Science Girls

Blinded 'em with science.

Disappointment All Around I was hoping for a burn based tactics, what I got was a game that felt like it was designed by a high school Game Development class as a final project. It's like a collection of game parts that sound OK on their own, but never come together at all. The setting and characters work fine, but they try the slap on a flimsy explanation that wasn't fully hashed out and never amounts to anything. Next it the combat. There is no strategy and the closest thing to tactics in the game is the Hypnotize-Defend loop to regain SP (more on that later). Once you get out of the school, basic attacks are useless, and high cost and low return. Next comes the RPG elements. Stat scaling is a joke. With each level, you gain 1 stat point you can use to improve a base stat or unlock a new rank on your skills. This means you have to choose between stats or skills. Choosing stats is a waist because your skills will be worthless. But leveling up skills makes them cost more but not that much more effective. Then then there are the recovery items <sigh>. When the average SP cost of a skill is 10 and your strongest SP recovery item give you 5, you may as well not have recovery items. Thus the only way to gain SP in a meaningful way is to have a single opponent, stun them and use Defend (which grands SP to the user and bonus SP if all front row party members are defending at the same time) over and over until you have replenished your SP then finish the fight. But wait, there's still the VN elements in there. I don't just mean how the dialog is presented in a VN style. The girls have profiles that list likes and giving them a recovery item that fits their likes, they gain double the bonus. Still not enough to be worth it though so why have such a random mechanic in the first place. This game feels like it had a Character/Settings designer, a game play designer and an RPG mechanics designer that were all making a game on their own, and they just patched them together. I don't think I will bet buying another game from this developer.

Cool game. Takes me back to highschool science and learning cool stuff! Monster battles are bit silly but fun.

kinda grindy but not bad for a rpg maker game its kool

The storyline is lighthearted and often humorous, but rather short. Most of the gameplay is exploration and combat. Instead of traditional JRPG classes, each character has a specific science they specialise in, which affects how they fight. Psychological science girl can encourage allies or demotivate enemies, chemical science girl hurls chemicals at enemies and can poison them, and so on. However, the combat gets repetitive and boring real quickly; in my experience (playing on the highest difficulty), I find myself spending most of my turns defending and stalling for time to save up the SP I need for my attacks. This is further exacerbated by some enemies having decent evasion. Combat also takes place fairly frequently, as enemies can chase you on the map, and move faster than you. Also, it kinda makes no sense that units in the front row spamming defend will regenerate SP faster than those idling in the back row, I'd think it should be the other way around. I got this on discount for under a dollar so I can't complain, but I honestly don't think it is worth its full asking price. Might be worth picking up whenever it goes on sale though.

Decent game to play if you are into it.

Easy controls. Looks good. Plays smoothly. Fun interactions between companions. A few nice gems like Room 404. Enjoyed this game, and recommend it.

Become a science girl and save the world from aliens! I have yet to play a Hanako Games/Spiky Caterpillar game that I haven't enjoyed, and I always really like finding good games with female protagonists. [b][u]Gameplay[/u][/b] Science Girls is a standard turn-based RPG. For the first portion of the game, when walking on the school map, you won't see where enemies are. In the 2nd stage of the game, you'll see enemies on the map, but they'll only move when you move on the map (so if you stand still, they won't continue to creep towards you, great for if you need to step away for a moment, or pause to look as your map). You can set your difficulty level between three settings. Normal setting was reasonable challenge-wise, and I only found the final boss to be any real difficulty. [spoiler]In the final battle, one of your girls gets taken (unsure what the determining factor is - in my case it happened to be my highest-leveled character), and her abilities used against you, apparently I "lucked out" with the hardest combination here, with Nicole being taken and my points being put right into her all-group attacks when I leveled her.[/spoiler] One of the Steam Achievements can only be acquired through playing on the hardest difficulty. Battles are on a "3d" style map, but characters don't move forward or back, except in your rank. Back row can never attack (and similarly, you can only attack the front row of monsters, excepting for multi-target attacks). [b][u]Audio[/u][/b] The music frequently had an old school RPG style battle music feel to it. The battle call voiceovers are icing on the cake. [b][u]Audience[/u][/b] I think this game would appeal to a wide audience. Despite it being a "school girl" trope-y setting, I don't recall any inappropriate jokes that would make this game unfit for a younger audience. [b][u]Game Time[/u][/b] I played through in about 5 hours, and I think I did a decent job of scouring the map. [b][u]Bugs[/u][/b] The only bug I encountered was some strange moving glitch on the alien world map. It primarily occurred when using a controller. The character would get perpetually stuck trying to move in one direction. Usually if I managed to work my way into an enemy battle, the encounter repaired the move glitch. When I used point/click with the mouse to move, I didn't notice any issues.

A good game since the release. It has been outmatched by recent games. When at its period, if it was not the best in class, but no doubt as a great one. I've been tracking this game at Hanako Games website from early access: when there wasn't a level-based skill activation. Initially, it impressed me. Lately, it became closer and closer to perfect. You might not should buy this game if you have a better choice, because we are in 2020 now. At the past, I would absolutely recommend this game as a time killer.