I purchased this Lovely Bear early last year and have since not had much time to play with it. But yesterday I started it up to see what its like and write a proper review. Firstly, this virtual pet is a bear character. The packaging claims it can live up to 99 years old (i.e. 99 days). It has all the basic virtual pet functions including statistics meters, four different types of food (burger, candy, noodes, soda), a rock-paper-scissors game, a "give affection" option, discipline (studying), shower (for cleaning up poop), weather control, lights, and medicine. The bear comes in different colors (I've owned one with a pink bear and the one I currently own is brown).

Things I like: I think the actual character is very cute so far. It has not grown (because I took the battery out after playing it for a couple days), but the baby was adorable. I also enjoyed how the animations show the bear actually eating each food, opening his mouth and putting the food inside and chewing. The bear also wiggles its butt really cutely indicating it needs a shower. When the pet beeps, it just makes a single little chirp instead of going on and on like a vintage Tamagotchi does. The pet not only has a clock, but also has an alarm clock option as well. The sound can be turned off. I like how the "discipline" entails studying, rather than just simply punishing the bear so its sad. After the bear studies, it shows happiness. When you give the bear affection it shows a balloon and some flowers and then shows the bear happiness animation. The overall design of the shell is cute, and the background design is pretty like a vintage Tamagotchi's background design.

The things I didn't like: Even though there wasn't as much beepig, the beeping was really loud, and when going through menu options and playing with the bear and feeding it, the sounds got really annoying since they were so loud. Fortunately it only beeps once when it needs something. Even though there is a clock, the bear does not seem to follow any coherent sleep routine. The bear went to sleep at 4pm the first day I started it up. Fortunately it stayed awake all night, but the next day it went to sleep at 1pm in the afternoon, and then when it woke up it was awake all night when I was trying to sleep and couldn't take care of it. I figured this might just be a glitch with the programming, so I tried switching the time to 12 hours ahead of schedule to see if that would help, but the bear still did not go to sleep at night. As a result of this incoherent sleep schedule I decided to stop playing with the bear since I couldn't possibly keep up with its needs when I'm trying to sleep. Another thing I didn't like is that when the bear needs something it does show the "request" icon in the bottom right corner, but the bear never shows on the screen any sort of animations that indicate whats wrong. Last time I played with it I went through ever single option twice trying to figure out what it needed. I almost gave up and was feeling really frustated, but then figured out that it needed a shot twice. There was never any indication that it needed a shot other than the request icon. I did not like the rock-paper-scissors game because you can choose what both sides will use, so it seems like a pretty pointless game. When you feed the bear, the only thing that fills its hunger hearts is the burger, so I'm not really sure why the food options are there to begin with.

I give this pet a 3 out of 10. Its cute, but game play just isn't that great, sounds are unjustifiably annoying, and its difficult to figure out what the bear needs without a lot of unnecessary effort.

Here are some pictures of the one I currently own:







Pricing:

I bought this on eBay for about $6. I haven't seen very many of them on eBay in the past. Maybe one other time and it was really thrashed. Fortunately, I managed to get one in really good condition for fairly cheap. Sadly, I do not recommend buying this pet. It was a pretty big disappointment.

Tags: lovely bear, virtual pets
Current Mood: blah