[h1]A Foolish Samurai Warrior, Wielding a Wooden Sword[/h1]
I somehow forgot I received a key for this game.
[h2]Story[/h2]
The main character, Yori, is the scion of a feudal household, but his father was slain by a rival lord, Ichiro, and he was forced to flee from his homeland. 15 years later, he must decide how he wants to oppose the evil lord. Should he fight for the sake of his family's honor, or should he fight for the sake of revenge? There will be plenty of moral choices to make in each act of the game, which determines various events as well as gameplay bonuses.
Unfortunately, some of the moral choices don't really make sense. Some, like the decision to spare the bandits, are a good test of how ruthless the player is, but others, like whether or not to accept Haruki's sword, feel like the writer is trying to fill a quota for choices. Worse yet are choices that depend on the outcome of a fight, even if said fight is actually easy in terms of gameplay.
Although Ichiro is portrayed as the standard evil overlord, we don't get to interact with civilian NPCs to learn what it's like living under his rule. It's implied to be not that great, since he hired bandits to terrorize the land, likely to justify higher taxes or something. He also purged anyone loyal to the Takenaka clan, including an entire ninja clan. Additionally, I find it strange that narratively, he's the main villain and not Chiyo, since he seems to depend on Chiyo's dark magic a lot more than she depends on him. I assume she struck a deal with him so that he would allow her to turn any of his political enemies into zombies, but I guess we'll never know.
[h2]Gameplay[/h2]
All moral choices usually come with their own bonuses, such as passive stat boosts. However, the second choice in the game seems to be weighted too heavily in favor of the light path IMO, since it cuts the price of the crystals to a more manageable level. Taking the dark choice here actually increases the difficulty of the endgame because it takes much longer to farm the items that Haruki needs to use attack magic. IMO, if a moral choice is going to outright function as a [i]difficulty setting[/i], the player should at least receive a hint about it.
For overall combat balance, the game essentially makes both allies and enemies fairly tanky, resulting in a war of attrition where the player has to use their resources wisely. Player skills often come off as less impressive than enemy skills, since player characters don't have many AOE options, seem to have more limitations and costs than enemies who fight similarly, and lack ailment and damage-over-time skills. IMO, Tsuru is the least impressive combatant, since she mostly has weak but sustainable long-ranged attacks, a gimmicky stealing mechanic, and a lack of actual cool ninja skills like caltrops.
There is also some RNG BS involved, since the game's accuracy formula errs too much on the side of evasion. I don't know if it's using the formula where accuracy above 100 doesn't help, but it needs to be adjusted due to how many physical skills have cooldowns or resource costs. There's also RNG involved in determining how long buffs and debuffs last, which makes no sense, especially if the player tries to wait out the self-debuff from Kenzou's AOE skill. Finally, the game decided to make the game's ailment healing item RNG as well, since it doesn't have a guaranteed chance of healing the ailments and it also has a chance of inflicting confusion.
Going back to the second choice in the game, the economy of the game becomes really punishing if you choose the dark path, since the endgame enemy drops seem to be balanced around the expectation that the player obtained the discount. This means if the player is forced to hold back on using Haruki offensively on that route in order to "break even," making the battles much longer and more resource intensive. IMO, if the game really needs to have that choice, the endgame drops should at least be balanced around the harder choice to avoid a death spiral of dwindling resources. The idea is that the player shouldn't have to turn one of their characters into a complete brick just to break even with their resource gains and losses. To be fair, I've played at least one game with an even worse resource situation.
The game has a system where there are in-game timers for growing herbs, brewing potions, and waiting for someone to mine crystals. However, the required time increases if players already have too much of those resources. This means the player will have to remember to backtrack every so often to the locations where all these items are being prepared. This is helped somewhat by the fast travel system in the first region of the game, but the second region doesn't have a fast travel system for some reason, which feels inconsistent. Speaking of travel mechanics, there is a neat, but underutilized feature where once you beat the first region, the world map representation of it can be walked through, allowing you to revisit specific places very quickly.
The game has a New Game Plus, but it isn't necessarily easier, since the player starts at level 1 without the ability to fight random encounters. While this means the player won't have to waste resources on random fights, they won't be able to grind to learn skills earlier than normal. The upside is that the player gets to keep their equipment and consumables, which means it's advisable to accumulate a lot of resources on the first run and pick the light path for the second choice. Additionally, it looks like NG+ also increases levels automatically so that the party is evenly leveled with the mandatory enemies. Even then, I feel like some enemies are actually dying faster than on a first run.
[h2]Other[/h2]
I noticed that the battle music seems to be the same whether you're fighting a regular enemy or a boss. It's a minor nitpick, but I think the bosses should get a different theme and the final boss should get the best theme.
Another minor nitpick is that the Twin Swords weapon doesn't actually change any of Yori's battle animations to use both swords. Personally, I think that would have been a good visual powerup, especially for his 4-hit skill.
[h2]Verdict[/h2]
6/10
Overall, it's playable, but not particularly impressive in any category and there are some design choices that I disagree with. Fortunately for the dev's numbers, I still give recommended ratings if the game is at least a 6/10, since this means it at least has a few things going for it like the first region's world map mechanics. The moral of the story is that developers should never send me keys, since I may either forget I have the key or roast the game.
