奇々怪界 黒マントの謎 ( Pocky & Rocky Reshrined)

 

 I just finished going through Pocky & Rocky Reshrined or the much more appealing title 奇々怪界 黒マントの謎. I’m very fond of the Pocky & Rocky games for the Super Nintendo so this is a game I’ve been waiting for a very long time. Let’s just say it right away: If you liked the original Snes titles you’ll enjoy this as well. The music has pretty much the same tunes but got an update in quality and a couple new ones were added that are on par with the original BGM. Graphics are very good and has that fourth generation pixel art going for it that goes really well with this type of cute and endearing direction this game has. While the sprites are very, very good, I found the characters’ pictures during cutscenes, especially for Sayo, to be a little bit off. She doesn’t quite look right, at least for me. I would like her to look like the concept art as you can see on the box and elsewhere (https://www.natsumeatari.co.jp/kuromanto/character.html). The others are alright.

Now, one VERY IMPORTANT thing if you actually want to purchase a physical copy of this. The release under the publisher ININ is censored. One of the new characters, Ameno, had her character design mutilated in order to cover her cleavage. Getting ININ’s version of the game is of absolutely no gain whatsoever because the Japanese version actually has a language option and English is included, along with a bunch of other languages. So really there’s no reason whatsoever to get the mutilated version. How do you know which version is which? Simple, The box for the ININ release has their logo on the box, right in front. The Japanese release doesn’t. Easy to avoid. Anyway, moving on.

Like the previous games in the series, this game is very colorful, has an optimistic and cheering atmosphere and all in all is quite a joy to go through. The story got a little bit convoluted here but I can’t talk about it without giving spoilers, so you know, I won’t. What I can say is that it’s about Black Mantle again, but there’s more to it. This is not spoilers by the way, it’s right there on the title. There’s a lot of story here for a Pocky & Rocky game. You can skip it if you like but I appreciated that they decided to include a plot for this. I just wish Sayo would look more like her concept art. Oh well, still very good indeed.

The most interesting thing to me about this game is the fine line it walks between being a remake and an update on the graphics. There are a lot of parts of this game that are pretty much the same as the original, Snes game. If you played that one, get ready to revisit a lot of places. Sometimes all they do is rearrange the stage or add a couple of new obstacles. I would say half of the game is very close to the original and the other half is mostly new. There are a lot of new monsters here and all of them look adorable. There are also three new characters you can play as. Ameno, a Goddess who can fly, Ikazuchi, an anthropomorphized marten able to release thunderbolts and Hotaru, a samurai. You have to beat the game on normal and hard in order to unlock all the characters.

As far as the difficulty goes, it went way down compared to Snes title. The actual gameplay is mostly the same difficulty but the game now gives you a lot of extra lives and there’s an autosave system in place. That means you won’t be redoing the stages over and over again in order to make progress in the game. Progress is pretty much a given now and even if you absolutely suck at scrolling shooters you won’t have a problem finishing this one at all. But then again, I really doubt anyone getting this is going after a super hard game, if you wanted that you would be playing an actual bullet hell or some Touhou derivative. You would get this one for the colorful world, the lighthearted atmosphere and because you’re a fan of the original.

All in all I really enjoyed playing this and I’ll definitely play it enough to get actually good at it. If you liked the original or if you enjoy stuff like Goemon, retro games and/or cute shooters, then I definitely think you’ll enjoy this one as well.

いたいお姉さんは好きですか？(Itai Oneesan ha sukidesuka?)

 

To follow the life of Itai Shiori is like watching a tiny and precious trainwreck. It gets personal very quickly, too, because you’ll care about her from page one. Itai wants a boyfriend but she doesn’t quite know how to go about it and is not the best at reading social situations. And so comedic yet painful events follow.

The way the story unfolds is really clever in this one. Most of the text is not dialogue, but narration, like we’re watching Itai’s with the narrator and she too often will get flabbergasted about her actions. This really puts you in a position of wanting to help Itai. A lot. But you can’t. You’re forced to watch as she moves along being silly and living her painful comedy day by day.

A very engaging narrative and a very interesting read. If you enjoy awkward female protagonists and painful laughter, this title has you covered. The art is simple but it has a very unique charm I don’t quite remember seeing anywhere else. The author has a way of coming up with excellent facial expressions for the characters and even though it’s a simple, straightforward way of drawing the characters, there’s an attention to detail to the expressions that really adds a very special quality to them, it’s hard to put my finger on it. I guess you’ll have to read it to find out by yourself.

The Citadel

 

I don’t usually care for FPS games at all but after seeing a few pictures of The Citadel I was very captivated by it. It’s made by a single developer and he’s also a fan of Blame! so I pretty much had to play it. There’s a very unusual charm about this title, I can’t really put my finger on it. It’s a super violent shooter, all the enemies are either weird biotech creatures or female soldiers, you seem to be walking around this futuristic endless city and you’re there to kill angels, destroy the false god and set people free… by spilling their guts all over the floor. Like I said, I don’t usually care for FPS games but as you can see by my quick description it’s a rather unique game and it loosely reminds me of Baroque, that old title for the Sega Saturn. In there you also have all these odd elements and you pretty much don’t quite know what the hell is going on.

I finished the first 3 acts on my own but when I realized it was going to be a fairly repetitive thing, I just used a cheat and finished the rest with the best weapon in the game. Maybe I don’t really appreciate FPS gameplay but the first 3 acts were quite enough for me. I was still interested in the story so I wanted to continue but couldn’t stomach to slowly crawl my way through hordes of deadly enemies to see it. This game is not hard by the way, but you need to take it slowly. The enemies are not particularly intelligent but that could easily be explained by the brainwashing done to them by the false god. All they do is walk forward and shoot. The way it works with this game is you have to take the enemies one by one pretty much. If you just run in there without any caution you’ll get shot to smithereens, so it can be a slog sometimes. Then again, maybe it’s me and people who do like FPS games will like this one a lot.

It’s a pity that there isn’t much dialogue or any plot exposition. You’ll have to assume most of the story since there’s only a couple of people you can talk to and the dialogue is very limited, maybe 20 or 30 sentences total. To me the world was the most intriguing part of this game and I would have enjoyed a little more plot exposition here and there. Gameplay is very similar to the original Doom but a little bit more smooth I think.

Along with the weird world and the interesting graphics, the music is really, really good. I can’t remember a single bad bgm for this, every single one is really fun and enhances the whole experience of going through this super violent, super depressing neon future. I think people who actually enjoy this genre would really be able to appreciate this. I had a lot of fun with it myself. It’s one of those games that don’t particularly excel in any aspect but just the combination of its parts create this charming, rather odd experience.

メイドさんを右にミ☆ (Super Zangyura)

 

 

I just finished playing メイドさんを右にミ☆ or Super Zangyura as I just found out there’s an English release for this. Not sure what the English title means but it’s not a translation of the original one. Anyway, this is an almost 20 yo doujin game remade for the consoles. It’s a rather interesting game that plays like Castlevania but I feel like deep down, at least visually, it kinda wanted to be more like a gothic Megaman. In general the game looks more colorful and optimistic than any Castlevania title and the characters tend to be cute instead of monstrous.
 
The story here is that every century Dracula wakes up and the land gets filled with monsters, so the people call for a vampire hunter and instead of Van Helsing they get a young lady dressed as a maid and capable of handling a gigantic ball and chain flail about her size, so you know she must be right for the job. There are 5 main areas divided in several rooms filled with spikes, falling platforms that will crush you, and huge chess pieces wandering around eager to hurt you. Also flying jack-o'-lanterns, lots of them.

This game is not exactly hard, as far as doujin games go but it can be if you play it without patience. The way some things work in this game can really destroy your run if you’re not careful. First, meido-san (I called her Mei on my save file, it’s fitting) doesn’t have an invulnerability period when she gets hit, meaning she can get stuck and continue to get hit until dying. This happens often if you’re not careful and there are several spots during the game that it can happen. Best policy is not to get hit at all, just to be safe.

Then, your common attacks with the flail don't go across walls and doors (unless you swing it overhead but that takes a few seconds so you can’t always use it) but the jacks can go across any part of the stage, this causes the problem where you’ll attack them but the flail will hit a wall, giving ample time for the jack to do some damage. This would not be a problem but since many stages have a very limited space, very often you’ll find yourself in very close range of several enemies at once. This is not exactly an issue, just something you need to get used to.

The music is nice but it’s too fast paced for me and for the game, too, sometimes. It gives me a little bit of anxiety to be honest. The graphics are quite nice, I really like the animation for the main character. The designs are a little bit like 90s anime of sorts and that’s my thing too, so I enjoyed it. All in all I’m definitely happy I found out about this game, I enjoyed it enough that I’m currently trying to finish it on hard mode now. They mean it, it is hard. My only complaint is how short it is, soo all it's left up to do is to get better at the few stages available. You can probably finish this in about an hour or so.

Umihara Kawase Fresh!

 

I had a blast with Umihara Kawase Fresh! I feel like not enough people appreciate this game. I finished it yesterday but my library is still missing some items and there are 4 or 5 enemies I haven’t encountered yet, so I went looking for a FAQ or guide to the missing stuff but to my surprise there is none. There’s barely any content at all about this game out there. So I’m slowly replaying it from beginning to end in order to find everything by myself. It’s better this way really, that way I can enjoy it all over again.

I find this is my favorite Umihara title yet. The way you make progress now is by completing quests in an open world ripe for exploration. Fresh! is huge compared to the rather smaller stages of the previous entries, which makes it more fun not only to explore but to try to solve the difficult jumps and pulls in a lot of different ways. Gameplay is pretty much the same but this time you can enhance your abilities by eating certain types of dishes. You learn that by completing quests that grant different food recipes. They’ll grant you boosts like jumping higher or a longer fishing line.

Also there’s a plot now and several characters. You can skip everything with no detriment to your enjoyment of this game but it’s nice that they put it out there anyway. I enjoyed it throughout. This time, Kawase is a traveling chef working at a particular restaurant and many of the quests are about you finding ingredients or doing some delivery. It’s just an excuse to get you out there in the field to do some tricky jumps with your fishing line and hook. It’s not only that though and the plot suddenly takes a much more interesting turn by midgame. Even Cotton shows up eventually. Now, I’m a fan of the Cotton games so I was pleasantly surprised when it happened. Also, after you finish the main story with Kawase, you get an extra set of fields to play as Cotton on her quest to fetch some candy. I found all of this to be a very nice addition to the whole thing. I would be happy with the classic Umihara gameplay by itself.

The only thing I didn’t quite like was the graphics. It works just fine, but I kinda liked the original one and Sayonara a little better. There’s nothing wrong with it but the world now is much less surreal and mysterious. They also added a hunger feature here that works like a soft timer to the quests but if you’re like me who likes to harvest all the stuff that shows up around you, you’ll have all the time in the world.

Music is pretty good, it fits perfectly in this game. It’s relaxing enough and not distractive, so it works. I feel like the BGM for this really helps to not be overly frustrated when something goes wrong and if you played any Umihara game you know it will happen a lot. One particular quest took me a few hours doing the same 4 or 5 platforms over and over again. If you don’t have that patience you can always prepare a pizza or a burger on the fly to increase your jump or something and that will make things easier. If you still can’t make it, after you unlock Cotton you can play all quests as her and she can fly around for a few seconds which makes the entire game a lot easier. Not easy, just easier. Still, I feel like this is one of the most accessible games in the franchise.

All in all I really loved this title. Definitely one of my favorite games now. The combination of hard, sometimes brutal platforming, endearing characters, colorful environment, relaxing tunes and throwing Cotton in an Umihara game when I was not expecting it at all really made it for me.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land

 

I just finished Kirby and The Forgotten Land. I became a fan of Kirby maybe just 6 or 7 years ago, exploring the GB, SNES and N64 games. I never bothered to try them out back when I had those consoles. Kirby games never really interested me but since playing many of them, they’ve grown on me quite a bit. You kinda have to understand what they are first, though. You’re there to appreciate cute characters huffing around, colorful and relaxing little worlds and happy music. It’s all leisurely and relaxing, There’s no timer, no urgency of any kind. It’s just you and Kirby walking around magic caves, green fields, around mountains and other such beautiful places.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying this game is too easy so let me address that for a second. Look at the character design, the way the stages look and just the general atmosphere of this game. Now tell me what the target audience for this title is. Of course it’s easy, it’s a game for school children, you’re not playing Kirby to improve your platforming skills, you’re there to take a stroll with Kirby while some catchy tune is playing in the background and a soft breeze goes by. You’re there to enjoy yourself. Maybe it’s difficult for 9 yo but it’s probably not going to pose much of a challenge for you. Also, as a side note, it makes sense it’s easy. Kirby is the most powerful creature in the universe. He can actually gulp down a black hole without breaking a sweat (check the manga), so keep that in mind while you’re playing this game.
Yeah it’s too easy at times, so why play it at all? First it has all that relaxing, cute atmosphere and endearing characters I told you about. If you like that it’s reason enough, but there’s something else. For me, playing Kirby is like having a small window into how children perceive the world in a way. The innocence of Kirby’s universe grows on you and it feels nice to be part of it, even if it’s for a little while. Speaking of which, this game is quite big as far as Kirby games go, so you’ll be in there for a while. It was quite a pleasant playthrough for me.

I my opinion this is one of the best 3D titles of the series. Back when they released the trailer I thought they were going to try to turn yet another cherished series into an open world full of nothing but I’m happy to report they didn’t. It’s a lighthearted platformer with lots of different environments to explore, a lot of collectables (there are over 200 capsule toys to collect in this game) and many interesting enemies to interact with. Also there are tons of minigames this time, a lot more than in any other Kirby title.

As far as difficulty goes, this game is not difficult but still can pose a challenge, especially on the several time attacks. Some of those I still can’t beat under the required time (it’s not necessary though, you just get a few extra coins for your effort just finishing them is enough). Since the platforming is not difficult, you’ll have plenty of time and peace of mind to wander around looking for the lost Waddle Dees. They’re scattered and lost all around the stages and it’s funny how some are hidden right under your nose and still you can’t find them. The plot is simple enough, and doesn't even need its own paragraph. One day, a vortex swapped the land and many Dees got sucked into another dimension. You go in in order to find and rescue them.

The music is fantastic. All the tracks are readily available on YT and you can check it for yourself. I particularly liked the music for the Wondaria stages, which are absolutely brilliant. They have that nostalgic Kirby tune to it but introduces something new and catchy as well. Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHv3vWHbgPw and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yq_8thBr98 and tell me if that doesn’t sound pretty good indeed. The Winter Horn world music is pretty good too, like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw_SIdt3vfE .

So all in all I’m very happy to see how well this Kirby game came out. It really stayed true to its nature and managed to add a lot to the series. I hope they make another one soon.

Princess Maker 5

In Princess Maker 5 you are  the legal guardian of a ten-year-old girl. She’s the only daughter of a royal bloodline and the center of a political dispute that quickly escalated into open war. Surrounded by enemies and fearing for her safety, you take her far away, into another dimension, to the land of early 2000s Japan, in order to give her a safe and decent upbringing. Cube, your loyal servant and friend, is there with you. You bond as family. Your new life begins.
 
I just finished my very first run of this game. This is the first PM I played and the first raising sim game I played as well. I’ll say the most important thing right away. This title needs your complete devotion. It plays like a casual game but it needs your complete emotional investment in order for it to work. I think this is why it’s a rather niche sort of game. I don’t think many people could play this to the end and the reason is simple; Gameplay is pretty much looking at stat numbers slowly rising while the same sequence of short animations play over and over again. It is repetitive, slow and mostly uneventful. Yet, this is one of the best games I’ve ever played. How is that possible?

Like I said, it all depends on your emotional investment. For the past several days I did nothing but play this. I would close the game and think about my decisions and how to make the life of this girl under my custody better. A lot better. In fact I was aiming for a beautiful childhood. This was the point that appealed the most to me and what made me enjoy this game so much; the possibility to provide someone with a meaningful, wonderful childhood.

As such, my gameplay was guided completely by roleplay. I didn’t look up any guides or tips on how to improve this or that stat or what to do in order to get this or that ending, I didn’t care about the numbers so much. I wanted to experience this game in a completely organic manner, mistakes and all. For example, I allowed my protégé to continue to attend music classes long after she mastered the skill, just because her best friend also attended there. I figured that’s what she would like, given the fact she only had that single friend during that time. This is how I made every choice in this game and it was completely worth it. I was completely invested in the task of raising this girl and it made every consequence very meaningful to me personally as a player.

If this is the type of thing that sounds appealing to you, then there’s only one problem to overcome with Princess Maker 5 and that is the gameplay. It’s a raising sim and that means creating a routine for your daughter is fundamental to her upbringing. This game will make you feel what a routine is like. You’ll watch every single week of an eight years period, as she goes to class, attends extracurricular activities, extra courses, cram school, do tests, club activities and later, part time jobs and everything else in between. You’ll help her pick birthday presents for her friends year after year and you better remember which friend is which. It is repetitive and I even feel asleep a few times (if you watch my streams, on rare occasions you’ll see the mouse cursor running offscreen. That’s because I dozed off for a few seconds) but the repetitiveness of it gives it the proper weight of reality and gives you the time to actually care about the game and with some luck, you’ll end caring a lot and having a fascinating experience with it.

Graphics are beautiful. I love the character design and the animations. It has that appeal of early 2000s anime like Toradora, Soul Eater and Haruhi Suzumiya. It has a sort of quiet charm about it, can’t really explain it but the visuals add a lot to this game. The music is so good I consider it to be a good enough reason to at least play a couple hours of PM5. It’s relaxing, engaging and quite beautiful in its own right. In fact I predict I’ll continue to listen to some of those BGM for years to come.

Only one thing bothered me while playing this game and it’s the lack of character development for many of the characters, particularly the students. There’s just not enough events in there for everybody. The few that there are are really nice to follow and read about, but it’s too little. It took me about 50 hours to finish this, I completed the entire ‘arc’ of several students and there’s just not enough text for them, they deserve a lot more dialogue, a lot more things going on in their lives. I can well imagine a Princess Maker game being enhanced this way by adopting a little bit of VN gameplay. It would be absolutely perfect. In my opinion it’s the only thing missing really.

I think that summons up my experience with PM5. A beautiful, precious gem of a game that maybe requires a very specific type of player to really enjoy it, but if you’re one of the lucky few, man, you’re in for some very good times with it.