The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom is the latest addition to the Adventure Time videogame franchise; the game is developed by WayForward Technologies and published by Little Orbit. This action-adventure RPG will be very familiar to some gamers. Immediately the game gives off a Legend of Zelda vibe, but it’s not until you get to the Overworld that you realise the extent of the similarities; it does have its own little characteristics to make it feel more like the Kingdom of Ooo and less like Hyrule. If you go into the game expecting anything unique and special regarding gameplay, you’re not really getting going to get that here.
Plot-wise, Secret of the Nameless Kingdom is possibly what you would expect to happen in an Adventure Time game – A Kingdom needs some help that involves the Princesses, Finn and Jake go and help out, and you get some cameos from other characters in the series. Though the writing for the game doesn’t really do the show so much justice as a spin-off; it’s dull in places but a majority of the voice actors actually appear in the game – apart from the glaringly obvious different actor for Treetrunks. Gameplay and the world layout is an obviously Zelda clone, but overall the game really feels like a shorter, unfinished, casual version of A Link to the Past with an Adventure Time re-skin. The dungeons make up for the feel of it being a clone, with some interesting puzzles and usage of the items received – like Jake turning into a fist and slapping switches to remove spikes.
Graphically, the game looks pretty awesome and keeps true to the series. It’s fairly colourful and cartoony, but doesn’t tend to give you a headache over time. There’s a good balance between the look of the overworld and the dungeons, though it’s a shame it doesn’t go for much uniqueness in general as it could have been pretty decent on its own accord. I did experience some graphical tearing at times; this could just be attributed to the compression down to 3DS though. The music and sounds in the game are very reminiscent of the Zelda games, but it’s pretty nice to listen to, with a couple of good tracks in there make it feel more “Adventure Time“- the track when you find Party Pat and the Party Bears is fantastic and probably my favourite piece of music in the game.
While the game doesn’t have many unique features, most of the game is executed fairly well, so if you’re a fan of the Zelda games you’ll probably enjoy this to some extent. The combat does seem slightly sluggish at times, so you just need to not be like me and run at everything with your sword out – even if it’s the most fun thing to do. Boss fights are fairly entertaining, with the tactics having an Adventure Time humour to them and following suit with being more tactical than spamming attacks utilising the items you received in the dungeon. One thing the game doesn’t really have is a sense of direction, with one example being that the item you need to get into the second dungeon is located during a side-quest, which is blocked by another side-quest that took a while to realise what needed to be done.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of no hand holding in games, but if your map is small enough to find everything and still not have a distinctive solution for a quest, it gets kind of frustrating. Overall, Adventure Time: The Secret of the Nameless Kingdom is a fairly average with it not offering too much in unique gameplay, but at the end of the day it’s short and enjoyable for Adventure Time and Legend of Zelda fans.