If you're looking for a silly and relaxing time, this is your game. On the other hand, this is not the game for someone looking for great gameplay or a compelling story. The creativity in the world and its characters is where this game shines, but that shine will only reach so far. I wish it was a twice baked potato, yet sadly this is half-baked.
Never in my wildest dreams did I picture myself playing a game where I would be playing as potatoes. Not only potatoes but other foods with celebrity pun names like Bendy Cumberpatch and Scallion Johansson, yes you read that right. Nonetheless, this is a review so let me tell you all about this zany game.
The story behind the game is that your characters are being chased by another large ship. Yet at the same time, you are looking for something or someone (refraining from spoilers). In your search, you go around the galaxy to planets. You then loot and fight your way through the planets. Sometimes you may find special weapons, blueprints, or even some special characters to join your crew.
Holy Potatoes is a turn-based fighting game, in a similar style of the Pokémon games. You pilot your ship and fly around planets and combat against random enemies as well as bosses. The fighting mechanics are different, and I haven’t seen anything like this before. The screen shows both your ship and the enemy’s ship. In between them, is a box with your ship’s crew members who are manning the weapons. With them, is a number range that shows the potential damage that a character can do. The way you pick who attacks is decided by the charge meter. The charge meter starts at a certain number, which depends on your level, and it dictates how many people can attack during your turn. For example, if you have one character with a 4 charge requirement, and a character with a 3 charge requirement they can both attack if you have a 7 charge or above in your charge meter.
You can customize your ship in different ways. The first and probably most important way is the type of guns you put on. The options are lasers, canons, and more. Based on your characters abilities, you want to choose the right weapon that maximizes their skills. This rolls over into the combat. Certain weapons have different charge requirements just like the characters do. If you think it is confusing now, then I apologize in advance because it is only going to get worse from here.
On your ship, you can have a training area, a research lab, and a crafting section. Those are pretty self-explanatory. You can upgrade your characters in the training area, you can upgrade items and your ship with research and crafting allows you to make new and improved versions of weapons. All three of these elements take time to figure out, as you have to unlock them as you progress.
After you reach so many planets, you then reach a boss ship. Like in every other game in the history of video games, the bosses are harder and have different abilities. In these fights, they throw everything at you except the kitchen sink. Once defeated, you go on your merry way to the next set of planets, rinse and repeat. This is where the game loses you. Nothing really is set up to surprise you. But really that is to be expected when playing a game with talking potatoes. Right here lies the double edge sword of the game: it does not take itself seriously which allows for funny one-liners and silly characters, yet the gameplay and story really fall flat.
There is a major aspect of this game that gets annoying and it is the ship menu. The ship menu is hard to navigate, and I don’t mean just one aspect of it, I mean the whole thing. The controls, using the directional pad and then R1 or L1, felt very clunky. Many games like Destiny or Apex Legends have that cursor that you can move around the screen like a mouse and I wish that was integrated for consoles. PC wins again I guess. If the controls could be improved or modified, it might have made for a better gaming experience.
The only other downer to this game is how short the experience felt. I’m not sure if the game is meant to be in short spurts, but I got about 10 hours of gameplay from the story before the experience was over. It’s certainly not the shortest game in the world, and the characters are wacky enough to make the experience entertaining, but I just wish there was a bit more from it.
