!

Kamiko features three playable characters. Yamato who wields a large two handed sword, Uzume who is an archer with a bow and Hinome who sports a sword and shield. They are the standard characters you would expect to find in any rpg/action game and they play as you would expect. Yamato’s special attack swings her sword in a mad whirlwind, Uzume’s bow special shoots a ton of arrows and Hinome’s special has her throw her shield in a manner that kills everything on the screen.

Z+Ys=K

The game play in Kamiko is not original in any way. It takes a tried and true formula and molds a great game around it. It’s very similar to Hyper Light Drifter but it’s easier, smaller and more straight forward. If you’ve never player Hyper Light Drifter before its essentially 2d Zelda meets Y’s. You have an attack and a dash,thats it. At its core Kamiko is dead simple but there is some depth to be found in the combat. You chain kills to build your “SP meter” which allows you to unleash a special attack once you reach 50 SP. There is a balancing act though because SP is used to unlock chests and “main nodes” so you don’t want to blow it all in battle when you need it after to unlock a “main node”

Each level has four “main nodes” that you are looking to activate. Once all four have been activated the end boss for that level unlocks. Activating these four nodes will have you solving Zelda style puzzles and cutting down tons of enemies. You will push blocks onto switches, activate timers, pickup items that go onto pedestals and pickup keys to unlock doors. Sometimes you will enter rooms where the gates go up and you have to kill everything before the gates will drop back down. When you need to replenish your life you will, get this, break pots and cut down trees to get more ” hearts”. Yup it’s Zelda with a fresh coat of paint and I’m fine with that.

I’m sure you can figure out what happens here

BOSS TIME

Like Zelda the combat is mostly superficial. It’s there for you to gather SP and outside of the rooms that require it you don’t need to engage in combat if you don’t want to. Just like Zelda you will be required to test your combat skills on the level bosses though.

The boss fights are creative and fun. The combat patterns are easy to figure out and the difficulty is quite low but they are enjoyable. It’s enough to make you think a bit, learn the pattern, then go for the kill! Before each boss you will get a permanent boost to your stats and thats the only character progression in the game.

Short and Sweet

After completing the game you will be greeted with a nice little ending and a “clear” screen showing your times for the run. The game is short and sweet and they clearly mean for you to play through more then once. Here’s my first run with the game.

There is a secret menu on the title screen marked “???????” which makes me think it will be unlocked after I complete the game with all 3 characters or perhaps clear the game in a certain time with each character. This gives the games some legs and it makes me want to beat the game with each character!

I like Zelda

I really love the Zelda series and Kamiko takes almost everything I love about Zelda, stuffs it into a tight package and charges the low price of 500yen. The game play is fast and fluid, the graphics are great, the music is catchy and its 500yen. What are you waiting for? Did I mention its only 500yen?

Run, don’t walk, to your switch and buy this game!!!