What is Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King?
Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is an indie isometric top-down action-adventure game where you play as a knight in training named Lily. Lily is tasked with tracking down 3 ingredients that are needed to wake King Orchid from a magical slumber forced on him by his brother, the wizard Crocus. In her quest for the 3 ingredients Lily goes to three different dungeons and earns new equipment and skills while fighting enemies and bosses of the dungeons. Blossom Tales takes clear inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past and because of this, many of my critiques and comments on Blossom Tales will be a comparison to Link to the Past. The similarities are apparent in many references to the acclaimed Zelda title including the game starting with the protagonist waking up in their bed to an older relative giving her instructions. These similarities felt particularly fresh in my mind as I recently played Link to the Past. I don’t think the similarities are a hindrance however as Link to the Past has secured its place as one of my favorite games of all time. Blossom clearly flatters the Zelda title through its imitation of Link to the Past, but still manages to set itself apart by maintaining some unique charm and features.
Game Review:
I played Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King on Nintendo Switch. In addition to the Switch, it is also available on PC.
Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King has an interesting premise; it takes place as a bedtime story being told by a grandfather to his grandchildren. The game uses this premise in a charming way. Everytime you boot the game up, it gives you a little recap of where you are in the game through the grandfather giving details to his grandchildren. The game also uses the bedtime story premise as a way of adding commentary to the game as you go and in some cases, that I won’t spoil, changing a puzzle or challenge in the game world through an interaction between the grandfather and grandchildren. It adds a charm that you don’t see in Zelda but also makes the world feel less lived in.
Gameplay in Blossom Tales is very similar to that of Link to the Past but has some minor differences. In Link to the Past you will often run into the issue of running out of items like arrows or bombs. Blossom Tales solves this because items and magic are used through a shared stamina meter that recharges when not being used. This helps the specific struggle you would have in Link to the Past of running out of arrows or bombs. It removes the need to scrounge for items in the overworld and lets the player focus on using the items and looking for currency and special items in the overworld (there are many side quests and items that can be acquired for those side quests that give you incentive to explore the overworld though). The game without side quests takes less than 10 hours to beat, but I would estimate about 15 hours to complete the mainline and all available side quests. .
Combat plays very similar to Link to the Past as well but Lily has a combo move with her sword rather than just doing the same slash over and over again as in Zelda. Personally I actually like Zelda’s approach more: when Lily does her combination, she covers a full 360 degrees of rotation but leaves herself open in more directions to attacks. Lily also has the spin attack that is a staple in Zelda games. Personally I found Lily’s movement to be a little floaty and that her hits don’t leave the same impact that Link does in Zelda so I prefer Zelda in that regard.
There are fewer boss battles in Blossom Tales than in Link to the Past due to there only being 4 dungeons, each with a mini boss and main boss. The bosses that Lily faces tend to be easier than Zelda and less memorable so I would give Zelda the edge in that regard but they are still fun.
I’m not going to spoil the other items in the game but there are many items that overlap with Zelda but there are a number of items that you can get that are unique to Blossom Tales. One gripe I have with items is that there are no item descriptions and on multiple occasions I obtained an item that I had no idea what it does because not all items are equippable either.
There are a total of 4 dungeons in the game, 3 of them to obtain the 3 ingredients and 1 final dungeon to finish the game. The dungeons are fun and incorporate puzzles and combat. However, I personally think that the dungeons are a little long in the tooth and overstay their welcome. Through each dungeon I would find myself saying “it’s still going?”. The game does a good job at checkpointing with 3 different fast travel points in the dungeon which allows you to leave the dungeon at multiple points if you need to go to the shop or explore the overworld. The puzzles are generally fun, there was a puzzle or two that stumped me and I needed to look up a walkthrough for but most puzzles are approachable and were what I looked forward to more than combat with the common enemies.
Family Friendliness:
Blossom Tales is family friendly. It’s a cute pixel art game with a charming story. It doesn’t get very dark and while it does have violence (swinging a sword and fighting) it is not graphic in any way. I would feel comfortable playing this in front of my child.
Features for Parents:
This game has a few features that can really help a parent at home with the kid still play: 1. It has an autosave feature that saves after every room or screen you enter allowing you to be able to exit at a large number of points. 2. The recap feature that happens every time you boot up the game as I talked about with the grandfather. 3. You can pause at any time during the game (this may not seem that big but after playing FromSoftware games I can tell you it’s great). 4. It’s available on the Nintendo Switch so it is portable and handheld.
Final Verdict:
Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is a cute and charming Zelda-like game that is great for anyone who loves that type of game. It is not a must-play as I think it doesn’t do anything that we’ve never seen before. It utilizes creativity with its premise of a bedtime story but hits similar notes to other things we’ve seen throughout the game. It’s a short and fun experience but not all that memorable.