Star Crystal Warriors Go!

Ok so first things first, this is a fun and enjoyable read. I liked it. I have never actually seen any of the animes about magical girls (Sailor Moon and similar, I guess), but it's not a hard concept to get. Young girls, they do magic stuff. It's cute. They keep their magic identities a secret. Don't think too hard about it. It's fun. *However*, I have a beef with this as a game and it's the use of personality trait scores as determinants of success or failure in various endeavors. Use the skills or don't use anything at all. It's not fun to consistently choose the "rational" or "pragmatic" option and consistently fail a check because somewhere along the line my "idealism" score got too high. Use skill checks to determine success or failure and use personality checks to determine flavor text around events. It's bad game design and punishes players for making different choices in different situations.

(played on app) I value the equality and inclusion in COG works. In this story some terms broke my immersion, especially when I play as a female character. Some NPCs call my character “guy” or “man.” My character says she will defeat “bad guys.” The phrase “strongmen competitions.” Please use gender neutral terms. For example “strongperson competition” or “strength competition.” I also noticed you already use “businesspeople” instead of “businessman,” which I appreciate. I hope you can keep that respectful tone and fix the inconsistencies above.

Kinda hard to rate this one... I'd give it a 6/10. I had high hopes for a magical girl IF and, yeah, fortunately I do see toooons of cool things here: - The dream concept isn't the most imaginative, though it works well and playing around with it was pretty cool - Getting to explore bits and pieces of the Dream Kingdom was equally entertaining - [spoiler]The "past life" bit, while predictable to a certain point, sure was interesting to explore[/spoiler] - Working on the school festival was fun and I enjoyed helping Morgan - I haven't played as a villain so I can't vouch for that, but I can guarantee the heroic path did feel very, well, heroic. I like to play as a goody two shoes, okay?! - Characters are a bit two-dimensional (I'll go into it!), though I like what they represented and most of them have some kind of development - I enjoyed the episodic nature of most villains and the main antagonist had some good set-up - Stats were very clear and stat-checks seem very very reasonable (...except for personality checks. Get rid of 'em, CoG. I think it's safe to say most people hate them.) - Nightmare descriptions were positively disgusting. Great job! - There seems to be a good variety in choices and consequences, though most of it seems to occur in the later chapters While all of that makes this a fun adventure, that's kind of all it has to offer. All I could think of while playing is that it's preeeeetty undercooked. The [i]concepts[/i] are interesting and imaginative, sure, but it hardly goes beyond that. The dreams lacked the actual craziness and unpredictability of real dreams, instead relying on run-of-the-mill scenarios (things rarely go wilder than a freaky amusement park) that fail to explore the depth they could've had. Most dreams follow a very repetitive formula of "Problem in real world -> Go inside dream -> Describe dream for a page -> Find Nightmare -> Defeat Nightmare with one to three skill-checks" which gets old rather quickly. This same structure can be seen with most conflicts in fact, from setting up a school club to saving the world, but I digress. I see tons of missed opportunities to genuinely explore the dreams of characters we've met to see their backstories and inner thoughts and intricacies that you can't normally expand on through dialogue. [spoiler]Why didn't we get to see our father's dreams to find context regarding our mother's death? Why is Morgan's initial dream not directly tied to how their character eventually develops? Why do we never get to see Orion's or Kit's?[/spoiler] Speaking of characters, their arcs are very two-dimensional. Development is scarce and I think that's due to a lack of interactions. Sure, the main cast is [i]mentioned[/i] quite a bit, but most days go by with short descriptions of a minor problem going on, us fixing it, and then moving on to the next, sometimes without much dialogue or consequence. The pacing is rapid-fire, to the point it took me a while to realize months have passed since the beginning to end of the story. I thought Orion and Kit had just been introduced, but turns out they were both at the climax of their respective arcs by their third or fourth relevant interaction. Even descriptions of the scenario are scarce and devoid of player interaction, like we're just constantly going through the motions. It's tiring. One of the best scenes was when we could just slow down and talk with Morgan about their parents' expectations. That was great(!) and, unfortunately, few scenes follow the same structure. At some points, the writing seems like it's going through a first draft, like a bulleted list, each paragraph describing things that [i]should[/i] be happening, but that never got written as proper scenes. Incredibly minor spoiler: [spoiler]One example is when you can get a limo for the festival dance... then the festival starts with a very short paragraph narrating MC getting in the limo, then an even shorter paragraph telling us that MC picks up their date, then they're at the dance. Not a single interaction or description.[/spoiler] I need development! Conversations! Small talk! Gimme something!!! Thus, well. The ROs seem fun, yet their screen-time is surprisingly limited considering the very short cast. The proper romance starts few pages before the last chapter, with arguably more special interactions than most other CoG entries, but not by thaaat much. A shame, 'cuz I was initially quite invested into how their classic tropes would develop to form full-fledged characters and ended up disappointed by the fact that they don't really get past that (childhood friend, brooding(?) ally, and enemies to lovers. Pretty standard :/) Outside of that, the dialogue obviously attempts to simulate what a teen would sound like, to varying success. It sometimes comes across as really corny. This is mostly fine, because the story's obviously intended to be a very juvenile and whimsical adventure, although... I feel like that tone falls apart at times? There are some mildly violent/gross descriptions during Nightmares that don't quite fit-in with the rest of the setting. They were reminiscent of Madoka Magika with the whiplash, though I think a more mature tone in general would've worked out better if that was the intention. Personally, I think I'd enjoy that story more, though of course ymmv. Also, the mystery surrounding the lore was kinda predictable other than a minor detail, so it can be a bit boring to walk MC through it. Not a big problem as the plot itself is at least pretty engaging and I like how it impacts a certain character! [spoiler]I like Polaris![/spoiler] At last, I did enjoy the first three and the final few chapters quite a bit. [spoiler]Kit's redemption was a bit rushed, but I really like their character and I'm glad they showed up more.[/spoiler] The lead-up to the big bad was very fun and I liked how much we could change the world by the end. Still, I think there's a big lull in the middle area there, from chapters 4 to maybe 7, where concepts could've been better explored and characters could've developed further, particularly our dad. All in all, definitely a good experience, though I wish it had more substance. It reminded me a bit of older CoGs (Sixth Grade Detective, Psy High, Diabolical, and, albeit I preemptively apologize for the comparison, Heroes Rise) in how the choices and plot are structured. That is, I feel like more risks could've been taken to create a truly remarkable experience and to escape the monotony of defeating the villain of the week. Nevertheless, it's a fun if flawed 6/10.

巴啦啦小魔仙，摩卡巴卡，变身！！！ 虽然感觉更像是降世神通+圣斗士的设定。 玩的时候非常有早期民工漫的感觉，尤其是死神。 浪漫选择也很典型日漫：天降 / 青梅竹马 / 宿敌。 满满的日漫feel, 还有校园祭。日常校园与神秘结合的很好; 还有俱乐部活动，不是那种浅层的选项，而是带有经营 / 危机 / 交流的设定。非常有代入感。 难得的是，在多线剧情的情况下，居然可以同时推进，不是强迫重玩的那种。还没有说教，追求野心/力量也是可以达成相对好结局的。真正意义上的自由选择✓

A simple IF game, but one I had a lot of fun with. The game does encourage you to play to your character's strengths, which made sense to me and made for a compelling character in my opinion. I enjoyed the other characters we ran into, and I liked how you could even be a jerk to one specific character and get away with it, because he deserved it. (If you know, you know. If you don't, his name starts with C).

This is a standard choice of games title: a text game with character stats that rise and fall based on decisions. If you enjoy that style, and are interested in Sailor Moon, you will probably like this. The writing is solid and the story is enjoyable magic/power of friendship fare.

I wanted a magical girl game, I got a magical girl game. And unlike most Choice Of Game titles, this one actually allowed me to reload to the start of a chapter instead of having to start right from the beginning when I wanted to.

Decent, fun, quite sparkly - overall, it is exactly as advertised. I'd've liked to have see a few more other potential teammates - one of the hallmarks of the genre is having a team - but that's a bit nitpicky. If the description appeals to you, well, the game matches its description, so give it a shot!

Straightforward and fun!

This is such an incredibly sweet game! And an unexpected one for me, as I haven't heard of it before the release. It's not overly complicated nor long, but it does what it set out to do very well - the story is your typical magical girl/boy/person storyline with all the classic elements you could find in that kind of narrative, and it shines in that simplicity. It's honestly a very comforting IF - which really fits the genre a lot if you think about it. I really appreciate the ending I obtained, and the choices about the future we get in it were a nice touch. I'm also in love with the romance I chose (Kit). It's one of these instances it truly felt like my MC and the RO/LI were literally soulmates. Which is a feat considering this isn't a very romance heavy game. It follows more of a classic (eastern) visual novel formula, in the sense that romance fruition is sort of an endgame rather than something that'd be developped during the entire story. But at no moment it felt lacking since it did what it wanted to do very well. All in all, this was a very good read and a very pleasant surprise to me!