บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย bugfragged

The Kingdom of Manahill is a properous nation that is protected by a manastone-generated barrier, but underneath that is a corrupt society where King Vikar and his aristocratic faction exile people for arbitrary and often false reasons. You play as Lambda, a warrior who was exiled for unknown reasons, as she tries to help support her Settlement of exiles by finding manastones.

The story has some interesting concepts such as how dependency on a resource can shape a society and how being chosen by the gods isn't always a good thing, since it leads to the chosen one having way too much power over society with no real checks and balances. It also shows that an all-natural nomadic way of life isn't necessarily a good thing either, since people will still have to conform to a social darwinist ideology at the expense of their own personal interests. That said, I feel like the game didn't explore these concepts enough. We don't really get a good look at how King Vikar went mad with power over the years and even in the ending where we go back to Manahill, we don't get a good understanding of the legal system. Additionally, I feel like Illia and the nomads don't really argue their point well, since while they claim that humanity is expanding their civilzation too much with the manastones, they don't really explain how this might impact other lifeforms in Aevi and their own manastoneless society still has similar flaws with how people might use their power. I was hoping each ending would expand on these concepts, but instead, the ending is mostly just a power fantasy where Lambda uses the gods' power to solo the final dungeon. At best, the sidequests will explain how some of the sidequest givers got exiled, despite the lack of actual "crimes" committed.


The main gimmick of the battle system is that instead of just having a regular attack, Lambda can choose which weapon she wants to use in the middle of combat, allowing her to deal extra damage depending on the enemy's type. She can also imbue herself with elemental ores to add an extra elemental hit to each of her offensive actions. Finally, she can spend 100 TP to use an Unleash skil, and each weapon has its own Unleash. That said, the extra elemental hits don't scale to the regular hit that they accompany, which creates a meta of using multihit unleashes to deal multiple elemental ore hits.

Instead of MP, you can spend manashards to use magic, and the game is very generous about giving you this resource. However, the beginning of the game is easy enough that you won't need to use magic skills too often. The end of the game does require you to use Debuff+ if you want to survive against the stronger bosses though.

Scar's gimmick is that he's an AI-controlled dog, and you can give him orders to make him target specific enemies or defend himself. Personally, I wasn't too engaged with Scar's gameplay, since he's literally just normal attack spam with one very generic Unleash skill. He doesn't really have any other tricks other than being able to use a weak Komabiscuit to heal. Additionally, without the ability to imbue elemental ores, Scar has no real way of defending against powerful elemental attacks.

Healing in this game makes it so that you can harvest Komaplants to keep your team healthy in long dungeons, and you can upgrade the amount that is healed and the amount you can carry. In the long run, Komaplants fall behind the characters' HP growth, making it harder to survive in battles of attrition. This ends up making it so that you need to finish boss battles quickly with DPS strategies, or you won't be able to outlast the enemy. For this reason, the last two optional bosses can be tricky to beat without NG+ bonuses because of how tanky they are, though it's still possible with poison/bleed infliction.

7.5/10

The story covers some interesting topics, but I feel like the endings didn't focus on these topics as much as I'd like. The gameplay is fairly balanced for the most part and it can be satisfying using some of the more meta strategies, though I wish Scar's gameplay was more interesting.

This game is apparently part of a different timeline from the other sequels to KB1, so I have no idea how much context I'm missing. The premise is that the expedition team hires the protagonists of the previous game along with new protagonists to explore the underworld, but this leads to them discovering the very artifact that turned Typhus evil to begin with. We learn a tiny bit more about Lilith's master and how they can brainwash people into serving them with or without the vulcan stone, and we get some worldbuilding for the Ambrose Underworld and dragons. Overall, this feels like a Gaiden game that is trying to set things up for Absinthia, which will probably focus more on Lilith.

One thing I liked is that there are actual logistical concerns for the expedition, as well as new challenges for traversing a world full of magma. Though the expedition team ends up meeting its goals fairly early into the game, leaving just the conflict over the Vulcan Stone.

IMO, it's strange to continue using the title "Knight Bewitched" for this game, since there really isn't any new lore for the witches and all the discrimination against them seemed to be abolished by the end of the first game.


The game introduces some new mechanics like the barrier buff, which absorbs a certain amount of damage, but is also weak to certain skills. Some enemies can regenerate their barrier every turn, which can make battles drag on if you don't optimize your DPS.

Characters mostly use the same skills as the previous game, but their skillsets are now split between characters with similar fighting styles, such as how many of Ruth's counter-attack skills went to Rae. However, Malady does get some additional skills to differentiate her from other mages, in exchange for having overall weaker healing ability. This can lead to more varied party compositions than the first game, though towards the end, I preferred having two tanks and two mages to make it easier to outheal the enemy.

The game does give EXP to reserve party members, but strangely, it doesn't scale up new party members. Still, sufficient leveling and EXP accessories should help close the gap. However, while the EXP situation is fine, it can be very expensive to upgrade gear for all party members, even if you're only focusing on the active party.

The battle system allows equipment changing in the middle of combat, but there's a cooldown to prevent it from being spammable. This can be helpful for dealing with unpredicatable situations or if you think you geared someone wrong. This can also be a way to remove ailments without using up a turn, since ailments disappear if you equip the equipment that resists them.

Unfortunately, the sequel doesn't have the bestiary that the first game had, which means it can be harder to keep track of which enemies one should prioritize for farming rare drops. The weird part is that Myrle the dwarf is keeping his own bestiary, yet the party no longer maintains their own.

As for boss balance, they have a lot more puzzle gimmicks compared to the previous game, especially when they have access to the barrier mechanic. Of note is Tiamat, who has a clone mechanic to force the player to pay attention to who the real one is. Overall, I'd say the game is harder and more complex than the prequel on equivalent difficulty settings, since not all bosses can be as easily defeated with brute force.


7.5/10

The sequel is definitely more creative with boss mechanics, though I have mixed feelings about splitting the old characters' movesets. The story doesn't feel quite as epic or high stakes as the previous one, since the party is preventing Typhus's ressurection rather than fighting him and little progress is made in learning the truth behind Lilith's master, and it feels like it was written mainly to serve as a bridge between KB1 and Absinthia.

Gaia's Melody 1 already had a decent story and worldbuilding, and the sequel expands on a lot of backstory and world history. As a consequence, this game is much longer than the previous, which is both a good and bad thing, since some arcs, such as the school arc, feels like filler, while others feel relevant to the overarching plot concerning the Gate. The epilogue quests are definitely one of the best parts of the game, since it gives proper time to wrap up various plot threads and prevents the pitfall of having rushed and unsatisfying endings.

As for the dialogue, I noticed that the characters don't speak in as childlike of a manner anymore, which makes sense because they're older. Additionally, Choko doesn't use the speech patterns of the Usagi anymore, which is a nice attention to detail that shows how much traveling the world has affected her.

The game also finalizes several characters' romance arcs, and while these are well-written, I do feel like giving Akira a canon pairing does render the previous game's choices irrelevant to some extent if the player was shipping her with someone else. However, it's still necessary to give her a canon partner sooner rather than later because she's going to show up in Endless Melody. That said, there are some sussy bits with the age gap for some of the couples, such as Bawr x Yuina and Tara x Ryuan (FBI open up?), though this is only noticeable if you read the guidebook.


I complained about the balancing in the first game and sadly, there are only minor improvements at best. There are still characters like Kari and Kasumi who have such low HP that they're not viable against enemy skills that have high enough damage formulas. It's also very grindy to make sure everyone is strong enough for story challenges, since the game doesn't have any shared EXP. There is an accessory that can cause EXP that was supposed to go to Akira go to someone else, but you don't get it until the final dungeon, which is too little too late.

As for damage formulas, I noticed that they aren't very consistent. Skills that cost about the same amount of MP seem to do very different damage, even when you consider stats and elemental weaknesses. This also applies to enemy skills, where an enemy can deal scratch damage with one skill and OHKO with another. I'm not sure if this is intentional or if the skill damage wasn't tested properly, but it does lead to a difficulty curve that feels like a sine wave. Maybe it would help if the damage formulas were also written in skill descriptions?

As for the party meta, Doken and Zephyr got nerfed to put them closer to the level of the other characters, though Doken is still one of the most consistent damage dealers even if he can't spam his ultimate skill as easily. However, due to the enemies having inconsistent damage, bosses are best dealt with by having a fast character like Tara to keep them stunlocked. Basically, the game's balance feels just like modern Yu-Gi-Oh, in that your win condition is to keep the enemy from taking any action.

The game has some new features, such as a difficulty setting and an improved version of the previous encounter setting. For the difficulty settings, Boost mode increases EXP gain and lowers enemy stats, which can make the endgame grind less tedious, but it still feels like a band-aid solution to the overall balancing issues. Hard mode multiplies enemy stats and lowers EXP gain, and it would take massive amounts of grinding to catch up to them. I suspect hard mode was meant for NG+, since the multiplier can't make enemy stats go beyond the stat cap. There's also a neat little art collection that functions as a collection sidequest that spans the entire game. Unfortunately, the game also lost some features, such as minimaps and the bestiary. The former was crucial in figuring out where to find story objectives, so this could make it tricky to avoid advancing the story too far. As for the bestiary, it seems to have been replaced with a scanning feature, but scanning the enemy doesn't give very useful information at all and it might as well not even be a feature.

Edit: Minimaps are implemented now, along with objective markers. Also, hard mode was rebalanced.

The combat animations in both games tend to be very long, even if you hold down the examine key to force the game to make the animations faster. Additionally, I personally don't like having characters move all over the place randomly, since this could make it more annoying to check on their states or figure out if an enemy is covering up another. IMO, it would be better if the characters returned to their original positions at the end of each turn so that it would be less disorienting.

6.5/10
The story has some sussy bits and filler, but it's still very well-written and it's satisfying seeing the characters get their happy endings. Unfortunately, the combat is still not much better than the previous game and I'd go as far to say that this duology has some of the worst combat I've ever seen in an RPG Maker game. Overall, I'll have to give a barely recommended score to the game once again, since a game really shouldn't neglect its gameplay loop.

The basic premise is that the Halonian knight, Ruth, is on the run with a witch, Gwen, that she spared. At the same time, an evil dragon Typhus is coming back to wipe out humanity, so the party has to fight both Halonia and Typhus in order to find their place in the world. Unfortunately, I feel that despite the title, the story didn't focus much on either the romance or the persecution of witches. Instead, those two plotlines were mostly overshadowed by the conflict between humans and dragons and the divine conflict found in the bonus dungeon.

I'm not much of a romance writer, but the relationship between Ruth and Gwen definitely feels like it could use some more cutscenes. There is an interesting part where Ruth finds out that Gwen used a hypnotism curse on her, but I felt that Ruth forgave Gwen too quickly. IMO, it would have been better if Ruth and Gwen compared the hypnotism curse to how Typhus brainwashed another dragon into loving him and bearing his children, which would show that by rejecting the usage of the curse, Gwen is seeking true love rather than a false love like Typhus.

As for the witch conflict, we don't get a whole lot of lore about how witches came to be so hated, and we could really use some more focus on this kind of history. Additionally, the main antagonist of that plotline, Alduin, is a son of a witch who ironically is bigoted against witches due to a lie that his non-witch peers spread. Although you'd think he would be the main villain of the overall plot, he's completely overshadowed by Typhus as a threat and his redemption seems to come rather easily. I think he could have made a bigger impact if he was forced to interact with Typhus and see how similar he's becoming to the latter, since his hatred of witches causes him to misplace his priorities and nearly doom the people he's trying to protect, just like with Typhus. I also think it would be interesting if part of Alduin's motivation for hating witches was because he wanted to prove to his peers that he's different.

I only vaguely watched Hawkzombie's stream of the legacy version, and it looks like the Enhanced Edition gave a bit more characterization to Typhus to make him less generic. It's implied that the reason he's so fanatical about hating humans is because Lilith's master, possibly Zamas, corrupted him into believing that humans are evil. We also get a new flashback cutscene of Typhus arguing with Strasza, which helps show how much he believes his own hype about being the savior of dragonkind. Though IMO, I wish information about Helena and Zamas existed outside of the bonus dungeon, since it seems way too important to be optional.


I didn't personally try out the hard mode of the legacy version, but I can say that EE's hard mode is at least balanced when it comes to bosses, since even the strong bonus bosses feel tough but consistently winnable if you know what you're doing.

All party members have fairly complete skillsets for almost any situation, but some skills rely on equipment, which means you need to be prepared with the right setup for certain fights. You can't swap equipment in the middle of combat, which is a shame because it would have been interesting to use this feature against bosses that change up their tactics, like Ogopogo. Though such a feature would need to be balanced so that it's not spammable.

There's a bestiary and item encyclopedia feature in the EE. For the former, you get info on enemy drops, but not their stats and weaknesses. Though the weakness part is compensated by their weaknesses being shown in-combat. For the item log, I think it would have been more helpful if the item entries also list the best place to buy or farm them, since it's more cumbersome to look through the bestiary entries one-by-one to figure out where things drop.


The gameplay is well-balanced on all difficulty modes and is a prime example of how RPGs should be balanced. However, the story feels like a mere shadow of something that could be greater. While there is some decently fleshed out lore about the dragons, the witch conflict feels like a mere side plot, which is unbecoming of a game titled "Knight Bewitched." Hopefully, the sequel will improve in that regard.

7.2/10

If you played the previous game, Case 02: Paranormal Evil, you were probably under the impression that Marty and Sally would live peaceful lives until Hans shows up, but it turns out that Nya is still active and is seeking to interfere in Marty's life again. When Marty decides not to pursue Sally's secrets, the two eventually break up due to Sally's unknown fears, so he ends up falling for Nya's temptation to travel back in time.

I feel like the game's plot was written to make up for the lack of twists or deconstruction in Case 02. Marty may have gone through a lot of character development and became a stronger person over the course of Loser Reborn and Paranormal Evil, but due to the loss of his family and best friend, he's very emotionally dependent on Sally, which leads to him trying to pursue a "happy ending" with her no matter what. Meanwhile, Sally does have a dark secret and gets character development and a backstory beyond being a damsel in distress, and she gets some moments where she sasses Marty for saying something stupid.

The game's twist this time is that Sally has an evil alter ego due to DID (dissociative identity disorder), which is harder for the main cast to deal with because they can't exorcise the alter like they can with evil spirits. However, I have mixed feelings about this twist. On one hand, I think it's an interesting break from formula that the protagonists are forced to solve a problem that they can't brute force with guns and psychic powers. On the other hand, DID is a controversial topic to handle when combined with serial killer plots, since it could perpetuate stigma for that condition (admittedly, I have no expertise in this area). Additionally, I feel like this creates a plot hole for the previous game, since you would think Sally's alter would have emerged in a high stress situation like a zombie apocalypse. Hell, it's actually surprising that the alter didn't take advantage of Gla'aki's necromancy in an attempt to bring John back from the dead. I actually question how much this twist was planned in advance, since it's something that really should have come up in Case 02.

Although the game uses 2D RPG Maker maps, the game becomes very linear after you explore the living room and will make you examine events in a very specific order. IMO, it would have been more interesting if Marty kept his full memories from the loops so that he could ask for additional topics in the living room, and maybe even have special bad endings if Marty picks topics that are especially sensitive for Sally.

8.5/10

I enjoyed Marty's slow descent into madness, but the twist feels like it conflicts with previously established events. I also think the topic system should have been utilized more, if only to make the game slightly less linear and reveal more information.

As you can imagine from the game's title, the story is pretty bleak, since humanity is inevitably going to die to the Miasma/Fog. The constant despair has done a number on the overall mental health of human society, making otherwise good people more desperate to uphold social order. This can be seen with Mia, who wants to save humanity, but is unable to maintain order among a panicked population, causing her to resort to desperate methods to save as many people as she can. On the other hand, Aeyr rejects utilitarianism because of how poorly he was treated by society, but this also means he has little regard for anyone outside his circle of friends. For most of the game, the two are friends who are trying to reunite with each other, but the player can see that their opposing ideals will eventually make them come to blows.

The game has four endings and I got the one that requires the two leads to stay in-character, which requires more effort than having them act out of character. I suspect this "Resolve" ending is supposed to be the true ending, but I never got around to getting the other endings. I don't know if this is true of the other endings, but I wish there was more follow up for Luke, Trill, Amalie, Reyson, and Serra.

Edit: Turns out there is no true ending and each ending has its own trade-offs.


The combat system gives the party three actions per round, and anyone can use up any action. However, all characters have an SP bar that regenerates at the end of every round, which means it's more efficient to spread actions among all characters if possible. Though I usually end up having Aeyr use most of the actions per round because he's the only one who can heal without items. However, the actions per turn can be hard to plan around due to how the UI doesn't display buff/debuff duration.

Most of the character skillsets are balanced and useful, but some of them have very RNG dependent proc rates. This can be a problem for Mia, since she needs to proc Branded on enemies in order to use some of her skills properly. Serra's Oracle abilities are an even more extreme case, since they grant very powerful buffs, but applying them isn't an absolute chance. This is in contrast to Trill, who gets more situational and weaker buffs that are guaranteed to proc.

Every enemy has a set of weaknesses and resistances, which can be viewed from an analysis menu in the middle of combat. This makes it easy to keep track of such information the moment it's discovered and adds a layer of strategy when it comes to swapping out equipment in the middle of combat.

At first, the damage to the party members doesn't seem too bad, but you'll soon find that it's difficult to hoard supplies, due to the item cap being at 10 and the lack of inns. While there is a traveling merchant, I find that the merchant doesn't show up very often or predictably. This can make resource management a lot harder, since it's easy to use up too many items in a tough battle, you can't save up supplies in preparation for long dungeon stretches and while you can find a lot of items on the ground, you won't be able to pick them all up or return to them, making the resource situation unpredictable. IMO, this limitation wouldn't be so bad if there weren't so many respawning enemies, making it hard to backtrack while maintaining supplies. As a result, the gameplay feels like a bizarre combination of a JRPG and a stealth horror game, since it becomes necessary to dodge roaming encounters in order to avoid running out of supplies. To be fair, EXP is scaled to the characters' level compared to the enemies', so it's actually fine to skip some encounters. Plus, the flee rate seems to be near guaranteed unlike other games.

The game mainly relies on save points, and while they are spaced out adequately, it would have been nice if the player could save on the world map somehow, since entering an area could trigger an event. In a game with a lot of "points of no return," saving on the world map would go a long way in making the player feel more secure.

For some reason, the game has a difficulty setting, but only after you already beat the game once. I personally would have preferred having it available from the start, since I'm the type of person who likes to use the lowest setting on random foes to save resources while using the highest setting on bosses to test the limits of my party's abilities.

8.5/10
I really like the clash of ideals in the story, since I feel like many people (at least in my Twitter feed) simulataneously feel despair towards their fellow people's hypocrisies, but also have a moral code that makes them feel obligated to support utilitarian (of varying kinds) outcomes. The gameplay is a mixed bag for me, since the resource situation feels a lot more stressful than in other RPGs due to how unpredictable it can be to resupply. It's still mostly balanced on the default sliders and the EXP curve makes up for the resource situation somewhat, so it's not quite as hard as it initially seems.

From the Steam description, you're probably thinking this is some sort of Harry Potter-like power fantasy, due to the protagonist Kaito joining a community of mages. As you play, it turns out magic has a dark twist and ultimately causes more harm than good, and every party member has been negatively affected by magic in some way, whether it's through unwanted side-effects or political power struggles. However, the source of magic, the Black Pearl, isn't explained all that well. The ending implies that there are efforts to get rid of it, but I can't help but wonder if the untranslated and removed prequel, HIBIKAKEYIRONOKISEKI, is necessary to fully understand the lore.

Unfortunately, the pacing of the story is very slow compared to the amount of important things that actually happen. Some acts don't seem to advance the plot very much and just feel like filler monster extermination, which I felt made the game a bit longer than it should have been.

As for the characters, like in Rise of the Third Power, there is a lot of friction between them, most of them have issues, and they have at least some positive character development concerning these issues, but I feel like the two who need growth the most, Marie and Asha, ended up getting the least. As a result, the two still feel like the "token evil/anti-hero teammates" of the party for the entire game, which makes the way the ending is set up all the more jarring, as I would have preferred Nina and Remy to be the ones to accompany Kaito for the ending segment.

This is a minor nitpick, but I think some scenes would be better conveyed with CG images rather than just the live 2D models reacting to situations. It can be hard to tell what's going on otherwise.


This game does something unusual with its town maps, since they're just shown to be minimaps with event markers, and you don't see what the location actually looks like other than a generic background image. In a way, it's like a bizarre combination of Fake Happy End and Sacred Earth Promise's map systems. Personally, I think the game should have committed to either a more pure visual novel exploration system or traditional RPG maps. As it stands, it still takes quite a bit of time to walk through town maps, but you don't even get to see what the maps look like, essentially giving the player the worst of both worlds.

Combat segments consist of the party just moving forward to advance a progress bar while fighting waves of enemies, which is like the Eternal Senia mobile game. This definitely takes away the feeling of exploration that players would normally feel in an RPG dungeon, though it does mean we don't have to worry about getting lost and having to fight more enemies than we want. In a way, you could say this is the extreme opposite of RPGs that have needlessly huge and complicated dungeon maps, and I'd much prefer an RPG that strikes a balance between these extreme dungeon designs.

All characters have to slot in 5 skills to use in battle, whether they be active or passive skills. Autopassive skills don't have to be equipped, but these skills are unique to each character. You can swap skills in the middle of battle, but doing so takes up an entire turn, so it's best to know the best possible setup beforehand if you want to use your turns efficiently. Unfortunately, a lot of skills require you to grind older skills through usage, which isn't always practical because some skills are inherently better for quick trash mobs than others. Note that you can't use items like in other RPGs and you can't revive characters, which means it's game over if even one character falls in battle. Fortunately, you have various healing and support skills to get around this, but it does mean that one bad move can be fatal.

Other reviewers claim that the battle system is too simple, but looking at their playtime, it's unlikely they made it far enough to reach the game's difficulty spike. Before Act 11, you can turn your brain off and just spam attacks and healing magic to beat everything. In Act 11+, enemies can easily wipe the party if you choose disadvantageous elements or fail to pick characters and skills specifically to counter the enemy's own skillset. You can instantly retry a battle if you lose and automatically heal between fights, which offsets the difficulty, but you definitely need to use your head for some of these fights. While the story bosses are balanced enough, the endgame bosses feel really tanky because you have to play around their counterattack mechanics.

At some point, you can unlock optional EX versions of story bosses, which have new skills and higher stats to cover their old weaknesses. Unfortunately, the skill grinding system is tedious and due to the lack of shared EXP, it can be hard to level up characters enough to match up with these EX bosses, so I don't really have much motivation to beat them right now.

7/10
The story is dark, but decently written and has quite a twist at the end. The combat system is well-balanced, but various limitations like active party size, skill grinding, and deliberate stall tactics from both allies and enemies can make it feel tedious. The weakest part of the game is definitely the exploration and maps, since it seems to combine the RPG and visual novel exploration in the weakest way possible.

Bambooblade's one and only mission in this game is to climb the Reanimator's tower to find the cure to Princess Gloria's disease. There really isn't much else to the story until the end of the game, where you discover that there was actually a major decision point in the very first stage of the game that determines whether or not you'll kill or spare your enemies, and you'll have to replay the game to get the other ending. This decision point actually helps set up the conflict between the light countries and the Dark Realm in future installments of the Peacemaker series.

Although the Glorious Princess herself is mentioned in the title, we don't really get a lot of characterization for her, since she spends most of the game in the castle. We also don't really get the same amount of worldbuilding as Hero King Quest, so it's hard to tell what Bambooblade's homeland is like. At the very least, it's implied that the Silver Kingdom has different priorities from the Cerulean Land, but these priorities aren't specified. That said, there is a decent amount of characterization for the Reanimator, making it easier to appreciate her role in future installments.


The gameplay is almost exactly the same as Case 02: Paranormal Evil. You have to make dice rolls to overcome events, and the number of dice you get depends on your stats. Personally, I find that this gameplay results in a lot of reloads on higher difficulties and is very punishing if you choose the wrong events to clear, so I played on the standard difficulty to save myself time.

Unlike Paranormal Evil, you can spare enemies by defeating them without a weapon, but this also makes strength checks harder and makes the final boss harder. The good ending is also locked behind a fist-only run, though there's still enough room for error on standard difficulty. I don't know if a fist run is possible on hard and extreme difficulty though, and I don't think I've seen any video uploads of the game on those modes.


7.5/10

This review is very short because the gameplay is something I have seen before and the story is also very simple and short compared to other games in the Peacemaker and Physical Exorcism series. However, I rated it higher than Paranormal Evil because I like the surprise twist of having a pacifist ending and I liked that the final boss gets a new moveset on this route to differentiate her from Gla'aki.

This is the tale of heroes and Dark Lords, only the heroes are fighting for an insane theocracy while the Dark Ones want to survive, but are plagued with a completely inept and uncaring ruler. As a result, the protagonist, Spiderweb, has to forge alliance withing the Dark Realm while also making her own ruthless plans to defeat the current Dark Lord and the heroic nation. As someone stated, the Cerulean Kingdom isn't portrayed sympathetically or with much depth at all, since they seem to be the most fanatical about following the Light Spirit's teachings. However, there are other games in the series that seem to be from the perspective of the light side humans, so the conflict between the light and dark sides might not be so simple.

As for the protagonist, I find her to be an interesting contrast to the exorcist duo from Physical Exorcism, who are also portrayed as morally grey protagonists with their own moral codes. While Brucie and Jade admit that they don't fight for lofty concepts like justice, Spiderweb does seem to have her own sense of justice, as shown by her outrage towards the Dark Lord's abandonment and discrimination of the citizens and towards the Cerulean Kingdom for their genocide of her people. At the same time, her justice makes her believe that she must conquer the world to prevent any more genocide against the Dark Ones, so she could end up being potentially more ruthless than the exorcist duo.


The battle system shows each character leading a squad of nameless soldiers, which disappear as the characters' HP gets lower. In practice, a character's HP/follower count doesn't actually have any effect on gameplay, at least compared to games like Conviction. This means the gameplay is pretty much a standard turn-based RPG and is in fact a simplified version of Loser Reborn's battle system, especially with the skills that inflict global increases or decreases towards elemental resistance. However, there is only one element instead of two, which means it's much easier to defend against enemy attacks if you just spam water arrows.

Balance-wise, the game is designed to be less of a resource management puzzle compared to Loser Reborn, mainly because weak enemies can be respawned for more efficient grinding. This makes it easier to buy all the necessary supplies to succeed on the journey and rectify bad spending decisions. The full-healing service can also be used up to three times, giving the player more room for error if they want to conserve their items.

However, the boss design in this game is bland, both visually and mechanically. All the bosses are just bigger and stronger versions of certain regular enemies, to the point where the final boss is basically just the golem enemy scaled to about 4-5x their normal size. It almost makes one wonder how the human nations defeated the Dark Mother in the first place.

8/10
I really like Spiderweb as a morally grey protagonist and am looking forward to fighting her in a future installment in the series. The gameplay is well-balanced this time, but I think the bosses need more unique appearances and skillsets.

The game basically functions like most gacha games in that the starting events and objectives will get you a decent amount of gems, but later gems will take more time and effort to grind out. The good news is that the initial batch of gems is mathmatically enough to build one or two decently competitive decks if you already know what you want. The crafting and dismantle feature also plays into the gacha design of increased scarcity, since it essentially costs three cards of one rarity to create a new card of the same rarity. All of this means that the player has little room for error and experimentation if they want to start with a competitive deck. Any mistakes they make in their initial build will require grinding and perhaps even real money to rectify, which encourages controversial netdecking. You also can't trade with other players, likely because such a feature will invite scammers and other exploits. Still, it's much easier to build competitive decks with F2P methods than in real life YGO, giving new players a greater chance of getting their foot in the door.

For PVP mode, there is a ranking system based on your win streaks and losses, and it gets harder to move up ranks as you get farther. However, there is a time limit for each turn that will disqualify you if you fail to complete your turn in time, so it can be anxiety-inducing to perform long combos. Additionally, thanks to the aforementioned ease of netdecking, expect to get bodied even at lower ranks if your deck isn't optimally built. Fortunately, the requirement to go up a rank is easier at first to compensate for fact that OP decks can show up at low ranks. Finally, all of your matches are temporarily saved as replays, so you can rewatch your gameplay and figure out how you can do better. You won't have enough space to save all of them, so make sure to record the important replays with OBS or similar software.

UI-wise, the game looks just like its predecessors in the video game series. However, there are a lot of cards that apply lingering effects, like Gatchiri @Ignister, making it hard to keep track of which monster has which effect applied. In a game as detail-oriented as this, not being able to see applied effects is brutal. There's an influence button now that shows bonuses from XYZ material, but I'm not sure it works for all lingering effects in general.

The game has features other than duels, such as solo mode. In this mode, you have to face AI opponents with specific structure decks that you can add to your collection once you complete the stages. The decks might not be plat worthy, but these modes could still be a nice break from using your usual rank deck and you don't have to worry about time limits. Depending on your chosen archetype, the cards from the structure deck could be worth it. Additionally, some of the duels allow you to use any of your decks, meaning it would be a good way to practice combos without the stress of PVP. However, cards earned through solo mode and legacy packs cannot be dismantled, which is somewhat disappointing. However, I wish the game would allow players to design their own custom duel puzzles, even if it's only for the sake of testing specific card interactions to help understand the game better.

Shops have various booster packs, including secret packs that unlock if you obtain or craft cards from certain archetypes, making it easier to gather related cards of that archetype. Unfortunately, the secret packs only stay up for a limited amount of time, which is inconvnenient if the player doesn't have enough gems on hand. This makes me suspect that the secret pack system is designed to encourage whaling. There is also a duel pass system that rewards the player for finishing PVP duels, but you can only get the gold pass rewards if you pay a bunch of gems. If you complete all the tiers, you can essentially get all the gems back, but it'll take a lot of grinding to break even.


7/10

Personally, I don't have the right mindset to enjoy card battle games and I find the power creep kind of ridiculous, but I do think the developers did an impressive job simulating all the card rulings and implementing convenient features like replay. And despite its predatory gacha design, it's still an easier alternative to trying to collect cards in real life.