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If your quantity of hamsters is deemed insufficient, simply staple some together and you�ll be
set. Erm. Games. I meant hamster GAMES, not actual hamsters. That would be bad. Felicity
from Worcestershire would never forgive my transgression. FORGIVE ME, O HAMSTER QUEEN,
DONOR OF STRANGE GAMES! I was merely lacking a decent beginning to this piece! After all,
it�s simply three stapled-together hamster-flavored components, one of which we�ve already covered
on this very program! But first, since... well, I�m me... HAMSTER RPG.
Awright, so there�s not much to say about the RPG. You�ve got a young boy or girl,
an Alice-in-Wonderland trip to a land full of animals, a plot-centric hamster, and a
number of monsters to be collected and raised in the style of damn near every RPG released
between 1999 and 2005. Let�s face it. There�s not much hamster to be had in this section
of the title, since... well, it�s kind of a bog-standard RPG, but with a hamster you
never see. So let�s get straight on back to Fantasy Puzzle Hamster Monogatari 2, first
seen in the Puzzle & Tantei Collection I covered a little while ago.
Only problem here is, this version is very, very stripped back. Which on the one hand
is rather convenient, as the walking-around and shoehorned-in adventure elements simply
distracted the player from the rather decent puzzle action of the first one. Here, you
have just a static progression of stages, no plot, no strange occult hamsters, no Smurfs-ripoff
mushroom town, nothin�. Of course, this also means you lose the rather excellent edit
mode from its predecessor, and that�s quite unfortunate. Regardless, it�s still the
panel-lifting, block-moving, spike-avoiding puzzle action we came to love last time, just
without the absurd difficulty spike. And now the important pieces are color-coded for your
convenience, and slide apart to reveal a stairway! That�s gotta count for something, right?
There�s a third component to Hamster Monogatari Collection... but it�s that most detestable
of tacked-on content, a fortune teller. Yes, you may think that the hamster with the crystal
ball is your friend, but he really just wants to dish meaningless data at you based on trite
observations of your age, birthday, gender, and blood type. There�s even a compatibility
checker, which is even more creepy, as it requires you to know the blood type of whoever
you happen to have eyes for, and that�s not really data you carry around. Oh well,
at least the puzzle game part of Hamster Monogatari Collection is pretty awesome! I�ll take
that one to the bank, if my Hamster Card hasn�t been repealed by Queen Felicity yet. My penance...
shall be fluffy.