The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths Review

The Mysterious Cities of Gold was a Japanese anime series co-produced with a French production company about a Spanish boy venturing forth into the New World in the 1500s. This 31 year old kids' cartoon series doesn't sound like much fun on paper, but throw in a giant golden condor, kids getting caught up in all sorts of perilous machinations, and genuinely interesting, educational factoids after every episode, and the end result became something those of us who remember the show first time round could truly cherish forever.

Now, to accompany the return of the cartoon last year (on French television, damn it!), The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths has arrived in interactive form to either enhance or sully those cherished memories. Gameplay is spliced in between excerpts from the new cartoon, basically meaning that you are playing out the events from series 2.

Quasi-simultaneously controlling all three main characters; Esteban, a young Spanish boy hunting the globe for his father; Tao, the last living descendant of an ancient tribe; and Zia, an Incan High Priest's daughter thought to have knowledge on the elusive El Dorado; gameplay largely consists of in-the-right-order puzzle solving, and is both tedious and satisfying in equal measure. Essentially all three children begin at point A, and one of them has to reach point B to beat the level. For the completionists each level has three targets to achieve for a gold medallion each; don't get captured; complete the level within a specified time limit; and find 100% of all collectibles on that stage. Unfortunately everything about the game is just a bit too simple.

If one of the characters presses a switch, a passage will open somewhere, and all characters can progress through. If there's a square slate on the ground, someone has to stand on it to let others move onward, and find a way to get the one left behind through elsewhere. This, and avoiding pirates and other timely antagonists with their generic, mindless footstep retracing, is largely the extent of the whole game. Each individual character has his or her own ability, however, which at least adds a small amount of tactical thinking behind proceedings.

I'm being fairly negative about Secret Paths, but truth be told it's a very well put-together, charming and utterly inoffensive game. It looks and plays well, graphically it pays the perfect homage to the series, and has little to no control issues. Its only real problem lies in its simplistic gameplay and total disregard for puzzle variation. Once you've completed three or four levels there's very little else to do, except more of the same over slightly bigger maps. At times you'll encounter pirates, bandits and other ne'er-do-wells, walking back and forth as you avoid their lines of sight. Any peril is quashed when they see you and begin to home in on your location, but as long as you remember to move far enough away they too easily give up the chase and return to their brainless marching.

The story, while lacking the depth of the new series, links into the game well, either lifting entire scenes from the cartoon itself or through RPG-style dialogue boxes during the game. This does aid the player in powering through the campaign, but ultimately serves as a means to give reason as to why you are moving from A to B, not to engross you into finding out what happens next.

The pace and general tone of Secret Paths are its saviour. The colours are bright and beautiful, characters are animated well, and switching from one to another is seamless, clicking on their face on the left of the screen will pan the camera to their position rather than black out and load in instead. The use of the protagonists' abilities is accurate to their profiles, too. Esteban uses his special medallion to activate golden statues to reveal secret locations, Tao can decipher ancient languages written in stone... to reveal secret locations, and Zia has the ability to squeeze through gaps in walls to reveal... yep, you guessed it, secret locations. Like the rest of the package, there is little to no variety to the children's abilities and their uses, but finding these obstacles in the first place becomes one of the games greater challenges later on in the game.

All the while you are enchanted along to sweet, sometimes emotional, Eastern soundtrack, or at times to some calmly exciting carnival music. It doesn't always fit in so well with the actions on screen, but it's nice to play along to. Perhaps it's one of the reasons I felt compelled to play through. It's hard to see exactly which demographic Secret Paths is aimed at, as those who remember the cartoon first time round are likely to breeze through the game effortlessly, and those young enough to find this any real challenge are given no Cities of Gold history, character profiles, or lore at all. The series clips are just that, they don't provide any additional information, not even explaining who Mendoza is – an integral character to the original 80s anime, he just seems to be a guy hanging around with the kids who knows a lot of stuff.

Despite its flaws, I found myself enjoying The Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths quite a lot. Maybe it's the satisfaction of consistently using (small amounts of) my brain to solve puzzles and walk away with a perfect score time and time again, and maybe it's the faithful resurrection of a childhood favourite. Those unfamiliar with the Cities of Gold universe will sadly see very little of value here, but the fact is Secret Paths is a good game with a seamless interface, charming music and lovely, cartoon graphics. It's its simplicity and unvaried gameplay which prevents it from being great, and frankly it is a challenging variety of puzzles that would have easily made this more of an essential purchase. I'd love to be able to recommend this to those who aren't acquainted with The Mysterious Cities of Gold, but you'd likely be disappointed (unless you're eight). If you are familiar, give it a try and enjoy the reminiscing, just don't expect to be bowled over. If you're not, you should definitely check out the original series.