Review

I enjoyed this installment of the Cake Mania series more than I have enjoyed any Cake Mania since the original! I actually finished this one and went back to make sure I received expert on all the levels. To me, the largest improvement was the pacing; the game was consistently challenging. And the upgrades didn't take forever to purchase. In previous games I grew increasingly tired of impossible levels & unreachable upgrades. 

I loved the other locations as well. I usually hate when developers slide HO games into a TM game but I rather enjoyed Risha's boutique. For me it was the most challenging & required the most attempts to achieve all expert scores. I thought Gordo's pizza was charming & relaxing. The game also has a relaxation mode for each level which isn't unique but isn't exactly standard for TM games either. For me half the fun is the chaos so I never tried it, but it is a nice option. The music surprised me as well. I thought it better than much of the music in other casual games. Ordinarily I don't notice the music or I turn it off, but this was pleasant. 

The graphics are mostly lovely but the drawing of Jill on the bakery level screen is horrible! Her face is all jagged. Her features have been getting smaller throughout the series & now when you think her face would be most round they went and made her look like a pregnant skeleton under a giant wig! However in the levels themselves she looks ok. The dialogue was another issue. What was up with Jack and Jill? She acted like a shrew or a complete hormonal mess & Jack wasn't much better. He was always the insensitive jerk or a total klutz. There didn't seem to be one happy moment during the entire pregnancy. And this is admittedly extremely nit-picky- but more often than not even if you don't find out the sex of your baby your doctor usually tells you if there's more than one of them! 

This was a delightful game otherwise & I hope there will be another installment of similar quality......