#chumbosoft

Basically it’s about a world where humans and all kinds of mythological creatures (known as Mogwai for whatever reason) live side by side, which has caused a lot of people to compare it to Pokemon. And to be fair, visually it owes a lot to Pokemon, and there’s an emphasis on humans in a modern-ish setting emotionally and spiritually bonding with their favorite Mogwai. However, unlike Pokemon, all the Mogwai can talk, and most can assume a human form, so you could also say that humans and mythological creatures living side-by-side is more Touhou than Pokemon. The Mogwai are people, not just beloved pets.

Anyway, it’s a JRPG where most of your party are anthropomorphic monsters like Minotaurs or Cat Sith. Also everyone is a girl. Like, everyone in your party and also 90% of the important NPCs. Not in like a fanservice-y way, but it’s just a casually female game. This is Touhou influence #2. I suppose it’s also worth noting that a lot of the designs are rather androgynous: the artist clearly didn’t feel a need to make everyone “girly” just because they’re women.

Also, and this is not at all a bad thing, this game is really really gay. Like, super gay. Again, in a casual, PG way.

I guess I should mention the plot and stuff. You play as Eve, a human “Conjurer” who was born with the ability to form pacts with Mogwai, specifically her childhood friend Klein, the Cat Sith (Klein is a girl; always remember that everyone is a girl). Conjurers are a little rare but not unusual, and Eve is basically just an ordinary 20-something working part-time in her grandfather’s grocery store. The game starts with her being sent out on an errand, and ends with her fighting to save the world. You know, normal JRPG stuff. It’s like 15 hours to reach the ending, give or take.

What I will say though is that the atmosphere is deceptively idyllic. It feels extremely Pokemon at first, with everyone constantly talking about how cute the monsters are. And it feels like nothing could ever go wrong in this world, other than perhaps comical Team Rocket escapades. But as you get further in the game, you start to see more and more tensions rising to the surface, and the world isn’t quite as idyllic as you might have thought. I found that interesting.

In terms of just the writing though, the dialog and descriptions are consistently silly and whimsical. Good stuff. However, I note with some disappointment that after the initial demo a lot of the more outlandish dialog has been edited down to be comprehensible, which is a great loss. Still, there’s a great use of character voice all throughout, and I especially loved how they handled some the text messages characters will send you.

Mechanically it’s closer to your standard turn-based JRPG than it is to Pokemon. You’ve got a party of four people at a time, and you take turns beating each other up in AGI order. There’s, like, a super move meter but overall everything is kept pretty simple. Buffs and debuffs are extremely important, and the game will probably smash you if you don’t use them. On hard mode I had a difficult time beating the very first random encounter, and I ended up switching it down to normal after the 2nd boss. So... it’s a game that can kick your teeth in, but that’s not a bad thing. It just means you need to pay attention to what you’re doing.

Random battles can get irritating, but it uses one of those relative EXP gain systems where you level up incredibly fast if you’re below the expected level, and incredibly slowly if you’re above, so you won’t fall behind by skipping battles.

One thing I found interesting is that your party is constantly changing due to the plot, somewhat like FF4 or Grandia. Rather than gathering a huge group of people who you can switch between freely, you always have a four person party composed of whoever happens to be traveling with you at the moment. I like that, as it means you’re forced to use everyone, rather than just sticking to the ones you’ve decided are the “best” by whatever metric you’re using. In particular, since each character has an innate element that they can’t change, you’re often forced to fight at an elemental disadvantage (that’s a good thing in my twisted mind). However, it also creates an annoyance because each character has their own field ability for solving puzzles (cutting down plants or seeing hidden paths, for example), and if you’re too eager to advance the plot you can lose them and miss out on optional sidequests.

Music is good. Each character has their own boss theme (Touhou strikes again!) and in general the boss themes got me pumped up. None of them are stuck in my head though. It’s hard for me to comment on music in any more detail than that, but I certainly didn’t want to replace it with something else. There’s an amusingly musical tone to the error beeps when you try to do something you can’t do.