WitchSpring R is a wonderfully pretty, and well-made game for sure, but also fell into a lot of pitfalls that many, many JRPGs tend to.
The story was remarkably strong for the first half, as it wasn't just doing lore/world-building and exposition dumps, but slowly opened itself up over-time, keeping me invested. The various characters' growth also felt believable and earned.
However, I'd say around chapter 4-5, in the second half of the game, the story does start to lose steam, and starts to reveal itself as a more typical/cliché JRPG/fantasy anime plotline. The MC who is set to "save the world", who wants to help absolutely everyone except the "big bad", and a somewhat weird and out-of-place romance.
I have to expand on the "romance", because it could have easily ruined the story, but thankfully was kept minimal. What was there felt half-baked at best though, mostly because Justice is such a generic, one-note kind of character for a huge part of the runtime. Don't get me wrong, he does have some moments and does grow in the story, but compared to Livya, Justice is just far too backloaded into the ending sections the game offers in the main (non-epilogue) story.
Thankfully, every other notable character was done really well, whether the gag character of Alfredo, the MC's main companion of Black Joe, or even the more antagonist side of the bunch with the likes of Kate. Piberry herself is a bit cliché, but does shine at points when alongside the other characters.
Although my enjoyment of the story stayed at a 8-9/10 up until the ending, which was probably a 6-7/10, there were other issues present in the questing system, mostly being that a lot of side-quests and side-content is completely missable. It's weird, because there's exclamation mark icons on the minimap for minor stuff, but then there's multiple mini-quests you can just lock yourself out of, or straight-up not know exist. Examples being Melina's "dragon quest", Luna's "friendship", Reina's "family sword", and then some extra dialogue with Livya and Ethan (before CH.4). All of these can award gear, weapons, or achievement progress, and they also change the ending cutscene and dialogue slightly.
I ended up referring to a guide, and got most of what I needed on my second run-through of the ending segment, but did need to save-edit a unique key into my inventory for 2 achievements. Unfortunately though I will still need to go through an entire New Game+ to get the missing dialogues for the full ending and the "Good Listener" and "Unspoken Feelings" achievements.
The bulk of the rest of the game is then mostly split between exploration and combat. Exploration was really close to excellent, as there are a ton of bosses and unique gear hidden away in little side-paths, which does incentivise being thorough. It's not without fault though, as even here, there's easily-missable content, mostly because of a specific pet you can capture that allows traversal over water. If you didn't previously know, or didn't pay close attention, some parts of the map are going to appear inaccessible, meaning missed gear, pets and achievements again.
Combat for its part, was challenging enough at the start, even on easy difficulty (for some boss mobs), but later became a breeze when my Pieberry had enough HP and STR to simply tank and out-damage most everything the game offered, outside of some "end-game" and optional bosses (even then it wasn't hard). I ended up avoiding a lot of enemies toward the end, because I would either have to sit through 5 minutes of animations, or just one-shot them, and I didn't need the pitiful amount of materials they'd offer. I also didn't have quite high-enough AGI to simply "Quick Farm" a lot of them either.
I do like the fact that you can kind of build and train Pieberry to fit your preferred playstyle, whether more frontline warrior, glass-canon mage, or mixed spell-sword, even though it's a little weird, given how she's meant to be more of a stereotypical witch.
Lastly, the training and crafting parts of the game... Well, training does add a fun little mini-game, but you need to do a lot of combat and tasks to actually get enough training points to really matter stat-wise. For crafting, outside of the magic circles for higher-tier magic, or a couple of side-quests, I barely touched it. I had so many potions and HP/MP restoration items through general gameplay, it was just never needed outside of scripted moments. Stat-boosting items were also plentiful through Ralph's shop.
Overall, WitchSpring R is a pretty and solid game, but doesn't quite achieve greatness. I do not regret my purchase and definitely enjoyed my time with it, but it does lead me to question whether I would have spent the full ~£30 asking price, rather than the £15-20 I did actually spend on it. On sale, I would recommend it.
