Umihara Kawase Fresh! (v2021.06.29)

Elastic fishing-line platforming gives Umihara Kawase Fresh! a personality few action games can match. Set across the colorful, strange island world of Micheliner, the adventure follows Kawase as she crosses towns, caves, forests, and industrial areas packed with oversized creatures and offbeat residents. Its cheerful presentation hides a demanding physics-driven platformer where one badly aimed cast can send the heroine flying into danger—or sling her cleanly over an impossible gap. The tone stays playful and eccentric, mixing cartoon seafood enemies with a surprisingly broad quest-led adventure.

Kawase’s fishing rod is both her weapon and her means of movement. Players hook enemies, walls, platforms, and distant objects, then use the line’s stretch and recoil to swing, bounce, pull themselves forward, or build momentum for dramatic launches. Areas connect through a loose open-world structure, with more than one hundred stages, optional objectives, collectibles, and jobs that steadily open new routes. Captured enemies and gathered ingredients can be turned into meals, granting temporary boosts that make difficult encounters or traversal challenges more manageable. Nata de Cotton also joins the cast, bringing aerial movement that changes how certain routes and puzzles are approached. The basic controls are approachable, but properly controlling the rope’s angles, tension, and momentum demands practice, especially in the tougher challenge stages and leaderboard-focused trials.

Rather than copying conventional run-and-jump platformers, Umihara Kawase Fresh! turns every jump into a small physics experiment. Its hand-drawn 2D look, bizarre food-and-fish-themed world, and flexible stage order make it feel less rigid than earlier entries while retaining the series’ famously technical movement. Completionists have plenty to chase through side quests and alternate paths, while score-minded players can repeatedly refine their route execution for faster, cleaner clears. Fans of Bionic Commando, Wind Waker’s grappling traversal, or precision platformers will find a distinctive cult favorite here, although newcomers should expect a learning curve before the fishing line feels natural.