Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc

Although I'm giving this a negative review with the only choices being the black or white "Recommended" or "Not Recommended", I'm doing it more to give constructive criticism to the developer and inform potential buyers of some things positive reviewers might be leaving out. The difficulty curve is extremely harsh. You have four levels of difficulty you can play at. Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane. In the first three you can pause the game at any time in order to take your time placing units (spirits), looking at tooltips to read weaknesses, etc. In Insane you cannot pause at all. I started out playing on Normal and assumed that it wouldn't be too hard to progress at that level. Wrong. Even at Normal you will most likely quickly get overwhelmed and have to fall back to playing levels on Easy. Even on Easy you will most likely have a hard time completing progressive levels and have to go back to earlier levels and grind random rewards (Item Blossoms) and sell those rewards for money that you can buy enchanting items with from the store and upgrade your Spirits items with. This however is another issue in my opinion. Completing levels only gives you experience that levels up your spirits and the item blossoms depending on what difficulty level you played and if you did it perfectly without any enemies making it across the end line and damaging your 10 health points. It used to give fewer item blossoms but it was patched to increase the rewards. On Easy you will get 4 random Item Blossoms (3 + 1 if you do it perfectly) from a specific pool of items that the level can give. Completing levels does not give you any money. You have to sell your random rewards to the shop for ~33% of their value that the store sells the same items for. Also, sometimes rewards consist of patterns that unlock items in the shop; aka they have no monetary value. So to enchant one of your spirits weapons up to +10 you need to grind easy levels repeatedly getting rewards such as Bows that you sell for about 33 currency or Coins that you sell for 97 currency. You might get around 200-350 currency per repeated grind. You need 400 for each level of enchanting up to level 10. I think it would be better if the game directly rewarded currency for each level completed instead of needing to grind materials and sell them for low percentages repeatedly. The story is pretty random and hard to follow. None of the characters know why they're there or why they're doing what they're doing. The main character seems to have amnesia. It's hard to follow which character is even talking when you're clicking through the dialogue at a decent pace. When there are four characters on screen and two are named "Mindy" and "Minzy" and two are named "Nina" and "Nino" it can kind of be confusing which one is saying what. Especially when there is usually no indication of a character starting to talk besides the (very similar) name changing. Aka the character art won't change and the speech is not appearing above their head; it is always in the same place down in the center. Even when the character suddenly changes moods and says something like "What!? Really!?" their expression won't change and they still have the same smiling expression art used. And you cannot scroll back up to past conversation to check something if you missed it or were clicking through too quickly. You can usually do this in visual novels and having that feature would be great. It's worth pointing out that there is some Engrish. It's not constant but there is quite a bit of it. Incorrect grammar, missing words, words in the wrong order. For example: one time a line said something like "Quick, we to need go now!" instead of "Quick, we need to go now!". It's definitely not impossible to understand but there are a bunch of errors. Although it isn't a huge deal it can be kind of annoying dealing with the different elements of the enemy mobs. They have weaknesses and affinities. The weaknesses are simple enough; a raccoon spirit enemy has a weakness to fire? Great, your fire archer spirits work well against them. The annoying thing is the affinities. If they have a lightning affinity for example they will absorb and heal from any lightning damage. There are Leapie enemies which hold shields that have a lightning affinity and are immune to all damage except any that has shield piercing on it. They're weak to wind so once you get the wind archers with shield piercing you obviously use those to kill them. But when tons of Leapies come out on all five rows it's kind of annoying to have your Lightning Mage spirit up. It will just constantly attack the Leapies and heal them. You can't even desummon spirits once you summon them. You do have the ability to pause the game and manually click and redirect the Lightning Mage spirit's attacks to another enemy (if any are there) but as soon as it kills it it will just attack the next closest enemy (probably a Leapie) and start healing them again. It's not worth constantly manually redirecting your dim-witted spirits attacks for every kill, so I just end up not using the spirit at this point. There have seriously been rows of enemies that include alternating Leapies (weak to wind) and Squirrel spirits (wind affinity, heal from wind damage) over and over. One leapie, one squirrel, one leapie, one squirrel, etc. You need to place your wind archers to kill the Leapies, but as soon as the first Leapie drops it will continue to shoot the next enemy - the squirrel - that will just block it's attacks and heal from it. You can use other spirits to kill the squirrel enemies but your wind archer spirit will continue to shoot them as well until it despawns, constantly healing it and competing against your own spirit trying to kill it. The elements can be kind of frustrating and rather than purely rewarding using the correct elements to do more damage the affinities seem to limit what you can do and punish yourself in some instances. Another thing I hope could be changed is sometimes you try placing your own Leapie spirits to block incoming waves and if you misjudge whether or not you have enough room to place the Leapie it will just instantly delete it once you resume game because it was a fraction too close and got placed on top of the enemy. And then you are sort of screwed or at least at a big disadvantage as it goes on its 10 second cooldown and the wave you were trying to block is probably sprinting or equally dangerous. You can be very conservative in such situations and just place it another square back but having an indicator telling you that you can't place it there would be nice. Overall I think that it is a pretty fun game. It can be rather hectic and the difficulty curve does seem kind of broken as of now. I don't think it should be necessary to both drop down to the lowest difficulty and still need to grind to improve your spirits because you can't even progress on said easiest difficulty without doing so. The developer is very defensive about people commenting on this. I've seen responses with him questioning if they listened to the tutorial or are using strategic pause enough or that he sees they haven't enchanted a weapon to +10. I have done grinding to enchant multiple weapons to +10, etc, paid attention to every tip given and pause a lot (it's necessary); it's still challenging even on easy. I hope the information I provided was useful. There are many positive aspects to the game; I am simply chosing to focus on the negatives since nobody seems to really point them out. The developer seems to care about the game and still be involved in improving it. I do think it's a decent game. [u] I recommend picking it up. [/u] Edit: In a recent patch (you can see him post patch notes in the announcements) the developer improved the electric caster spirit's AI and increased item sell values (from 35% to 50%), improved some typos, etc. He continues to work to improve the game.

When it comes to strategy games I've come to expect a long and arduous process of tutorials and insane difficulty curves that keep me putting them off, but what's so pleasing about Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc is how quickly I was getting into the pace, drawn into the action driven by attractive artwork and incredibly snappy background music. The story is colorful to put it simply, and seems to take after the Magical Girl/Transformation tropes often seen in 90s anime. Much like the magical shoujo series I remember seeing in my youth, the quirky and fast moving story is mostly lost on me and I'm just content to relax and take in the pretty artwork and up-beat tunes driving this off-the-wall story. The plot is strange enough to keep me wondering about some of the more mysterious characters and their situation while offering just the right amount of anime cheesecake to be entertaining without overstaying its welcome, but overall [b]where Winged Sakura really shines is the unique brand of fast-paced defensive tactical combat.[/b] The gameplay at first glance simply resembles a more anime themed Plants vs. Zombies with player units being placed as defense on the left while enemy hordes advance from the right, however the similarities stop here as Winged Sakura takes a more complex and refined departure towards deeper RPG mechanics and unit variety. Just as you're starting off you already have three distinct units fully displaying the importance of their combined teamwork. Leapies are shielded units and will act as a defense block to gather a row of enemies while Magicats will bombard the cluster with a magical area attack, whereas the Sneaky Cat archers will pick off the stragglers with a simple arrow shot. Units both ally and enemy have their own elemental strengths and weakness, adding another bit of depth to planning your offense. With the addition of a multitude of spells the user can cast to change the tides of battle, things can become a little overwhelming with how much multitasking goes on. Luckily this is remedied with the insanely useful Strategic Pause command, allowing even the slowest of strategists to carefully plan their next wave of defenses at their own leisure. Of course, once you get to Insane difficulty this option is no longer available forcing you to put your prior practicing to the test. While the basic formula of the game may be simple and easy to pick up for all skill levels, the difficulty quickly ramps to ridiculous heights often forcing me to drop the setting to Easy until I leveled my Spirits (units) up enough. It's accessibility keeps victory in sight at all times despite this challenge, and the player will always have a good idea of what they did wrong at the end of a soul crushing defeat. With each return to these frantic stages of multitasking and quick wits I was more excited than the last, picking up on new strategies and complex combinations If you aren't totally adverse to bits of corny albeit fun anime fluff and filler this is nothing short of an incredibly deep strategy title, and one I recommend to any fan of the defense genre or games with heavy RPG mechanics such as crafting, enchanting, and stat building. The artwork is eye-catching and very attractive and the constant stream of interesting character designs keeps your attention, as does the catchy original soundtrack.

An excellent defense game with heavy RPG elements. Gameplay consists of enemies appearing from the right side of the screen, and you summoning spirits to prevent them from reaching the left side. The spirits you summon are short-lived, so you constantly have to summon new spirits to keep up with appearing enemies. You can pause the game anytime (except on highest difficulty), allowing you to plan your defense precisely. As mentioned in the opening line, Winged Sakura has extensive RPG elements as well. Each spirit has level that increases as the spirit participates in battles, and can equip its personal weapon and an accessory from a fairly large list. Equipment’s quality can be improved by both finding or crafting higher-tier versions of the item, or upgrading existing item (and as upgrade cost raises with item’s tier, upgrading lower-tier items is often a preferable alternative to getting higher-tier items). The story is very interesting, and cutscenes are done in anime style, with beautiful character art. Both cutscenes and battle art is very good in general, as can be seen on screenshots. I recommend Winged Sakura to all fans of defense games, doubly so if they like anime style as well!

This game is really unique and extremely challenging. It is a very fast paced lane defense where you use spirits to kills enemis and spells for mass lane damage. It is very enjoyable, with many upgrades, spells, weapons, and spirits to choose from. I played for over an hour and cannot wait to continue later this weekend! The only downfall of the game is some of the menu buttons are hard to recognize as they only have a couple letters on them...but eventually you figure everything out through experimenting.

A hardcore TD game which requires a lot of micromanagement and punish you for even little mistake. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1401315726 This game feels and plays like any Japanese game. UI reminds me Final Fantasy. There is a story in anime visual novel style and etc. So, for me, European player, It was hard to understand the game. Especially because of annoying and forced tutorial and... extremely hard difficulty. I lost third level 3 times before I beat it. After you gather you attention the game becomes good. It bring new mechanic to the TD genre. All battles pass on the same map. There 5 long rows. Reminds Plant of Zombies.... but.. All your towers have limited lifetime. So you need to constantly summon new towers. For example, there is a tower which last for 4 seconds and has 1,5 cooldown. So this is more action game, then strategy game. Yeah, you can set the game on pause, but anyway the game requires a lot of micromanegment. You start with 1 tower and unlocks new tower during the story. I unlocked 4 towers in 4 hours of the gameplay. You also get some stuff after the missions. You can sell it to but items with permanent effect for your towers. Also, you can upgrade these items. And there is a skill system with a few option. In overall, the game offers a lot of interesting hours. But be ready to suffer :D https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1401315669 Pros - Innovative gameplay for TD genre. All towers has limited timelife. - There is a story in classical anime novel style. - Gameplay could be very enjoyable for people who seeks challenges - Nice soundtrack Cons - Game is incredibly hard. If you leak one pack of monsters - you lose. And there are many packs. - You play all levels on the same map - Not enough diversity in towers and enemies - Annoying forced tutorial - Confused UI. Reminds me old Japanese games. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how it works https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1401315783 [h1]Resume[/h1] It's more action game then strategy game. Yeah, you need to think where to place towers, but mostly you need to place them fast, very fast. Towers has short life, so basically, you just put towers again and again until the level finishes. The game is very hard. I lost third level 3 times before I completed it. So... if you like to a lot of actions in the short period of the time - you might like the game. If you prefer chilly and relaxing gameplay - don't take it.

In Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc, you read through brief dialog segments, interact with a shop/menu system, and experience a Plants-Vs.-Zombies-like combat system. I'm often a sucker for tower defense sorts of games and persistence progress such as level-ups and relevant unlockables, so I gravitated toward this purchase and gave it a fair go. [h1]Story[/h1] Before I talk about anything else, I have to say that the story-telling is a bit clumsily handled, with plot-twists being too strongly hinted at and a small cast of characters in which two pairs of characters have the same names (Mindy and Minzy, and Nina and Nino), each of whom are on-screen at the same time with their dialog only written (no audio), without speech bubbles or text position changes, making it confusing at first as to who is saying what, and which character is which. There seemed to be a few decent bits of story writing here and there, but it just felt mishandled. That said, I don't really hold it against the game. I didn't come to this game or even this genre for plot at all, so although I didn't think the parts of the story I experienced were very good, I don't mind in the slightest. [h1]Brief Positives[/h1] Now, that said, I found numerous qualities I liked about the game; particularly its visuals and its music/sound. As far as 2D games go, the art style was enjoyable to the eye, and the songs, though few, were quite good and didn't get old for me. Also, the leveling system for both your spirits you summon as well as your playable character's skill tree were enjoyable during the more than a dozen hours I sunk into the game. The gameplay itself is even enjoyable. I was concerned that I wouldn't like how spirits you summon disappear mere seconds later, but it kept the game rather intense, and the ability to pause and quickly place more spirits in a hurry to stop attackers was well-done. Win the battle, and you get experience and item rewards. Therein, however, was the core issue I had with the game. [h1]Grinding, Grinding Ad Nauseum[/h1] With many JRPGs, the deciding factor on whether or not the game is actually fun for me to play comes down to this question: "is the grinding fun and does it feel really rewarding?" With Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc, the overall answer was "no." The leveling grind was not a problem for me; rather, it was the item grind that caused the game to stop being enjoyable for me. Weapons and accessories are obtained either as random drops, or you can buy or craft them, provided you obtained the schematic to add it to the shop menu. Of course, those schematics are also random drops out of 17-20 or so other items that infinitely replenish, adding back to the pool of items I don't want to get. You get 4-5 items per battle playing on the reasonable early game difficulties (I played on Normal; beat a few on Hard), and those battles can take about 10 minutes or so, each. This might not sound like a problem. Let me clarify it a bit. Weapons are colored in terms of quality, like in Borderlands or Diablo. If I had a white bow, I would need a green bow purchase schematic to buy a green bow, or I would need a green bow crafting schematic and parts to combine with the white bow to make a green bow. If I just have bad luck, I can be incapable of ever getting a green bow. The various weapons of the game are all this way; same with accessories. If I get a blue bow crafting schematic sometime, then I'll need a green bow to craft it, and if I was never able to get the green bow, then I'm screwed on ever getting a better weapon for that spirit until I luck I spent [b]7 hours[/b] just farming to get 2-3 early-game schematics this morning, and [u]did not[/u] end up getting them. 7 hours, in an area where the XP payout isn't good, and playing the same couple of levels repeatedly got really old. It's not like I was hunting for some late-game uber-rare show-off loot. This was early-game stuff, and this should not take this long to obtain. At least one guaranteed schematic as loot from each round would mean only having to play some of the same levels only 7 or 8 times in a row. That sounds a bit overkill already, but as it is, it took me 7 hours this morning trying to get 2-3 particular item schematics and not succeeding. If I had gotten the schematics, then I'd need to craft those items, and then upgrade them up to ten times using more and more and more parts obtained from hours of grinding these battles. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] I initially enjoyed Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc, but lost all enthusiasm for it after realizing the deliberate amount of excessive grinding the developer elected to put into the game. As I mentioned earlier, when I'm grinding in a game, I want to feel that my time spent has been rewarded, and 7 hours invested without the low-end schematics I set out for is simply unacceptable. It is very disappointing as I would liked to have followed the odd, albeit clumsy story to its conclusion, and seen the later levels and spirits of the game. Update after another 14 hours: The grind is truly abysmal, and the story is handled like the worst visual novel imaginable, with actions being stated as poorly-written narration. Moreover, several characters have names that are identical with a one-letter difference, further muddying things, and an off-screen character has been introduced to clutter up the story even though it isn't terribly complex. Story and characters are often the biggest appeal to me in games, hence why I adore the Danganronpa series. However, with WInged Sakura: Mindy's Arc, I found myself literally scowling as I read through the story. For me, this game is just dreadful from a story, character, and gameplay perspective...which is essentially all I care about when I'm gaming. And it't not like this is Undertale, so there's no epic soundtrack to give me some singular thing to praise the game for. I cannot recommend this game, and would encourage you to try just about any other game you're interested in, rather than getting this one.

They Remembered the Neko Maid: A Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc Review. I love tower defense. I do, the idea of building up a massive wall of peons and watching them go about bringing destruction to the lemmings below has always been a type of game that inspired me. And my other guilty pleasure is that cute anime garbage that makes me happy. Games like Recettear and 100% Orange Juice, whereas lacking in violence, still can make you smile just from the smiles on the cute characters faces. But wait. Those things don't mix...or do they...? They can sure try. And here we come to Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc: A fast paced anime-styled tower defense game by Winged Sakura Games. I'm sure I've lost you already, so allow me to clear things up now. This is not the type of tower defense game many people will be expecting. It's beyond fast paced, it's hectic, and though I've yet to actually find a need for it, the game comes with a "Strategic Pause" (This is a normal pause, but allows you to catch your breath, refill your drink, think about your next move, or run out into the rain and question your current life choices). The game is structured very similarly (so far) to the first levels of Plants versus Zombies, another tower defense game that this one, like many others, so desperately wants to live up to. Except this time around, it's cats versus....the same exact cats, and your cats are on a timer. By this, I mean they fade away in seconds, or even after they attack ONCE. So you will be constantly reapplying the towers and struggling to keep yourself from being overrun by.............cats. Oh and a chicken! And I *think* I've seen bunnies by now. The gameplay is honestly pretty enjoyable. Fast paced is a nice breath of fresh air in the genre, and I'm always willing to try something new. So let's move onto...the...story...... Hm. If you're looking into buying this game, or at least have read the review up to this point, you're probably an anime fan. And most anime fans have enjoyed anime on television, from Adult Swim to Toonami, all the way to Anime Unleashed by from Techtv. Think back to those good old days--remember when you'd turn it on, and it would be an anime that you've never seen before, but the story was a good ten episodes in already? But you watched it anyways, not really trying to get into the story? Mine was .hack//sign. God save me, I had no bloody idea what was happening, but I watched it anyways. Point being, that's what this story is. You get into the story, and CLEARLY, you're in the middle, but the game makes no attempt catch you (or its characters) up to speed. They all start out like they know a bunch of secrets, act all chummy, and guess what? You're not in on the joke. The art style is charming if cliched', and there seems to be a lot to do for your characters. There's a skill tree, item crafting, upgrades, so on and so forth. I use the word upgrade despondently because Claws turns into Claws, but with a green name and a bunch of upward pointing green arrows on the stats. I would have liked to have seen the artists come up with cooler weapon and accessory upgrades akin to Drakengard style, where each upgrade looks a little more menacing. But since you only see these items in the inventory between rounds, I'm sure I'll get over it. This game is still very recently released and Team Winged Sakura Games seems to know what their doing when it comes to patching the game. But for now, don't be surprised when you have to grind the same "rounds" (all the levels are the same) over and over again. Which is probably a good thing, because the STORY mode, a term used VERY loosely, looks to be very very short from where I stand, at just around 5 hours, grinding included. However, I HAVE NOT BEATEN THIS GAME, so this shortness may and or may not be true. EDIT: Good news. It's infact quite a bit longer than I expected! This is a good thing. There is a neko maid added about an hour in. I am still waiting for an explaination for this beyond "because anime." All and all, I'm still playing the game, and it knows how to keep my focus. I feel like there isn't much substance, only one level, enemies are also allies, storyline thinner than the maids blouse's fabric, and upgrades are only just so because the game tells you they are. If you like anime and tower defense, you'll probably enjoy this game. There's a survival mode that I assume becomes unlocked once you beat the game, and there are some trophies, though it seems like they'd be easy to get. Lastly, the steam cards trade for this game at around 2$ a piece, and I've currently gained for. Do wih this what you will. This is Faust, thanks for reading. +Fast paced Gameplay +Classic modern Anime Design +Fair amounts of strategy required +Rewarding Grinding ------------------- -Unappealing storyline -Slightly non user friendly -Lazy design -A neko maid? Really. Come on. You're better than this! And Sakura? REALLY? Didn't sakura spirits just come out? Didn't it just forcefeed us these stupid trophes? This is what is known as profiling. These are not elements that make anime. I'm sorry, but this had to be said, and you know it as well as I do, Team Winged Sakura Games. Recommended: To those who want a tower defense game that is slightly different, but not outside the realms of what they've come to know and love from the genre.

It annoys me that I don't like this game. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the game, but the fact that I don't like it makes me want to find something to critique. But it's OK to just not like a game, even if everything in the game works fine as it does here. Why don't I like it? I love Plants vs. Zombies, Trolls vs. Vikings, and every other lane defense game I've played. So I [i]should[/i] like Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc...but I don't. Graphics, sound, sprite design, color palette, attack patterns, variety of units...I like all of this. The only thing that I don't like in this game is that your units time out: each unit you place has a short duration, and they disappear after a few seconds, [u]without getting defeated[/u]. Obviously, this changes the gameplay in a major way from any other lane defense game: you can't set up a defense of a lane and rely that the defense will continue to deal consistent damage over time. Instead, you have to budget to put smaller defenses in play, because you will be buying them over and over and over again. I just wasn't able to enjoy that change to the basic lane defense gameplay. That's on me. You may like the game, and there's lots of reasons why you would. I [u]wish[/u] I did. I keep coming back, trying the game again and again. It's like trying a food that you just don't enjoy but others love, like Red Velvet Cake: you periodically come back to it, sure that you're missing out on something great because everyone else loves it, only to find that, nope, your tastes still haven't changed. I love planning a defense and then executing that plan in lane defense games. I love arcade games. But this blending of the two - having to form a plan that involves frequently, frantically replacing your defenses because they simply vanish - just isn't to my taste. I don't know why, and I hate that. It makes me feel old, unable to enjoy something new and different. EDIT: I have since played a bunch more of this game, and my attitude toward it has mellowed a little. Built into the assumptions of the game is that you will be replaying each level multiple times, grinding in order to earn the currency to upgrade your defenses. Knowing that there is a way to get to complete levels makes me feel a bit better, but at the same time, I don't like being forced to play the same levels multiple times.

If you like Tower Defense type of games, this is worth looking into. Mindy's Arc is a TD with RPG elements where you have to be quite active, as your Spirits(towers) have a limited field time. In Easy, Normal or Hard, you have access to Strategic Pause, which which is pretty nice when you're new to a stage. The arts are pretty and cute and the soundtracks are decent. The story is a bit confusing at the beginning, but everything is straighted out by the end, so don't let that drag you down. I've never really been a big TD person, but I've enjoyed this game a lot.

小厂做出来的小游戏，数值有点崩、交互有点不好用、甚至立绘和cg都不是一个画风。 不过我还蛮喜欢玩这种小厂游戏的，经常能看到一些少见的玩法。在电子ed的情况下，换换口味还是挺不错的。 像这个游戏，就是我很想玩养成+塔防的情况下买的。明明舟游还挺火的，但pc上却根本没几个这类的游戏，也就小厂和黄油会尝试冷门玩法了。