A tear of dissapointment...
It really hurts to give this awesome submission a 9 out of 10 possible stars, but as everything else I do, it does have a reason - this is the feeling I'm left with; dissapointment.
While I expected Larry and the Gnomes to reach the top of the NG charts of all time, which it most certainly will, I feel like saying - despite the glorious music perfectly forged together with high quality sound effects, great voice acting, such beatiful graphics and art combinated with, of course, the overall gameplay experience and hillarious storyline - the game is too repetitive, and the bosses too easy to kill.
I tend to overdo it, but some things really irritates me, such as the inability to actually resume the game from the pause-menu by pressing P, and the stupidity of every single little, and huge, gnome: A bush, a box, almost anything in the way of a gnome would stop the gnome from moving on, even through there were a path around it. Large enemies could be easily avoided by simply running back and forth across the center of the gnome, resulting in him failing in utter confusion.
THE BOSSES ARE TERRIBLE!
Yes - terrible. Too easy, too boring, and really annoying. All of them, especially the final Gnome King Boss.
Firstly, the Mage Master is, as I see it, an introduction-boss, so it's supposed to be easy. Hitting him would make him cancel his spell-casting, and he were primarily a pretty poor boos.
Secondly, the Boar Gnome never seemed to throw that stupid spear of his to expose that only weakness of his, while the bushes supplied with infinite Health and alot of Rage.
Then comes the Freak - the one who damages 97% of Larry's Health with one hit - put up a good fight compared to the other bosses, but the tactic were too simple to really be a challenge. Also, doing the same moves over and over got repetitive qucikly.
Lastly - The Gnome King! I didn't even get hit once, as the first thing I did after breaking all those boxes and stuff were to place myself right at his center, and I didn't even have to move. Spamming attack and jumping once in a while, a minute later and the so-called "King" lied dead on the ground - seriously dissapointing.
Also, I found a few bugs:
-Holding one direction and double tapping the opposite direction results in a backwards sprint.
-Standing on top of a breakable box makes you pretty much unhittable from alot of the Gnomes' melee attacks.
-In the Underground, knocking enemies off-screen outside a small cliff with a legde below would sometimes result in me not getting any progress. The enemy refused to suicide, I couldn't kill it, and so the level didn't progress.
Don't get me wrong, I still heart the game, and I will complete it as many times as I need to for all the cheat codes, but I guess my hopes were up too high...
PS: Thanks for the Medals, and good luck on episode 2 - I can't wait!