Despite the average quality of Kamen Rider games over time, I’ve always been very forgiving of them. Many have had good intentions despite execution, and some have been legitimately good games. Surprisingly few of them have been flat out lazy efforts that were pushed out to try to cash in on a trend. That’s why I was a little skeptical of Kamen Rider SummonRide! from the very beginning. No attempts were made to hide the fact that it was Japan’s version of Skylanders: A simple 3D beat-em-up that earned its immense western popularity based on placing a physical toy representing an in-game character onto a base that read data into the game. Each figure retained level and attribute information for that character, and they could be switched at will by the player. The use of actual toys in a game was something unique to the gaming world at that time, and created not only an interesting in-game experience but also added a physical collecting element for those who chose to pursue it. At the time that I first played Skylanders, my only really issue was with how simple the game itself actually was. It was a 3D beat-em-up distilled down to its most basic form.
The first of many versions of Skylanders was released in 2011. And the more I thought about SummonRide at its announcement, the more I thought that it could actually turn out well. It had been a few years since Skylanders introduced the idea, so Bandai Namco could take their much cooler Kamen Rider characters and actually improve the game itself while keeping the toy element exactly the same. If the actual Skylanders game had more depth, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more (despite having no attachment to the Spyro characters). If Bandai Namco could do these things, they could have a real hit on their hands.
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| The small, boring hub world complete with annoying characters that always want to talk. | Kamen Rider Ryuuki is ready for his closeup as he’s placed onto the Rider Gate. One of my favorite Heisei Riders! |
I had no idea just how much SummonRide would blatantly rip off Skylanders, and actually end up some elements of the experience worse. They made no attempts to improve upon the game structure whatsoever. It has basically the same elemental system (Fire, Wind, Water, Light and Dark) where you need characters of specific elements to access certain paths in levels. There’s also a hub world that you go to between levels, in which you interact with annoying NPCs (in this case they are original characters, not pulled from the existing Kamen Rider universe) to level up your Riders and create Energy Plates to enhance your stats, all in exchange for elemental crystals and items that you collect throughout levels. Also like Skylanders, the game goes from being extremely easy to reasonably difficult if you’re not willing to think about the battles involved in each stage and grind to level up the appropriate characters. That level of challenge is still just not enough to make up for the simplistic game play and utter lack of variety found in each level though. SummonRide will quickly start to wear on you, even if you have some fun with it at first.
SummonRide comes with a base to read in your figures (the Rider Gate), as well as three figures (Kamen Riders Drive, Gaim and Wizard) and a few Rider Chips, which are coin-like chips that provide different levels of assistance. Despite what I had thought initially, Rider Chips are not an original idea invented for SummonRide, as they are remarkably similar (and even less dynamic) to the Power Discs found in Disney’s 2013 Skylanders-a-like, Disney Infinity. They come in two varieties: Nakama (Partner) Ride and Kyouka (Strengthening) Ride. Nakama Ride chips will actually summon the rider pictured on that chip to assist you for a brief period of time. Kyouka Ride chips will allow your current Rider to change forms (assuming you use a chip that corresponds correctly to your Rider, otherwise it works the same as a Nakama Ride chip). Additional Riders and Chips were sold in packs of two Riders and two Chips or simply just five Chips, and there were several that could only be obtained through special means such as gashapon machines , Japan’s World Hobby Fair, or pack-ins with a Kamen Rider specific magazine. Unlike the Skylanders figures, all of the Rider figures are largely designed from one template with very little variation between them in terms of poses. It certainly doesn’t impact the game in any way, but it’s just another example of the lack of effort that went into SummonRide. An annoyance that will only be felt by older Kamen Rider fans is that they elected to only make figures of Heisei and Neo-Heisei Riders (Kamen Rider series that occurred in the 2000s and after). You won’t see any figures of the original Kamen Rider, V3, Black, etc. I’m not too proud to admit that I would probably own a lot more of these figures if they had made ones of older Riders as well.
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| One of Kamen Rider Wizard’s attacks is basically a giant hand! | While most of the level bosses tend to be other Riders or humanoid in some way, some of the later levels feature battles against giant monsters. |
The game’s biggest problem is not that it so slavishly copied Skylanders, but rather that the Rider Gate was obviously rushed out before it was working properly. Whereas Skylanders’ equivalent device reads your figure in immediately, the Rider Gate always has a significant delay to it. It also seems to be randomly sensitive about reading the figure or Chip that you set on it, often requiring you to change the position. The game play itself seems to frequently be choppy even when you’re not interacting with the Rider Gate at all (at least in the PS3 version that I was playing), though I can’t be certain whether or not the Gate itself is at fault. The load times in general are also extremely long, especially for a game on the Playstation 3. Even for someone who has no issues with the simplicity of teh game, these would make for a frustrating experience.
Looking back on my expectations of SummonRide, it was probably rather naive of me to think that Bandai Namco would care enough to actually improve the game in any significant way. Like Skylanders, it’s meant to be an accompanying piece to the toy line, and the main objective is selling those toys to kids. The bottom line is that these products are for kids, who can probably appreciate a more simple game than an adult. That doesn’t invalidate my other claims of laziness though, and it doesn’t surprise me that even Japanese kids saw through all of this since SummonRide was a failure in terms of sales.
This was my SummonRide setup, for any who care to see! I ended up buying the pack that contained Ryuuki and W.