The release of Yumi’s Odd Odyssey has been a long time coming in North America. The series, known as Umihara Kawase in Japan, started off on the Super Famicom in the ‘90s and developed a cult appeal over the intervening years. You play as a little girl armed only with a fishing line wielded in a unique, physics-based manner. The original never made it out of Japan, and neither did any of the sequels or remakes until Yumi’s Odd Odyssey, a new 3DS entry in the niche puzzle platforming series out now on the eShop in North America.

Yumi’s Odd Odyssey is structured as a series of focused platforming stages that, when you know what you’re doing, can be finished in a matter of seconds. When you don’t know what you’re doing, they can take quite a while as you trial and error your way to completion, slingshotting around and tackling weird fish people. The stages are made up of difficult puzzles that require you to not just be nimble with Yumi’s fishing line, but also use the motion of the line to do spectacular things to clear stages. Therein lies the issue with this peculiar adventure: the mechanics, specifically the fishing line, are super precise and demand near perfection to get past any number of the 50 stages.

The movement of the line doesn’t really have a gaming analog, and is a lot jerkier than other similar swinging mechanics in other video games. It makes it unique, but also makes it hard to judge at times without a lot of experimentation. However, since the stages are so short, there aren’t many chances to play around with the swinging. Usually, you need to figure out how to do something while the threat of failing and restarting a stage hangs over your head. Even Mega Man games often feature a screen buffer, letting you mess around with the controls and weaponry.

Despite the light-hearted graphical presentation and charming music, Yumi’s Odd Odyssey is extremely hard. Each stage holds different obstacles and new twists, which is great, since Yumi’s fishing line physics are shown off in an array of novel ways. Rarely is the same trick repeated twice, and you need to fully understand the way the game works to progress. With that, the learning curve is steep, compounded further with a combination of unforgiving one-hit deaths and a near necessity for trial and error.

The boss battles highlight the frustration as well, with each fight being a puzzle in itself that requires players to experiment, but experimenting can take a long time when one hit forces you to restart. Some measures are in place to help combat this, such as different playable characters with abilities that purport to help you. One character lets you restart a mid-level checkpoint once, while another lets you cue up your next move while in slow motion. They are both helpful, but it’s more like a bandage that routinely falls off than medicine.

If you can master the sway and motion of Yumi’s fishing line, you might have the fortitude to tackle Survival Mode, which tasks you with beating stages in succession with a limited number of lives. More secrets lie in wait throughout the 50 stages, all of which are part of a map with branching paths and multiple exits per stage.

Yumi’s Odd Odyssey is likely going to be seen as a divisive game. If the controls and swinging clicks with you, you’re likely in for a treat. If they don’t, you’re going to have a bad time unless you have the patience to learn it. I was somewhere in the middle, annoyed by its precise and borderline obtuse solutions while being occasionally wowed by a clever use of the game’s mechanics. It’s a fun game at times, but the frustrating retry system routinely killed any momentum I had while swinging through the challenging stages. Yumi’s Odd Odyssey is worth looking into mostly as a puzzle platforming curio, especially if you crave a challenge born more out of mechanics than level design and enemies.