My Mega Man Legends marathon continues with the spinoff. Tron Bonne is a pretty unique game as it’s essentially a collection of minigames that you play until you unlock the final showdown. It definitely makes for a good adventure though even if the game can be a bit more complex than needed. You should expect the difficulty to really ramp up by the end.

The game starts with Tron’s brother being kidnapped by some debt collectors. They explain that he owes them 1 million Zenny and so Tron will have to gather that amount in order to free him. It won’t be easy to earn that much money the right way and so Tron begins to rob banks and steal livestock from various farms. She will have to contend with the interest on the money as well but Tron is ready for this. She has been trying to prove herself for a while now and this is really perfect timing for that.

Right away I can tell you that these minigames actually have some decent levels of challenge to them. Fortunately you don’t need to beat every minigame in order to complete the game. You need to earn 3 million Zenny to unlock the final boss. How you do that is up to you. Clearing the minigames is advised because they can get you bonuses from 150,000 all the way to 800,000. Of course the higher the prize, the more difficult the minigame. I was never able to clear the 800K one.

So what do you do if you get stuck at the minigames? Well there is a free roam dungeon that you can challenge an infinite amount of times. You make 80,000 per run and each run only takes 3-4 minutes. So it’s a bit on the tedious side but in theory you can beat the whole game that way. I’d recommend trying to complete as many minigames as you can though because that variety will make the game more fun. Each minigame has 3 levels to it before they shut down.

The first one is about moving boxes around so that you can get the right ones onto a boat. It’s almost like navigating a Tetris run or something like that. I was able to handle the 3 puzzles for manual running but got stuck on the first puzzle with the tractor. Definitely not a minigame that is for the faint of heart.

Then you have the RPG levels which replicate the gameplay of Legends 1. You basically run through a bunch of caves and have to open chests and hit switches. It’s a bit more detailed than you may expect. These levels weren’t super hard but do take up more time than all of the other games to the point where you just aren’t sure if they are super worth it or not. I’d still say to go ahead and do it though, they add more story to the game.

You also have the robbing the bank levels. Those are the most fun because these levels are fully action packed. You have to destroy all of the robots in your way and break into the buildings. It definitely reminds you that you are playing as a villain which is something that you may end up forgetting after a while. There is a recurring character who is a cop that you have to stop. Trust me, you’ll feel bad for her after a while.

Then there are the farm levels. These got really tough and I got stuck on the third one that was worth the 800K. You have to corral animals which is easy enough but the final part has to trying to defeat a robot before it destroys your car. No matter how many times I tried that level, I just couldn’t do it. It seems like you need a better gun for that but I was stuck with my starter buster for the whole game.

To get power ups you need to play with your Servbots and that part of the game is pretty complicated. Basically there are 40 Servbots and each one has something that they like. You have to give them their favorite object to unlock other objects to give to other bots. You also need to improve their stats through missions and the gym. Finally there is a torture room where you have to take them whenever their sloth ranking gets too high.

It feels like the game really wanted you to spend a lot of time on this but that wasn’t really my gameplan. I would have done more of this if it was more intuitive but it’s all a bit too vague for me. Particularly when I was already close to the end of the game, I didn’t see the point in devoting too much time to this. If I had lost to the final boss then I would have had to consider it though.

The final boss was stressful because I had to defeat several segments with just my basic gun. It meant that the final boss was pretty long and a few hits would take me down for the count. Fortunately dodging actually wasn’t that difficult in this one. I was expecting the attack patterns to really change as the game went on but that wasn’t really the case. So just keep running in circles and the boss will not be able to keep up with you.

You should also buy a bunch of potions. This is one of those games where potions are absolutely broken because they are dirt cheap and yet you can stock up on a ton of them. I had only bought 2 potions but if I had bought more then the final boss would have been child’s play. In short, the game gives you a lot of decent options and that is the hallmark of a solid title. If you were required to complete all of the minigames and train up the Servbots then the game could have become annoying.

The graphics are definitely solid here. The artstyle has aged pretty well and definitely reminds me of the PS1 glory days. The soundtrack is also pretty good so you have a very well balanced title right here. At most you can just say that the game may be a little too short. It felt shorter than the first Legends even though they are technically about the same length. There is more replay value here because of the Servbots though. I imagine it would take a really long time to 100% this game.

Overall, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne is definitely a fun story. The characters are charismatic and the gameplay is solid. While action may be less of a focus than in the Legends series, the gameplay holds true when you do get the occasional boss fight. I also like the idea of minigames being the way you progress the story. It’s pretty original and just works well as long as you have enough variety. This one probably could have used a few more minigames so you didn’t have to rely on the free roam grind but had enough. If you don’t have this game yet then I definitely recommend picking it up asap!

Overall 7/10