Hamtaro : Ham-Ham Heartbreak takes place in the world of the television show it's based on. In this world, hamsters (called ham-hams) function like humans. They have beaches, villages, amusement parks, etc.
Sunflowers act as a form of currency. That seems weird, given that sunflower seeds are also a food in this world. It's the equivalent of using chocolate coins to buy things. I don't think that's a smart way to build an economy, but what do I know? After all, this world is strangely lacking in any legitimate crimes. There's no murder, assault,
gangs, etc. In fact, this little world of hamsters functions so well that a guy in a cheap devil costume who wants to destroy love by stealing hats and causing misunderstandings can be our antagonist.

Yeah, this game is pretty silly. One day our main character, Hamtaro, has a dream about a hamster who's sole mission is to break up any kind of relation. He hates love. This guy is bad news. Like, really bad news. Really really bad news. I guess it's like having a dream about the end of the world, since Hamtaro wakes up in a panic. He tells Boss, a character you're familiar with if you've watched the show, and Boss remarks that it's a weird dream. He then says that he hopes it's not a sign of what's to come. (It's not. This is actually a game about adolescent mutant turtles who become ninjas and fight crime. I'd call that a spoiler alert, but how could you not see it coming?)

A little while later we find out that GASP! Hamtaro's dream was true! There's a bad ham-ham named Splat who plans to ruin all love! It's up to Hamtaro and Bijou (His friend? Girlfriend? Platonic life partner? I have no clue.) to save the day with the help of some kind of hamster-angel hybrid named Harmony.



GRAPHICS: 7/10
The graphics in this game are pretty good, all things considered. The color scheme matches the show and isn't too painful on the eyes. The characters are all animated well. I don't have much to say on this, honestly. The game has an obvious look it wants to achieve and it achieves it well. It's nice looking. Now, it's certainly not the best graphics I've seen for the platform, but it's definitely not the worst.

The hamsters are all adorable, but there are a couple of instances where you have three or so hamsters that look the exact same. The areas are designed well. My personal favorite is Boo Manor, which has a very nice design and is probably the most unique level of the game. It could be a little too scary for it's intended age group, though.

Overall, all the designs in the game are very cutesy.



SOUND: 9/10
It's all, again, very cute. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE HIGH QUANTITIES OF CUTE. You'll probably explode.

Each area has a different theme song. They're all well done, but after

returning to an area for the third or fourth time they stop sounding pleasant and start to get painful. I eventually lost and had to cut off the sound after spending too long in an area. Each song is unique enough to differentiate, but they're made for the game and they aren't going to make you want to buy a soundtrack. My personal favorite was the one that plays at the Sandy Beach area. It's fun and fast paced, perfect for the beach. My least favorite was the Boo Manor theme, which is appropriately creepy for the kiddies but gets annoying after five seconds. They even have Beethoven in one part! That's...weird, but I guess there's nothing wrong with hamsters jamming out to Moonlight Sonata. I guess you have to give the game points for that, since I don't recall any of the Mario games introducing me to Mozart. Hey, maybe it was in the background of the game and I never noticed.

There are added noises for certain actions, but I honestly can't remember what one of them sounds like. I played this game last night. I guess that means they're good enough to not grate your nerves that much, but not so good that they're especially remarkable.

I'm rating it fairly high because while the sounds certainly do get annoying the game gets you through each part fast enough that it's not going to make you want to stop playing.


ADDICTIVENESS: 4/10
I had this game as a child. I never finished it because about halfway through the repetitiveness of it would get to me. It gets a little boring after a while. Seriously, one part has you tell all the hamsters in a group to go to the stage to perform and afterwards has you do it AGAIN with no real explanation as to why. I never had an urge to collect all the sunflowers, gems, or jams: I just wanted to finish the game. Years later I randomly remember it and thought "Hey, I bet it's on Vizzed! Why not give it another shot?" I played it straight through, mostly because I knew I wouldn't pick it up again if I stopped.

I don't imagine you're going to want to play this again and again. In fact, I don't imagine you're going to want to play through this title more than once or twice unless you're nostalgic or you want 100% completion.


STORY: 7/10
I gave it a pretty high rating because the premise of the game is fairly unique. That said, this is the sort of game you'll enjoy as a kid and then promptly forget about until several years later. It's cute and sweet, but not great.? I'm not really sure what to say about it. It's a game. It's very game-like. It has some hamsters and some other stuff that make it a game. Yeah. It's a game.

Okay, I do have one bone to pick: the ending wasn't great. I'm not going to lose sleep over it, but I wish there was more of a payoff. Maybe I'm being picky, but the ending isn't much of an ending. It feels unfinished. I do think it's funny that Hamtaro's prophetic dream is never brought up again. I kind of want to know what was going on there. I played a game about a devil hamster, I can play a game about a psychic one. Bring it on. That's a great gritty reboot idea.


DEPTH: 6/10
It has a surprisingly large amount of things to do given it's intended audience will lose attention about an hour in. There are mini games, various items to collect, a ham-chat dictionary to fill, etc. I can see this as one of those games that will get a particularly obsessive child into finding everything a game has to offer. That said, I certainly wasn't inclined to. I played the mini games enough to get the needed items, bought one dress up object but never had my picture taken (the only reason to get accessories), collected jams by accident, and hardly bothered with rocks. There just isn't enough of a payoff to make it worth the effort. For example, the only thing you get for collecting all the gems is getting to say you collected all the gems. Getting gems requires you to go collect rocks and then rub them down until the gem inside is revealed. What gem you get appears to be randomized and some rocks don't have anything inside. I did get all the ham-chats, mostly because I wanted to see the scene that follows when you do. The main story will take a few hours to finish, all the extra could take a while given that it appears some of it is random and other parts require you to replay mini games a lot. There are a few locked doors in the game that you can only open by finishing the main story and getting a chunk of the items, but I didn't bother. It had nothing to do with the story and just didn't seem that rewarding. Perhaps hardcore Hamtaro fans will want to, I don't know.


DIFFICULTY: 5/10
Again, this took me a few hours to beat. It will probably take you less, since I stopped a lot because I got distracted. If this takes you more than a week to finish, I'm a little worried. There's no dying in this game. You just have to complete certain things in order to continue the story.

I rated it a five because some of the things you have to do to fix relationships and whatnot are actually kind of random. There were parts I got stuck on simply because I forgot to ask one hamster something and thus failed to trigger a scene. For example, one part requires that you perform a certain action on all the hamsters in the area. It's really easy to miss this and think that you only have to ask one or two, since most of the hamsters have no idea what you're talking about. Some parts of an area can't be completed until you complete another area or finish the game, but the game doesn't tell you this or even hint at it. You think that you've failed to talk to collect an item or learn a new ham-chat. I guess kids would just keep trying to solve a problem until they gave up and went to the next area.

I didn't play the mini games that much, but they aren't hard. One has you catch pieces of paper on a stick for points, another has you play a form of tic tac toe, etc. My favorite (partly because it doesn't require much work on my part) is a dancing contest where you find the right combination of ham-chats to impress the judges. The most challenging mini game has you scrub tiles while also pushing enemies back. If they get to you, you have to start all over. It isn't hard, but it is kind of fun.

The 'bosses' in this game don't cause You harm. You just have to perform a certain action on them, like one part where you have to poke the boss three times with a stick when he covers his face. You only have to hit the final boss once. That fight is more annoying than difficult, honestly, since getting hit once will throw you out of the area and force you to talk to two characters again. I could keep Hamtaro out of the line of fire easily, but sometimes I wouldn't realize that Bijou was in an area where she could get hit. That part would be greatly improved by having Bijou stay outside and letting you just control Hamtaro. Otherwise, Bijou doesn't get in the way much. For the rest of the game she's never a problem.


OVERALL: 7.7/10
I feel bad for saying that it's cute again, but it is. If you like cute things, this game is for you. If you played this when you were little and feel nostalgic, this game is for you. If you like Hamtaro, this game is for you. Otherwise? Probably not worth your time. I would suggest skipping it. It just isn't worth it. This is a game whose intended audience was Hamtaro fans and Hamtaro fans alone. They apparently liked it well enough, but this is not one of those classic must plays.

I've judged it pretty harshly given what it is. It's really not a bad game at all.? It shoots for average and that's what it is, which I can accept. It's an average GBA title, one that doesn't get much attention and doesn't really deserve much more attention than what it already has, but if you find it in the used bin at a video game store for ten bucks and vaguely remember the show won't be a waste to buy. It's sweet and charming, not particularly unique but a fun to play through all the same.

Dude... why do you need to indent every time you finish a line? This is unnecessary.

lieutenantblue : To let you know, I have edited your post because you happened to use like 4 lines with each line you use and it makes it really hard to read it, like you have cut it like right in the middle of a sentence, I understand you're new to the whole reviewing thing, just letting you know for future reviews, do it like I showed you with the edit I did.