The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf Review

A very good platformer where you also have to clean up levels, which was just so satisfying! It takes around 18 hours to unlock all the achievements, there are no other missable achievements.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 18h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 4/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, I used this guide by PlaystationTrophies and this guide by Knoef.
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: Yes, the achievements for difficulty are missable. Play on hard from the start to unlock all 3 the difficulty trophies
Grinding Achievements: Yes, finding all the collectibles felt in this case as grinding as some of them are so well hidden and there are so many.
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No, but it has small challenges that require you to do X within a time limit.
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes, start and play through the end on the hardest difficulty.
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

What a fun platformer with a Smurfs theme where you also can clean up! That last one is bonus points, don’t ask me why it is fun to “clean up” in games when it sucks irl, but it is just so satisfying in games. The area around the Smurfs village is infested with some nasty plants. It is your task to clean the different levels as well as fight the evil plant and stay away from Gargamel.

I had a lot of fun with this game, it isn’t long but that is fine. It didn’t give me a nostalgic feeling, but I think that is because I watched the Dutch Smurf’s version as a child, with different names and different voices, so it didn’t trigger any nostalgic feelings but I can see it doing that when you grew up with the English version. The levels are quite different from each other and with the right amount of challenges.

However, finding all those collectibles was horrible and it reminded me of Tinykin. You know in which levels you’re missing how many, but the levels are quite big and they are well hidden, so finding them even with a guide is quite the challenge. And I really dislike using a written guide for something like this but following a video to find them is even worse. I wish there was some way to hear a sound if you’re getting closer, or to have an indication in which part of the level you have missing collectibles.

There are achievements for beating the game from start to finish on the hardest difficulty, so I would recommend just starting on that difficulty and you can turn it down while cleaning up the achievements you’re missing afterward. You’ll have to go back to earlier levels just because you unlock new skills and those allow you to reach new areas.

I had a lot of fun completing “The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf” and I hope the sequel is just as good, and a little less frustrating with the collectibles.

This review for The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf was written on 16 December 2023, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 28 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.