I DON’T GET IT
I don’t like writing negative reviews for games that are fine, especially smaller titles like Turnip Boy Robs A Bank, but after seeing a ton of praise for the title I feel like a lot of people may be disappointed with the game. I jumped on the Turnip Boy train with his first title Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion which despite being an older title that I purchased with my own money at release I will be reviewing so readers can compare how I write about both games and see why I am disappointed with Robs A Bank without me also reviewing the first game throughout this review.
PLATFORMS: SWITCH, XB1, XSX, PC
MSRP: $14.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $4.99
However before I can leave Commits Tax Evasion for the sister review, I need to note that the first game was a smaller, Zelda inspired experience. Robs A Bank is a twin stick shooter roguelike and not a great one. It’s fine. The base structure works and it’s fine, but is fine okay in today’s market? I would argue no. The entire time playing this game I was thinking of better twin stick shooter roguelikes I could be playing and how I would be having a better time. Firstly, the map in Turnip Boy never changes, with players always starting a run in the exact same place with the exact same map. There’s small changes run to run and the elevators always randomize where they go, but that’s party foul number 1 in my opinion. I get that the idea is to keep earning money to buy things that open up new parts of the bank and get more time before the cops show up, but it’s fundamentally just busy work to make less assets and reuse the same areas over and over.
Party foul #2 is its reliance on humor which isn’t very good. It’s trying to use the same sense of humor that was in the first game, but the game structure just doesn’t allow the comedy to flow as well. Enter the Gungeon (a better one of these types of games) uses guns and enemies as its main source of comedic value. Absurdity throughout, always trying to one up itself both in visuals and gameplay. The gameplay in Turnip Boy being sort of mediocre never really feels like it gets absurd enough for the story they are trying to tell, and the graphics just look kind of basic. Turnip Boy fights mostly other produce and the areas are just dressing on a game that doesn’t do much with the environment. Like it’s nice that the books fall off the bookshelf when I shoot at it, but there’s a lot of similar looking areas in this labyrinth of a bank.
Party foul #3 is that the game also just didn’t run well on Xbox One, which makes me wonder how it runs on Switch. Even after a day one patch which I waited for for my review, it still had issues. The task list for bank dwellers (which earns stuff like hats for Turnip Boy) has never worked. I can’t scroll the list to see the other tasks I still have. The game also slows down a lot still. It was much worse pre-patch but still too much for a game I just think is okay. The final sequence of the game is a terrible boss rush thing and I still had the game chug a long at times and by that point I wasn’t having fun.
In 2024 there is an abundance of games in both our future and our past. I can’t recommend Turnip Boy Robs A Bank when there are better games to play, even if the game released into Game Pass there’s better ways to spend time and much better ways to spend time doing what Turnip Boy Robs A Bank is trying to do and in my opinion only just succeeding at. A passing grade is not a compliment. I promise the Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion review is more positive as this game made me go back and actually finish it because I wanted to make sure I didn’t misremember the hour I played when it came out (the button layout was messy so I put it aside) and I was glad to find out I wasn’t wrong. Turnip Boy deserves better.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
