Whether you have nostalgia for the original or not, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated is a genuinely worthwhile game to pick up in 2020 and enjoy. It offers enough to do to warrant the price tag and is certainly a step-up in terms of presentation compared to the original. While it doesn’t offer much new, what it does offer is a great looking, smooth playing action-platformer from the tail-end of the Golden Age of Collectathons.
While imperfect and still missing some of what made the original game a total masterpiece, it is both a worthy successor and a game worth waiting 18 years to finally have.
Despite some of the non-enthralling parts of the farming and cooking, they are still fun enough to keep me repeating them over and over and continuing through the game, even if the plot lost my interest pretty quickly after the excessively long prologue and first few days getting oriented on the island.
Unfortunately, Niffelheim does not possess enough visual appeal despite its gorgeous hand drawings, nor enthralling mechanics or ease of access for non-genre enthusiasts like myself.