Nikoderiko: The Magical World – Director’s Cut

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I’m a pretty big fan of action-platform games, especially some of the classics such as Donkey Kong Country, Crash Bandicoot, and others. The game developers at VEA Games feel the same way as they’ve made a personal love letter to those titles with the release of Nikoderiko: The Magical World – Director’s Cut. They’ve polished their already great game to be even better, and serves as a near perfect platformer that anyone can enjoy.

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The story follows our two heroes, Niko and Luna, two young mongoose adventurers who are always seeking the thrill of finding long lost hidden treasure. Just when they found their biggest payload yet, the evil baron Grimbald comes along and steals it from them, prompting the two heroes to get it back with the help of some of the animal friends.

As soon as you fire up this adventure, you can feel the callback to games such DKC and Crash Bandicoot, as the controls are super smooth and fluid as you make Niko and Luna run, jump, dash and smash their way through many enemies and seven different worlds.

If the game didn’t call back to DKC enough, you can even summon rideable animal companions to help you traverse each level easier as they leap, swim, and crawl better than you can alone and have cool attack abilities to boot. Who doesn’t want to ride on a fire-breathing seahorse? You can also team up with a friend or family member with drop in and out local co-op play.

The graphics and animations were already great before, but now since VEA Games released this “Director’s Cut”, everything has been touched up. From the graphics, animations and colors, to adding in additional sections to the levels, new secrets to find, and a harder difficulty option, those who played it before will feel like this is a new game.

To really seal the deal with the Donkey Kong Country vibe, they even brought in famed music composer David Wise to do the music for this game. As he did with the DKC titles and more, Wise nails the fun and even sometimes emotional tunes on every stage. I caught myself numerous times with the music taking me back to my teen years, especially with the ethereal melody that plays when you select the game from the PlayStation 5 home screen.

If you’re a fan of action-platformer titles or a parent looking for a game to play with your kids, Nikoderiko: The Magical World – Director’s Cut is the one to get. It’s super fun, controls well, looks great and sounds even better thanks to David Wise and his perfect fitting soundtrack to make this one of the best games out there.