[h1]Plot density and how it affects characterization and stuff[/h1]
So, the description for the game describes our heroes as "a motley crew of girls and women at different stages of their lives, with their quirks, aspirations, crushes and little idiosyncrasies", but in actual practice, I feel this mostly comes across as a bunch of kind of annoying cardboard cutouts. The problem, I feel, is that the game is too short, and if this had been a TV show with multiple seasons to try to convey to the audience who these characters are, it might have worked fine, but when your game is a couple of hours long and you have 5 main characters to try to introduce us to, everything just gets crammed together too much and every character ends up spouting whatever their schtick is constantly to the point where it feels like they as a person can only think of one thing and it just feels bad to read. It also doesn't help that the plot more or less takes place across a single day in both of the parts, which means that in the middle of trying to save the world our characters are constantly going on about irrelevant stuff just further adding to the idea that their minds can't function on a basic level and making the entire plot as a whole feel inane. Literally at one point it's "There's monsters attacking the beach, let's go save the day!" "So, can we stop on the way there, then, so I can grab my swimsuit and take a dip after the fight?" and, I don't know, priorities, anyone? And I suppose to an extent that's the point and they're supposed to be a dysfunctional group and all that, but this just takes it way too far to the point where it just feels nonsensical. Again, if this had been a TV show, there would have been ample opportunity to have down time so we get a chance to just hang out with the characters and not worry about fighting monsters for a little while, and so to a large extent the problem is just they didn't have a colossal budget to fund a series, or, you know, a longer game at any rate, but I still don't feel that completely excuses the problem because I'm a big believer in "Do what you can, not what you can't", and if the constraints you face mean that certain elements don't work properly, you should seek out new elements to use that do work instead. Also, the lack of quiet moments to just hang out means that for a lot of the characters' quirks, we never actually get a chance to see them in action, but instead everyone just talks about how crazy they are, or they talk about this or that event that happened instead of letting us see it, and so it also kind of makes the characters feel very in your face about themselves, and if you're going to be a weirdo, then just be one, but when you're constantly saying "Look at me, look at me, aren't I the weirdest?" it just feels grating and comes across like you have some constant need to seek attention or something. This game really, REALLY needed more down time.
[h1]"You mean we have to write more? Oops."[/h1]
Also, the game has two parts to it, and I believe one of the parts was released first as a complete game and then the other part was added on top of that later, and so it has the feel of a standalone story and then the sequel to that story, which isn't a bad thing inherently and I don't mind getting a bundle of two games, but the problem is that the first story wrapped things up too neatly and the sequel was left with nowhere to go, and so the sequel sort of ends up having the feel of an epilogue and it involves the characters saying constantly "As you know, this event has been going on in our lives in the time since the end of the first story", and that also feels kind of bad to read for an extended period, and most epilogues are very brief and so it's sort of tolerable to listen to them for five minutes until they're over, but in this particular case, the second story is actually longer than the first and so we have to spend the [i]majority[/i] of our time in the game being told "You remember how I had a crush on one of the other rangers in the first part? we're getting married now!" Every. Five. Minutes. Yes, you're getting married now, good for you, STOP TELLING ME ALREADY BECAUSE I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME!
[h1]How the game handles jokes[/h1]
Also, the game sort of has trust issues and seems to believe the audience can't get the joke unless it explains it, and as an example, one of the exchanges effectively goes "Why did you save me after I tried to kill you?" and all of the other characters start thinking to themselves "I'm certain she's going to answer 'Because it's the right thing to do', surely she would never give a random insane petty reason, because wouldn't that be crazy?" which is already bad enough and fails to trust the audience to hold an implicit assumption of niceness without being told to, but that wasn't even my main point, and the girl basically answers "I saved you because you're hot!" and at this point the joke is over, we had the subversion of our expectations, we can laugh at how wacky that is, and move on, right? Wrong, and instead the other characters have to be like "So let me get this straight, if she wasn't hot, you wouldn't have saved her? Oh, what a crazy way to behave. You sure are wacky, Pink Ranger" and THEN the joke is allowed to end. You don't have to tell me what I'm supposed to be expecting, you don't have to explain the joke to me after the fact, it's okay if not every joke lands for every player, we'll each get enough of them to have a good time if you just give us the chance, you know?
[h1]And don't even get me started on the gameplay! It's... nice, actually[/h1]
Anyway, despite my issues with the writing, the gameplay is actually reasonably solid, and the game is nothing but boss battles which is fine because boss battles are usually the best part anyway and lesser fights are often just a chore, and the fights themselves clearly had actual thought put into them to make them unique and require some sort of actual gameplan to win and not just the same old "generic uber attack beats all" stuff you sometimes see in other games, and is it perfect? No, it could use a bit of polish here or there, I feel it gets a little RNG dependent sometimes and if you just get bad luck, then tough, kiddo, looks like you're starting that fight over, and I also feel sometimes the gameplay is too much trial and error and just sort of getting killed by an enemy because you don't really know what it does yet or not quite knowing how best to anticipate the upcoming sequence of turns until you've seen it before, but overall the gameplay is generally nice and I'd give it a solid, like, B.
[h1]A big big plot twist[/h1]
There was one part in the game that I thought was actually really neat, and the part where we learn that [spoiler]the entire game might be nothing more than a fantasy in Pink Ranger's head[/spoiler] had me like "Wait, WHAT?" and I did rather enjoy that section, actually, and constantly asking myself [spoiler]whether that was true or whether that's just what the enemy wants her to think,[/spoiler] but ultimately that section wasn't very long compared to the game as a whole, and I wouldn't say it's reason enough to sit through the rest of the story, so even with that plus the fairly good gameplay, I'm afraid ultimately I'm going to have to say this one is a not recommended.
