We’re back in the world of Bomberman with this next adventure. It’s pretty fun to finally be getting back into the swing of things as this series is always pretty good. Platforming with the bomb explosions is unique and you can’t really compare this to very many other titles. I would actually say this one even improves upon the last title because of various quality of life updates. Less missable collectibles/monsters this time around. In fact you’d have to try in order to actually miss any of the creatures. The collectibles can be a little more difficult though, I actually missed two of them and had to head back. Technically you don’t necessarily need every material but I didn’t know that until the end.
The basic plot is that the villains are causing a lot of trouble once again. This time they have powered up a rocket that will either ram into a planet and destroy it or it is going to fire some kind of laser. Either way Bomberman’s mission is clear, he has to destroy the ship right away. If he can do that, then the worlds will be safe and perhaps this villain group will forever stop trying to get in the way. The main villain is protected by the elemental bombers though. You’ve got a fire bomberman, water, ice, etc. They’re all working for the villains so I guess the main Bomberman is one of the only heroes left at this point. There is also Max who is around but don’t expect him to say anything.
The graphics are really solid here and I wanted to jump into that right away. It’s super impressive how many fully animated cutscenes we have here. I was super happy about that because not many titles did this back in the day. There are 2 big cutscenes in every world which establish the boss and set the stage up very well. Meanwhile the soundtrack is fairly decent. A little less memorable I will admit but it still works well so the technicals for this game were on point. Then we have the gameplay which was really solid too which makes for a balanced game. I will jump into that now.
In each level you have to get to the goal in order to complete it. To do that, you typically have to find some kind of switch or blow some enemies up. Each world has 6 levels at first although the latter worlds tend to be 4 levels instead. The first, second, fourth, and fifth levels are classic stages. You run and jump over obstacles. Then stages 3 and 6 are the boss fights of the area. Usually the third level’s boss is fairly easy and you can use any bomb to beat him while the 6th level’s boss is more difficult and only one element will be particularly useful here. So if you miss an ingredient for one of the bombs, the level will get tricky.
This is where Max comes in. He can hurt every boss with the exception of 1 with his unique power. It takes an extremely long time to charge but has the largest range in the game. It deals a quarter of 1 heart per hit so you can beat a boss with around 20 of those. I can see this working as a self imposed hard mode of sorts. If you get hit while charging then the energy ball drops and you have to start again. It makes it so Max is actually a rather difficult character to use but I did have to resort to him twice. You can also switch to him at any point during the normal levels but there isn’t really a reason to do that. Typically Bomberman is better for every situation.
There are only 12 different monsters to recruit in this game but they are all pretty interesting. The level up system is a bit basic this time as you can only go up to level 3. So at that point you will have maxed out the monster and there isn’t much more to be done there. You level up fairly quick so I maxed out around 5 of them before I beat the game. I don’t think it would take long to max out the rest. It looks like you can also unlock a bonus world but I’m not sure how you would do that. It’s probably connected to at least one of the collectibles that you can grab. So there is a decent amount of replay value here. The main campaign’s not all that long so you’ll have it completed in under 10 hours but with the replay value it might make it up to the double digits.
I appreciated that the collectibles weren’t fully mandatory for completing the game though. This one could be fairly difficult at times but in a very fair way. You just had to really apply yourself and be good at using the bombs and not rushing. Often times you will only get yourself into trouble if you try going too fast and start bumping into enemies. That’s really where the trouble starts but if you go slow then you shouldn’t really be getting hit. Some levels can take a while, one took me close to an hour although in part that’s because I got lost.
Each level does have a map but it’s fairly zoomed out so you can still end up bumping around a lot. Level 5-1 was easily the most difficult if you ask me. You have to activate statues and play a little minigame to determine your route and there is a lot of backtracking so that often meant I would pick the wrong path and have to start again When in doubt just go back to the start of the level and retrace your steps. The good thing is that the enemies don’t respawn so feel free to knock them out and then decide on a plan. That way you have no real distractions.
Overall, Bomberman Jetters is a pretty fun game. The actual gameplay is fun and the level designs clearly had a lot of effort put into them. The sheer size of some levels could be rather daunting but the game was really fair about everything. The way that the monsters and bombs are handled was better than in previous Bomberman games as well so this leads to a very smooth experience. It’s an easy game to pick up and play and I can safely say that it did exceed my expectations. The full anime cutscenes were just another boost to add to the top. So I would definitely say to pick up this game as soon as possible. You won’t regret it!
Overall 7/10