Spoilers ahead. I try not to give away too much, but still beware.
This game seems to be heavily inspired by Soul Rui after mini. Not a bad thing, but very noticeable if you have played it before.
The basic set up is similar with a supernatural entity trapping our protagonist in a pocket dimension in which she has to overcome four different challenges to win back her freedom or succumb to the entity. Speaking of, three of the four mini games are also very similar to Soul Rui after mini. The office starts and ends like the school, the goblin cave uses a gameplay structure akin to the forest and the night club here is similar to the night club of that game.
You can tackle the mini games in any order you like, but Sylphy acts in certain opening segments like she entered the other games beforehand even if she didn’t. In each mini game Sylphy can mess up five times before you get a game over. Not to worry though, a game over only increases her corruption with a scene and boots her back to the lobby, while your progress and items for that mini game are kept. For simplicity’s sake let’s go through each of them from left to right.
1. The Temple
This one harkens back to the first Sylphy game. Sylphy has to infiltrate a Temple to steal her ticket out of that mini game. You start in a forest to get yourself familiar with the controls and the returning grappling hook. Once you enter the temple proper you need to interact with friendly NPCs, avoid guards, gather items and solve puzzles to reach your goal at the top of the temple. While I do like the set up and most of the execution, there is a lot of empty space that you only wander through and a lot of dialogue and details only played for laughs or mood that could have been used for gameplay or scenes. Like on one floor Sylphy stumbles across closets with nun habits in there and she only comments on their design without even considering going undercover with one.
Once you got what you came for, Sylphy will be forced to complete a set of 11 puzzles in a limited amount of steps. And the mini game takes a nose dive here, the puzzles just outstay their welcome like this and you only have just enough steps in each puzzle to reach the goal, so no alternative solutions and no room for mistakes.
2. The Office
This may be the weakest one out of the bunch. It’s like an adventure game, so you need to collect items and solve puzzles to … it’s not really specified what Sylphy actually needs to accomplish here or what this office even is. Through exploring you can find out what you need to do: play the arcade machine in the break room and pay attention to the high scores, it may be connected to the rumored secret floor. Otherwise there is no real gameplay here, you pick a few locks to get coins for the arcade machine, run around and talk to NPCs, that’s about it. That secret floor may as well have been it’s own separate mini game, since there is next to no connective tissue between the office and it, there are some puzzels to solve here, but not much.
3. The Night Club
Here we have a small JRPG. Sylphy needs to increase her rank by pleasing the customers which is displayed by small mini games and actual combat. The mini games are all timing based, be it pressing confirm at the right time, keeping a bar filled to a certain point or playing DDR. All three are short and easy, but lack variation. The combat is similar I’m afraid. While the ideas and animations are nice, it just quickly becomes a chore. Also some specifics to the combat: I don’t know if it’s intentional or a bug, but even though the combat starts of with Sylphy only having to fill the enemies’ gauges once to beat them, either with increasing rank or due to me attempting the boss, the gauge only inflicts a set amount of damage after a certain point. There are only two regular enemy types, with one missing often when he attacks and using a buffing/healing move for allies, even if he’s alone, so he is basically impossible to lose to.
There is also only a limited number of moves, two AOEs, one of which being useless since the type of enemy it would be used against didn’t show up even once, a stun, a regular attack and an attack which randomly hits one enemy twice or two enemies once each. There is also an option to surrender or to inflict damage on yourself.
With both combat and mini games becoming chores quickly this one is pretty tedious. On floor two of the club you can however rush through the guards to get access to the final room. There is also a room with a vent you can lock-pick, couldn’t figure out how to open the vent, but I guess it let’s you enter the final room as well.
Like the Temple there is a lot of potential here with friendly NPCs and setups but neither really get used and are just played for laughs or mood. Like for example some of the other workers could teach Sylphy new moves for combat or side quests like the guy on floor two wallowing in his own despair actually being able to be cheered up for rewards, but to my knowledge non of this happens.
4. The Goblin Cave
Didn’t comment about the outfit changes till now, but I really like the witch outfit. It’s only a small change with the hat and cloak but it works really well with her standard attire. Shame it messed up after my first visit and even the debug tool couldn’t fix it.
Anyway, back to gameplay. We have a rougelite RPG here. Once you enter the cave you only give Sylphy directions to follow at each cross road and decide what to do at events. Combat is simple, there are goblins and three types of slimes to fight. You can attack with the staff or cast magic. You have a free AOE water spell, which turns your single target electric spell into an AOE and you also have a single target fire spell as well as a dark spell. The events you can encounter include fights, events (usually fights, but you don’t know what you will fight), treasure chests, camp fires and a shop. You can rest at camp fires, exchange money for heals or buffs at shops and treasure chests can either be opened or left alone. My guess would be some chests may be trapped or mimics, that’s why the option is there, but I’ve encountered neither during my play through (I went through the cave three times to find the boss).
Sylphy’s goal here is to reach the depths of the cave and beat the orc residing there. There are also other exits, but they just give you an item for your next attempt and kick you out afterwards.
For the entire game, the animations are good and there are some fun and creative ideas here, but it doesn’t realize all the potential it has. While I appreciate the additional animations with other characters, cheeky comments by Sylphy, some dialogue as well as details through out, they lack gameplay integration. The entity trapping Sylphy might as well not be there, since he only gets involved with game overs and maybe one comment per mini game aside from the opening and ending. Sylphy herself doesn’t fare much better, her dialogue doesn’t do much aside reinforce that she’s lewd herself.
There are also a lot of bugs like the gallery after beating the game not getting rid of the previous game mechanics (so it boots you back into the lobby with a game over scene) and as previously mentioned the outfits messing up and the debug tool not being able to fix it.
The Office aside, there is also a lot left unclear to the player, like when Sylphy has access to her grappling hook and when she doesn’t. Like in the Night Club it just shows up out of nowhere on the second floor and isn’t usable anywhere else in that segment.
Still, even though I have a lot of issues with this game, I would recommend it, since I had my fun with it and would like to see where another game would go with a little more polish and options.
