Doshin the Giant review

A God-Simulation with a Nintendo twist.

Review written by
Mr. Eye

So how can I put this. Doshin the Giant is not for everyone. Some people will praise its oddball style, while others will fall asleep with the controller in their hands. So, here's how the game goes.

You are Doshin, the happy yellow giant man who rises from the ocean every morning to serve the villagers of Barudo; some island far away. Really, you don't care about these people, you just want to beat the game, so you help them grow a thriving village in hope that they repay you in one of the many monuments you need to get in order to win.

But it's not as easy as it sounds. These villagers ask you to place trees around the places they want to build on. So you rip a tree out of the ground and drop it down. Now they want you to lower the land around the site. You do it (you can also raise land). Next they build a house, and like magic, grown adults pop out of the new home (weird?). They keep doing this until they love you, and build a monument in your honor. That's it. You do this a lot more times until you collect all the monuments.

You can mix different colored tribes to make new villages and earn different monuments (red, green, blue, yellow). And the occasional natural disaster can wipe out all your work. So you finish your duties, and wander back off to the ocean ending a hard days work. Where's the fun!

If you press the R button, you begin to see a side of Doshin you never imagined. You are now Jashin the Giant and you eat villagers for breakfast. Destroy all their hard work, stomp on them, light their homes on fire, and guess what. They build you a monument anyways! Ha!

Hey, make of it what you will, but here are my Pros and Cons.

I love how this game feels. Nintendo seems to always add a twist to their games that make them feel pleasant and high quality. In Doshin, you're on a tropical island, watching the sunset over the ocean. You can even sit down (and it's pointless)!

I also love the graphics and background music. Some people say the graphics are horrible, and I can understand that. If you look at the villages they appear to be straight out of an N64. But as for the water, best I've seen on a gamecube, hands down. And who can't resist plain yellow on your average giant man? The music is simple yet well suited. I feel like I'm on the island listening to that ukulele play. And those whistling villagers, I couldn't live without their humming.

I can find a lot of cons. My favorite, those slow, slow feet. I want to cry. Doshin walks slower than anyone can bear. It takes nearly a day in game time to walk across the map (each day lasts 30 minutes). You grow when the villagers love or hate you, so you do gain bigger strides, but on the next game day you're back to the size of a very slow mini-giant.

Another con, the villagers. I know you need to help them, but they can be so annoying. First they want you to raise the land, then lower it, then raise it some more. They want to build a house on a mountain, so you work your large behind off trying to flatten out a mountain. I have occasionally constructed a whole village, got all the preparations ready, and for some reason, they want to sit down and lounge. Ugh!

My last con would be the repetitiveness and lack of replayability. All you do is build and collect a dozen monuments. If you happen to get them all, you must start over, but with the option to play on other maps. These are exactly like before, and with the option to raise or lower land, you kinda make your own map.

My rating? 6 out of 10 for the whole game. But it depends on what you like to play. If spending countless hours slowly trotting along, attempting to aid little people is your cup of tea, you're in luck. If not, never ever buy this game. Unless you need a new sleeping medication.