Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~

It's good but not great. Dungeon crawling and battling is decent. First you'll need to dig through the sound settings after half an hour of dialog all while you blow your ears out with not great music. The reason you'll have to do that torture is the main menu won't save your sound settings. Dialog is way too long with meh substance. You'll spend anywhere between 5-20 min till you end up just holding the skip button. Durability on weapons decay per hit so it's a constant loot finding/replacing game. I'm not a fan of the magic in this game. Seems underwhelming especially since you need the mp to heal yourself. It's like sacrificing how far you can get in the dungeon for something that doesn't pack a punch. Update: As you burn through equipment I've noticed it's also really hard to navigate equipping new items. You can't see the items stats that they're currently wearing. Most of the item menus are really bad plus weapon decay mixes in with it. Update2: OMG The menu will make you rage quit the game. You literally can't see the stats of what they are currently wearing. You switch who's in your party, well guess what now you have to switch everything to see what has the best stats. It's a chore trying to keep your girls all the same lvl. The core battling gameplay is what barely carries this game into recommended. I'll update later if game gets better.

I've written a review on this game last month. The full review can be seen here. https://www.lostsummerdayz.com/2020/09/28/review-undead-darlings-no-cure-for-love/ But, to summarize. It's a surprisingly in-depth dungeon crawler that doubles as a romance visual novel. The dungeon crawling can be a bit challenging, even on the default difficulty. It is rewarding to see the story unfold and the different girls interact with each other. All in all, it's a really charming game.

Ich habe noch nicht viel Zeit investiert, aber bis jetzt sind die Dialoge echt gut. Ich musste ein paar Mal wirklich lachen.

This game is absolutely amazing, the music is also a banger, I love playing visual novels and rpgs and this mixture is perfectly done!

‘Undead Darlings’ is a DRPG/Visual Novel developed by Mr. Tired Media and published by Sekai Games. It is available digitally for the Switch, PS4, Steam and GOG. The story is about Reggie, a survivor named Buck, and the several girls he meets(Pearl, Jordan, Kairi, Summer, Cici and Emily), who are affected by a zombie plague that has spread through the world but retain still their humanity(called ‘half-zombies’ by the official description), and taking a cure for the zombification left behind by Reggie’s father somewhere safe that they hope can mass produce it to cure them and the rest of the world. As in other DRPGs, battles are mostly random but also have fixed encounters, shown as Green, Purple or Red(for bosses) Muffins, like in the logo above, and the battles themselves are pretty fast paced. Each character’s stats and skills are balanced so they each are unique and have a kind of role(even if some skills are shared between a few of them). For example, Summer is more physically oriented, Emily more so in magic(and has the physical defense of a wet paper bag), and Pearl is a jack-of-all-trades type of character. Each of the girls also specific types of weapons they can use, such as Jordan who can use knives and ranged weapons, while Summer uses fist-type and bludgeoning weapons. Same with armor; characters can and can't equip certain types. Accessories are fine for everyone, though. Speaking of skills, you can even use stronger combo skills by having two characters using two specific skills in the correct order(which can be saved to a ‘Macro’ option for easier use). You may end up finding a few by accident yourself, but here's a list of them. A nice little detail I like is that each character portrait isn’t mirrored; their right and left facing ones are different and accurate to how they’d look that way. For example, Cici has a noticeable wound on her left shoulder, and no matter which way her portrait is facing, it’s always correctly shown. It’s nothing big, but it’s good to see. Weapons, which you find either from random drop spots(which can drop items, armor and accessories as well) in dungeons or from enemies, can break from repeated use, and you’ll need to use Scrap to raise their Durability. This can be gained from breaking down equipment you find at Buck’s truck(or by yourself after the QoL patch). I recommend possibly doing a rerun of a dungeon to get some extra Scrap in case you need it(and to use to increase how much Reggie can carry at once). There are also rare weapons that have skills attached to them you can find, though they have reduced initial Durability than normal. After the QoL patch, Buck runs a ‘shop’ of sorts, letting you trade Scrap for basic items, like early-game healing items and Vaudeville Hooks(they work like a Goho-M from the Persona series, taking you out of the dungeon). Scattered across each map, there are many Sub Events(with specific characters required to see them) you can start up to see little scenes with the girls and Reggie talking with each other. What they’re about tends to be related to either the dungeon, their lives before and after becoming undead, their relationships and friendships with family and each other, and so on. Doing these can raise your Affection stat with them if the right dialogue choices are picked, which can possibly get you Arc Scenes with the girls if it’s high enough at certain points, and get you their ending. Doing these events will also let you find out more about the girls, and possibly Reggie in a few of them; even ‘wrong’ answers may give some more info about them. There’s even a couple points, like when you get to the Roadblock, where the group splits up, and you can choose several options to go with certain characters, and possibly raise Affection with whoever is in said group. You’ll need to see all of their personal Arc Scenes and have high enough AFF.(as it’s shorted to) for those to be able to pick their specific endings. Amusingly, Buck seems to have an ending, too, technically, though it’s more of a bad ending, imo, since his will be the only one available if you can’t pick any of the others. There’s also a ‘Harem Ending’, which is more wholesome than it may sound like, which just needs all of the girls to have 70 AFF. The Sub Events and each character’s Arc Scenes can have funny, and also some pretty highly emotional and personal moments in them, such as one of Pearl’s that can be seen after finishing the Hospital, that really made me want to hug her, and, without spoilers, further drove me away from ever drinking. During some of these events, there’s also some really well done CGs of the scenes and characters. You’ll get some CGs just from the story, but others are tied to Character Events. The artist/character designer is '@/hitsukuya' on Twitter, for those interested. Honestly, I think the game has some very good character writing, making everyone distinct from each other, and not being one-note or just archetypes they may appear to be(like Jordan being a tsundere contrarian). They're much more than may meet the eye(especially Cici). Like most DRPGs, the dungeons are all pretty big, and each is pretty unique from each other. The School dungeon, for example, can admittedly be a nightmare to navigate, with large rows of desks stuck together to work your way through, a lot of switches to pull, several floors and pitfalls to deal with. There is an amusing sub event with them commenting on it, with a possibly-justifiable in-universe-excuse as to why they can’t just hop over the desks, for both Reggie(carrying everyone’s stuff) and the girls(atrophy in their legs from zombification). There’s not too many annoying traps to deal with overall that a lot of DRPGs have, aside from pitfalls, which, after a QoL patch, can be passed over safely if you use a Tactical Flashlight item. There’s also one-way doors and a teleporter maze, but aren’t too difficult to deal with. The game is fairly long, probably ~50 hours or so for your first run without skipping anything. Repeat runs will probably be shorter, since pretty much everything carries over to New Game+(only Key Items aren’t), and the QoL patch makes it so you gain more exp. for each additional run. I decided to make this thread since I really grew attached to the game, and hope for more people to get into it. It feels like a lot of heart and hard work was put into it.

This game is delightful, with one glaring exception. Reggie, the MC, is 100% a chud and has entirely contemptible dialogue. Otherwise though 9/10 would date all of these zombies again