In the confusion of losing my old job and trying to re-establish contacts, I missed that Ratalaika and Shinyuden localized Deae Tonosama: Appare Ichiban. It’s a game I had earmarked for my Weekly Kusoge column, but never got around to because I was too busy having my soul trampled. I would have been all over this.

Retitled to Feudal Bros. Tonosama #1, it’s an odd game to go to the effort of localizing. This is possibly the first time you’ve ever heard of it. Who’s just going to stumble on it with a name like that? Mainly, it’s known for having a high price tag in the resale market, and it’s also a prime example of Bakage.

DO YOU EVEN LIFT?

Feudal Bros. stars Lord Baka and Prince Bouffan, the former being a feudal lord and the latter being a French prince. Both are disappointments to their father. While their fathers were impossibly muscular manly men who shaved their body hair, the two heroes have unimpressive figures and seem to have forgotten their masculinity in the bathroom.

But when a “Shadow” falls over Japan, the two must step up to set things right. That’s it. That’s the story.

I don’t use this term lightly, but Feudal Bros. is a dumb game. I know that’s literally what bakage means, but I’m taking that further to describe the fact that Feudal Bros. was designed in a dumb way. I’m not saying it’s terrible, I’m just saying that if some smart adjustments were made, it would have been a lot better. It plays somewhat similarly to Pocky & Rocky to the point where I’d speculate it might have been inspired by it. But that’s maybe a bad comparison, because it sets expectations too high. It’s not nearly that good.

DUMB AND DUMBER: EDO DRIFT

You start off by picking your dumb noble, then you pick their servant (which serves as their crash power), then you pick a level. This is where the dumb starts.

You’re presented a choice of four levels, and the icons on the map (three small blue arrows and one big red one) give the impression that there are three sub-levels and one final stage. You’d think you’d have to knock off the sub-levels before you can take on the primary, but that’s not the case. You can take on the big arrow right away. Clearing it lets you advance to the next set of levels, allowing you to just skip all those sub-levels.

The trick is that every boss you didn’t fight ends up in that last level. If you finish all the sub-levels first, you only need to fight the final boss; the level itself is completely empty.

That would be pretty cool if it was near-impossible to get through a gauntlet of the game’s bosses, but that’s not the case. Most of the game’s bosses are ridiculously easy. It isn’t that much of a challenge to just plow through the final level of each area bringing you up to a grand total of three very short stages. Which is nice if you’re pressed for time and don’t care about actually enjoying the game. Maybe this is actually very high concept and Feudal Bros. respects us enough to know we won’t skip levels.

There is one other incentive for finishing the sub-levels first, however. Doing so unlocks a bonus level. The bonus level allows you to pick one of two mini-games. One that has you destroying Onigiri for a bonus life and the other has you flexing to increase your TGR gauge past 100%. The bonus life is practically useless since there’s unlimited continues, and while an increased FGR gauge is nice to have, the game is so easy that it’s not really necessary.

UNH! FLEX!

Yeah, the TGR gauge. Let’s back up for a minute.

Like I said, Feudal Bros. is like discount Pocky & Rocky. There’s sliding to dodge, you can throw stuff or whack stuff, but in this game, only Prince Bouffan can throw, and only Lord Baka can whack. It’s maybe appropriate that a shrine maiden and tanuki out-class them by being capable of both.

That may make it sound like Prince Bouffan gets to have all the fun, but he throws roses, he throws them really slow, and he throws them very gently. It’s not a run-and-gun like Pocky & Rocky. But, more importantly, the roses aren’t as powerful as Lord Baka’s fan.

I think the trade-off is supposed to be that Lord Baka can’t move as fast and has to get close to danger, so he theoretically would take more damage, but the enemies are really accommodating to being whacked. Many of the bosses spend a great deal of time standing in one place, giving you ample time to unleash a good whacking. It’s no contest; Lord Baka is far more powerful.

But it doesn’t matter all that much, because enemies often drop percentage points that add to your TGR gauge. I don’t know what the TGR stands for. I looked it up, it’s apparently “Tonosama Great,” if you can believe it. The important thing is that it turns you into the heroes’ absolutely jacked fathers. You get to walk around as those muscle-piles for as long as you want, but any time they attack or get hit, it subtracts from the TGR gauge. When it’s depleted, you turn back into noodle-armed failsons.

The dads absolutely wreck bosses, sometimes in a couple of hits, so it’s a good idea to save for final showdowns. The other places to use up your TGR is any platforming area. You lose a lot of health if you fall into a hazard, but the fathers only lose a small percent. In particular, there’s one section where you ride dolphins that can be a pain if you don’t have some fatherly guidance.

PROTEIN DEFICIENT

Despite being a protein deficient copy of Pocky & Rocky, Feudal Bros. is still rather enjoyable. However, it’s majorly let down in two places. I already mentioned the first: It’s way too easy. This port actually has modern features like rewind and additional cheats, but you probably won’t need them. Especially since there’s unlimited continues.

The second is that it’s way too short, even if you do every mission. After completing the four levels in Japan, you’re given four levels on the world stage. After that, there’s one level in space, and it’s over. 45 minutes, at most. This would be forgivable if it was an arcade title, or if there was a challenge to force repetition, but since it’s so easy, it just feels really insubstantial.

It’s a fun game to see, even if the whole thing is sloppy and dumb. Its humour certainly isn’t sharp, but it’s entertaining enough to stand out. The brevity is, at least, offset by the rather reasonable pricetag that Ratalaika has given it. $6 greenbacks or $9 Canadian loonies (fewer loonies on Steam for some reason). That’s, like, a Blockbuster rental circa 2005. I miss game rentals, but I… Sorry, I got distracted there. You could treat this like a rental for that price, is what I’m saying. Make it a bakage night.

6/10

This review was conducted on a Nintendo Switch using a digital version of the game. It was provided by the publisher.