If you asked me to describe my ideal video game, it would probably be a lot like Gurumin. Gurumin just checks all the boxes. It's a quirky platformer/action RPG blend from the early 2000s by Falcom where you play as a cute girl wielding a giant drill, with a ridiculous amount of collectibles, a rocking soundtrack, and just enough jank to be charming without dampening any of the game's fun. It's an aggressively joyful experience in every way possible.
Gurumin is about a girl named Parin who moves into a mining town called Tiese where she learns there's a hidden civilzation of monsters, who she quickly befriends. When the monster side of the town gets ravaged by a bunch of phantoms, Parin pulls a legendary drill out of the ground and heads off to stop them. Being a Falcom game, it really shouldn't be much of a surprise that Gurumin's story is pretty great. It's not as heavy of a story as something like a Trails game, but Gurumin's narrative has some pretty solid twists and revelations near the end, and an incredibly heartfelt energy, especially in the ending. It helps that Falcom's character work is as on point as ever, with all the monsters and townsfolk you meet having likable personalities, and Parin in particular being a very charming protagonist.
As I said above, Gurumin is basically a colorful early 2000s 3D platformer crossed with a dungeon-crawling action RPG. There's a 50/50 split between simple but precise platforming, and chaotic drill combat. Movement-wise, Parin is surprisingly really fun to control. There's a real sense of weight to Parin's movement, even down to the way she leans left and right whenever you change directions. There's even a really fun wall-run movement that's rarely useful and often impractical, but it gives Gurumin a bit of extra flavor and finding uses for the wall run is incredibly satisfying. The combat is also really well-done. It's fast, there's a bunch of combos you can use, and you can augment your drill with different elements to keep things fresh. Once again going the extra mile, Falcom even adds a rhythm based system where you deal more damage by timing hits to the music. It's all these extraneous features like the rhythm system and the wall-running that add to Gurumin's charm because they're not necessary at all in theory, but are incredibly fun to mess around with in practice.
The dungeon design is pretty stellar too, boasting a variety of biomes each with their own unique focus. The forest area for example mostly contains large, sprawling mazes to explore. Meanwhile, the mountain region has a lot of verticality and tight platforming, and the final world is full of linear obstacle courses that put your skills to the test. There's a perfect balance of combat, platforming, and puzzle-solving and it never feels like you're doing the same thing for too long. There's also so much to explore in each level, tons of hidden collectibles, secret areas, silly easter eggs, and ways to farm money. I've revisited most of this game's stages several times on my playthrough and I still found myself discovering new things about each and every one of them.
Speaking of which, Gurumin is also absolutely flooding with content and replayability, it's a deceptively large game. The main campaign has 10 stages and five bosses, but there's also an optional reverse versions of each stage that's worth doing to help rebuild the monster town. There's also a ranking system, and a frankly ridiculous amount of collectibles tucked away in each stage, really encouraging you to explore thoroughly to get everything in a single run. There's also a ton of upgrades for your drill, hats that augment Parin's abilities that can also be upgraded, hidden medals and unlockable art, optional minigames and superbosses, adorable costumes, multiple difficulties, multiple endings, and even further unlockables like a boss rush and a second playable character. Some of the sidequests you do to unlock all this stuff are also really creative, fun, and just plain weird, ranging from climbing a deceptively challenging jungle gym, helping to run the shop in town, and waiting in one spot for half an hour as a timer slowly ticks up to 999 (yeah, it's bullshit, but it's the kind of bullshit I adore).
Presentation-wise, Gurumin slots right in alongside other Falcom games from the era in that you can kinda tell it's low budget, but the art direction being so strong more than makes up for it. All the characters have these cartoony chibi looks that hold up incredibly well, and Parin in particular is adorably expressive and full of life. I also love how Ghibli-esque some of the monsters look. The environments have that distinct sixth gen look where the models themselves are fairly simple, but the texturing is incredibly detailed and realistic, and it looks pretty solid. And being a Falcom game, the music is predictably phenomenal. Wataru Ishibashi, Hayato Sonoda, and Takahide Murayama really went outside of their comfort zone to make a far quirky and funkier soundtrack for Gurumin, and I think it ranks among their best work. There are some truly stellar stage themes like Guruguru Majin De Pon, Back The Way You Came, Secret Jungle Survival, Sight Of Silence, and The Mysterious Phantom Egg, but the boss themes in particular are just on another level. Dance In The Forest, Bomber Girl, and Rocky Nebula are incredible, and Murayama's magnum opus Soaring Through Azure Sadness is one of the greatest final boss themes in all of gaming, let alone in a Falcom game.
Gurumin is just such a likable and joyous game, I really can't imagine hating it. The story is heartfelt, the characters are endearing, the gameplay is satisfying and ridiculously fun, there's tons of content to sink your teeth into, the art direction is adorable, and the soundtrack goes tremendously hard. Falcom really swung for the fences with Gurumin but I think they knocked it out of the park, this is one of the freshest and most inventive games of its era and perfectly encapsulates the stuff I love about this medium.
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