The Snack World: The Dungeon Crawl Gold launched on Valentine's Day after a three-year wait for Western fans. It almost immediately fell off the radar despite coming from a well-regarded studio like Level-5. There is a big reason for this: the Metacritic score. Right now it is sitting at a 67.
Whenever a game falls into the yellow area, things get hazy for many gamers on whether they think it is worth their time and money. It gets worse, obviously, the lower the score gets. Despite what the aggregate says, The Snack World is a neat RPG with a lot of cool aspects to it. And yes, there are also a lot of bad parts as well.
10 Best: Multiplayer
This game supports both online and local co-op. Multiplayer is almost the sole reason someone should pick this up. It is not definitively the reason, but being by able to play with three other people can help alleviate some of the game’s weaker aspects such as the repetition. Getting some buddies along for the ride will help make the tedium of repeating quests more enjoyable, or at least quicker.
9 Worst: Expensive
Everything in the game is extremely expensive. Buying one piece of armor can take hours of progress, for example. Armor and weapons can be enhanced and even made, but that too takes materials. The point is the economy system feels broken due to the game mimicking the Gacha style of mobile gaming, but without microtransactions.
And on the subject of expenses, while multiplayer is great, not being able to play locally on just one system can be costly. Getting three other friends to get the game is a lot to ask for local co-op.
8 Best: Monster Designs
The English localization team for Level-5 is usually pretty spot-on with their translations and The Snack World is no different. The monster designs and names are a pun enthusiast's daydream. For example, Foul Cat has the head of a lion and the body of a chicken. BB is a bee shaped in the letter B. Ninjumper is an adorable ninja frog, and the list goes on. Some of these critters are too cute and punny to harm.
7 Worst: The Story
While the monster names and designs are good, the rest of the writing leaves something to be desired. That is to say the story is filled with repetitive text that dances around the subject. What is essentially an introduction to roguelikes for kids is heavy on the narrative, which is something that just gets in the way. The anime follows the game closely, or vice versa, and does a better job with pacing. Check out the English dub on Crunchyroll instead.
6 Best: Automated Menus
Almost everything in the menus can be automated, which saves a lot of time. The kingdom has a map that is easy to access for fast travel. Creating clothes or upgrading armor has a button that automatically places the right materials up for grabs.
And best of all, before a mission, the best equipment can be chosen for the job. Weapons have banes that work better against certain monsters and missions do showcase what the most likely encounters are. It’s the little things like these that help out the most.
5 Worst: Sound Design
Level-5 is usually pretty up and down with their music. Sometimes their games can have beautifully written scores like in Ni no Kuni and sometimes, in the case of The Snack World, the melodies are forgettable. More so than the music the fact that a 2020 game has about 90% text to 10% voiced dialogue was surprising. Those ratios may be off. In fact, the percentage of voiced work in this game may be lower. The point of creating a text-heavy game like this in a modern RPG landscape is lost on us.
4 Best: Trading
Another aspect of multiplayer that deserves its own entry is in regard to trading. Even the biggest co-op games out there today, like Destiny and Monster Hunter World, don’t allow trading between friends. Didn’t those developers play Pokémon in the '90s? Hello, that is a must-have feature in video games like this and few practice it, unfortunately. So kudos to Level-5 for adding such a simple mechanic into this Nintendo Switch game.
3 Worst: Looks Bad
It’s hard not to notice that this game started out as a 3DS game. That is to say, it does not look great. This is unfortunate as the anime has such a unique design to it. The characters are CG but made to look like they’re made out of clay, or something. It is incredible, but the same aesthetic could not understandably be used on the 3DS. This is another reason why the anime is highly recommended.
2 Best: Loading Transitions
Another aspect of fast travel that deserved its own entry includes the transitions. First of all whether one walks, or warps into a new area, the loading is fast, which is always a plus. Secondly, warping around has fun little transitions that look like they’re straight of the anime from crunching through layers to get to the game to a rolling set of heads panning over to the next scene. It is another small detail like this that makes this game charming.
1 Worst: The Grind For Everything
The reason why multiplayer is the best aspect about the game can be further detailed here. As a faux Gacha game, The Snack World is a huge grind. The high prices were already mentioned, but everything else is repetitive and time-consuming as well, from gaining experience points to gathering crafting materials.
This game is a huge time sink. Friends make the repetition easier, but even the best of friends may find trouble keeping themselves sane after repeating quests just to get a chance at a rare item.