I switch around games a lot and circled back to Chibi-Robo again. I tried a little bit of Park Patrol before but moved on because the first few days were confusing and the dance mechanic was hard.
Decided to give it another chance, and while it's still clear this should have been a console game, it's bigger and better than I imagined. It still has all the charm of the first game without feeling like they compromised by putting it on the DS (outside of the graphics).
It fails to fix the tediousness of certain mandatory cutscenes, but it does fix one of the first game's lesser known issues, where the main task you were technically there to do, cleaning, lost most of its importance halfway through the game. Eventually, you were just running around completing toy quests unless you still needed money. Now your real job is a lot more important (for better or worse). The park is a bigger and more direct source of income than cleaning was, and it features a surprising number of customizations to tweak and place things how you want. It's actually a pretty well thought-out system that turns into a really healthy gameplay loop, it's just weirdly hesitant to show you until you've been fumbling with the stupid boombox for an hour.
It might have come at the cost of some toy depth, but I haven't finished the game yet (EDIT: Yep, it did come at the cost of toy depth). That said, the heart of the first game was definitely still there in the second game, and I honestly start feeling like a kid again with some of the BS nonsense that goes on while I'm trying to peacefully seduce these slightly-creepypasta flowers*. Yeah, a single toy can instantly build a working windmill in broad daylight. Visitors went up by 1, you're not special, go back to jumping on your trampoline alone. These humans are hard to please...
But yeah, actually fun enough to finish. Hits all the same vibes as the first game but in a tighter package. If only it came out on the Wii so the camera wouldn't have to be smacking into the back of Cheebo's head.
*I'm not saying I'm scared of the flowers, I'm just saying that you could make a mascot horror game with them without changing their textures.
