Peak anime girl rpg game.

Shin Megami Touhou

I think the biggest problem with the game is that, while it has more respect for the player's time than many RPGs, but there's still a lot of backtracking and it's kind of tiresome. I guess it's mitigated by the Sleeper Timer item (which is like a Repel that costs a resource built in encounters). Sometimes it is little enough that it is carried by the dialogue if the characters have something to say, but sometimes they just don't.

Also, I understand that needing to walk into every dead end to clear the map is a genre convention, but the huge number of teleporters, some of which are extremely punishing (especially in the "monstrosity" dungeon and post game, as well as a very early side dungeon). "Just use a map" Maps are a finite resource that and that early side dungeon does a lot to undermine your trust in their effectiveness in helping you actually navigate rather than just skip over the work for the map clear bonus, which is not worth a map on its own.

I just wish you didn't need to walk the exactly same passages with the exact same encounters quite as many times as happened. The game actually tries to bait you into doing this with a dungeon that unlocks one floor at a time. A few times you need to go up to the new next floor early on, but later you can ignore these messages until the end and then go through to the last floor.

Oh yeah, and on this time subject, it would have been cool if, like there was an "auto-heal" option, there was an "auto-sacrifice" option to bring lower-level sleepers up to higher levels without need to go back and forth in the menu like 20 times generating and sacrificing sleepers for them. Just take my money! It's not like who you sacrifice is a meaningful choice when it comes to sacrificing "original" generated sleepers.

My other problem with the game is that it's a game that can reasonably take like 60 hours and it almost doesn't have a story, and most of the story that is there is frankly quite bad. I won't blame the game for its basic premise, but the usual criticism of these sorts of premises, where good guys are cloned or mind-controlled or something as an excuse to smash action figures together without concern for what social factors would cause the conflict and what impact the conflict would have on social relations, this criticism is one that the game not only fails to mitigate but honestly exacerbates. There really is no plot, there is a mystery where the investigation starts with brute force "Did you do this? How about you? How about you?" that rapidly devolves into just doing tourism. There are no active players in the plot except a mysterious implied antagonist who doesn't really antagonize you, one supporting character who does exactly one thing, and the player character. Arguably, there's one other antagonist, but they hardly do anything. The story is all just "get to the end of this dungeon and beat this boss" with the most variety being that there's sometimes a midboss. There are two cases that I can remember where you are given something of a real choice in how a dungeon/boss proceeds, and those are cool, but I would trade that for there being an actual story tying things together, especially since the actual true answer to the mystery is the most wildly unsatisfying excuse-plot that I've maybe ever encountered. You get a false explanation in another ending and, though it is incomplete, it overall feels somewhat more satisfying because the motivations for doing this and that actually make sense rather than just being, as I said, an excuse.

I should mention that, in place of a story, it does have some fun dialogue that I enjoyed, even if none of it really "mattered" to what was happening beyond a given boss being defeated and then going "idk what's happening either." That said, there's a dialogue at maybe the halfway point that pops up in an unexpected place and grants you a new mechanic, and I thought the scene overall was a pleasant surprise. There's another one later which was alright, but not as interesting even if it was more plot relevant.

Minor gripes: The flashes are a little harsh on the enemy melee attacks. I'm surprised there's no epilepsy warning on that basis (I don't think).

I wish that the names for spells were as expressive as the names of physical Skills. Those were fun, but the spell names feel like reading code.

The soundtrack has a really unsatisfying quality to it. Don't get me wrong, there are a bunch of cool tracks (including the title theme, which promises a mystery that isn't actually present in the game . . . ), but many get a bit grating and it's hard to pinpoint why, as a non-musician. I went and listened to the soundtrack online and realized that for 90% of the tracks, on a given instrument in the track, there is literally no variation in the duration of notes, which is bizarre, and then on the other tracks it's typically only one instrument (like HELP or Bamboo Forest). There's even one track where the lead does vary in note duration, but only between sections, so it's a continuous run of quarter notes, then eighth notes, then sixteenth notes (I think). Now, you can still have varied rhythm with notes of the same value by having rests space the notes in various ways, basically simulating a Staccato melody, but there is a propensity for just having continuous runs that are basically devoid of rhythmic variation or phrasing. I really think more varied notes would have made the tracks not feel as monotonous over time (though I don't think they are bad at all, there's just a lot of heavy lifting they need to do with how long you spend in these areas. Some counterpoint could also be cool, idk.

Why am I complaining so much in a positive review? Because this is all I have to say that I think is potentially useful to the devs. If I didn't mention it, I liked it. Gameplay was fun, settings were fun, art was pretty, I like the format with the overworld, I never encountered a technical issue. As I said before, I liked the dialogue and even the music, too. I hope you guys keep improving and make something even better in the future.