Thanks to Playful Corp for the review code

Title: New Super Lucky’s Tale
System: Nintendo Switch
Price: $39.99
Release Date: 11/08/2019

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Story

In this redux version of the original Super Lucky’s Tale, you take control of Lucky, who was been trapped in a series of worlds as he must fulfill a duty to rebuild the Book of Ages, and stop a group of cats known as the Kitty Litter from causing trouble!

Presentation

Released as an upgrade/remixed version of Super Lucky’s Tale, this game not only combines the original game with the DLC worlds, but rearranges and tweaks everything so significantly that the original game looks and feels like a prototype in comparison.

For example, one of the stages in the second world was a maze where you originally had to move carrots around, and the overall look of the level was very plain and just a dull, grassy maze. In New Super Lucky’s Tale, the maze looks much more detailed, is filled with more hazards and interesting setpieces, and the new objective is to recruit an army of bunnies against a Garlic King. This sort of drastic remixing is what Super brings to the table, which is pretty impressive considering how we’re going from a Xbox One to the less-powerful Nintendo Switch.

Likewise, other aspects of the presentation have been improved too, and booting up the original on Game Pass showed that one such example was the game’s intro. The story is now told completely differently, now in beautiful artwork with a more cinematic flair, and the first level is given a makeover with polish just like everything else. It’s tough to explain in more detail without going on for hours, but needless to say, literally everything about the game’s presentation feels different here, all for the better and giving the characters and world a lot more charm. That being said, the characters talk in this weird dialect too, and while Lucky lets out full english lines now and then, the other characters speak in this weird gibberish that’s a mishmash of random words and phrases thrown together, which can become a bit annoying after a while.

Gameplay

The original Super Lucky’s Tale was a 3D platformer where the main objective of each stage was to go in, complete missions and collect pages to rebuild the Book of Ages. In New Super Lucky’s Tale, the objective is the same, but a lot of polishing and quality of life tweaks have been made, while also feeling like a much more engaging adventure overall.

The controls are fairly simple here. Lucky jumps, attacks, and spins like most other characters in 3D platformers, and his handling here is surprisingly tight, stopping when you need him to and being very responsive overall. Another of Lucky’s main abilities is being able to dive forward and burrow underground, which can be used to collect items, sneak underneath gaps, and even attack enemies and gain extra speed. Using these techniques in the levels is the key to not only reaching the end of the stage’s main objective, but getting the three extra pages in each stage as well.

Each stage does have four pages, and each world consists of several stages and a few mini-stages, the latter usually consisting of a simple puzzle that opens the way to a new page. But for the main stages, the three bonus pages are obtained from collecting 300 coins, finding a hidden page (usually in a secret area), and collecting each of the LUCKY letters hidden in a stage.

Since each world’s boss door requires a certain number of pages, collecting all four in a single level can help out significantly to opening the door, so if you’re the type that hunts down everything you can blaze through the main worlds in no time, but the stages are so fun and clever that I found myself usually sticking to a world and only leaving when I got every single page, which is a huge contrast from the Game Pass original, where the levels felt a lot more repetitive and empty, prompting me to just want to hurry up and get the level over with to go onto the next world (and I dropped that version very quickly)

Alongside the normal stages that play from your typical 3D perspective, there are other stage varieties thrown into the mix too. From 2D sidescrolling levels akin to a Donkey Kong Country stage, puzzle segments where you need to move statues into specific spots to unlock a secret, or even the boss fights, which usually take place in a 3D perspective, but require a bit of light puzzle solving to get things done. This variety works very well in Lucky’s favor, leading to most of the stages I played to be plenty of fun and engaging, and far surpassing the design of their original counterparts.

Unfortunately, a few of the stages still are kinda lackluster, and I found the second world in particular to be a bit dull with its theme, but at least it had a good amount of fun stages, including an absolutely adorable chicken one, to make up for it. This is definitely a game I plan to fully 100% complete in the near future, as most of my time with the game was been filled with delight.

Conclusion

In conclusion, New Super Lucky’s Tale is a fantastic 3D platformer, polishing up a game in such a fashion that it becomes nearly unrecognizable from the original, despite not being a sequel or really doing much else. In a way, New Super Lucky’s Tale could be compared to the jump between Street Fighter II and Super Street Fighter II, in that the game still feels similar to control with the same outline, but nearly everything else about it is polished and tweaked for the better, leading to a far more engaging platformer that’s perfect for anyone to get into, yet has enough to do in order to satisfy the completionists or older players.

However, the game isn’t fully perfect. Some stages take a bit too long than they need to be, and some worlds are better than others, but overall, this is a very enjoyable, cute platformer that would work great as an easygoing/relaxing experience. Don’t expect much in the way of challenge from this, though I did found myself getting stuck with a couple of the letters due to the cryptic placement of them at times, usually behind some obscure puzzle.

I give New Super Lucky’s Tale an 8 out of 10.