But I think I'm at a good point to give my thoughts on the game.
Oh, and apparently this is going to be localized... in the 2nd quarter of 2019, I believe?
Also, as you can see above, I've used 50 hours to get to this point.
Also, I tried to include a few images, so NSFW.
First, the quick conclusion.
It is worth buying at its cheaper price.
And yes, I would say that Compile Heart was very smart in the move to sell this game at a relatively low price. Around $35, but if you bought it early, around $25.
To be honest, whenever I see people bring in lazy ports to the Switch at the big $60+ full price, I give them such a big eyeroll. I bet I could get the game cheaper on Steam or whatever. And they think they can trick the users into buying an old game for such an expensive price... just because it is on a new console? Hah?!
Especially Nippon Ichi, releasing Disgaea 1 despite it being hardly different from the original game, if anything different.
Anyways, before I get off-track, I definitely say Compile Hearts did a smart move there.
People are much more willing to buy what-seems-to-be-a-trashy-fanservice-game when the price doesn't give them two slaps in the face.
Yes, that includes me.
In general, the only thing attractive about this game is its characters. Because that is what it is.
You go around collecting cute anime monster girls and can interact with them.
It looks like it. And it really is. It certainly did not try to fool anyone and it didn't try to be any more than that.
And in that area, I think the game did a good job. The character artworks are pretty and cute, and everything is fully voiced (including the guys). There are a bunch of different personalities and types of girls, for your selection. There are a lot of voice lines, even for the non-story-related girls. This includes when you bump into a wall and when you touch them in specific places (like, they have multiple lines when you touch them on the head, different lines for the breasts, tail, etc).
Also, by changing their outfits, you can change their movesets and stats. So you have a fair amount of freedom in creating your team, as one character can do different roles. However, as I will touch on later, there aren't that many moves in this game, so while you do have a lot of freedom, it also means that a lot of characters will have similar moves/roles and there isn't that much uniqueness in battle.
However, despite them being monster girls, actually only one of them has non-human skin color. Heck, most of them are considerably human despite the type of monster they are supposed to be. For instance, Slime is... not a slime girl, but a girl on a slime. Lame...!
Of course, I'm being kinda picky though. But I would have preferred a few more un-humanish-y characters?
And of course, you have the touching mode, where you can touch around and see their reactions, touching in the right place in the certain amount of times.
To be honest, this mode is actually pretty hard to complete without prior knowledge of where to touch. Because you need to find the right location three times. The "correct spot" changes three times during the touching challenge, as you proceed through it. And sometimes, this correct spot can be something as small as the neck or hand, compared to a large target like the head.
It cannot be helped, but only the main girls get a special illustration for the touching mode, as shown in the first image below. (Yes, I literally snapshotted my own video, resulting in the time bar. I already moved the video to an external hard drive and did not want to retrieve it to get the image.)
The non-story side-girls reuse their character portrait, as shown in the second image below.
Of course, in exchange, the rest of the game is average at best.
The dungeon
is quite lackluster. At the least, do not buy this game hoping for interesting dungeons. There are a minimum amount of gimmicks, like ice floors, teleportation, and switches, but there are not many and confined to certain dungeons. And most certainly, do not expect any puzzles.
I previously referred to Stardust Amazoness, because both are fanservice + dungeon crawling, but this game focuses completely on fanservice.
However, I guess you can say that thanks to the simplicity, people can get straight to and focus on the fanservice and not get stuck on the non-fanservice parts of the game.
The fact there are four difficulty levels, including Easy, kinda helps support this type of playstyle.
Story
Yes, there is a story. Don't take it seriously.
...You kinda get an idea.
I mean, the story isn't painful or damaging and it kinda... works, I guess? But it is probably the last thing you should look forward to in the game.
Battle strategy and other... features... that kinda are there
Features like creating somewhat custom equipment is very ignorable. Heck, I did ignore them. What you get in-game elsewhere are good enough or far better.
And it is kinda funny I put it here, but the battle isn't really that interesting. One big problem is that there are very little moves. For both you and your opponent. So they aren't really that interesting.
It isn't completely boring, due to occasional enemies that fight differently slightly, but it really isn't that deep.
In the end, you'll just be Charge -> Attack-ing the entire time with your attacker while the other girls heal or support in some way.
You die. And die. And die.
You enter battle. Your opponent moves first. And someone on your side is dead by the time you get your first turn.
This is extremely common in this game. This is partially due to the fact there are some moves that have extremely high power and when used by an enemy, can cause instant death damage.
But guess what, it can get worse.
You enter battle. Enemy A uses an attack that hits your entire party. Enemy B uses an attack that hits your entire party. And by the time you get a turn, your party is half-destroyed.
Yup, extremely powerful single attacks and multiple enemies using party-damaging elemental attacks will haunt you from start to finish.
And so, with extremely powerful single attacks, you can just revive whoever gets killed. And thus why you will die over and over again and need to bring along a lot of revival items.
The problem is when you get multiple enemies. Multiple single attacks. Multiple party-damaging elemental attacks.
That causes game overs.
And because of this trait, from start to end, the normal enemies are always harder than any monster girl that appears by herself. On the other hand, monster girls that come with normal enemies are extremely hard... because of those normal enemies lynching on you.
On top of that, in the post-game dungeons, this becomes extremely prominent, as enemies who use the powerful single attack will deal out enough damage to kill a character TWICE. Like, I have 1700 HP and it does 3000+ damage. A normal enemy does this. And you bet they don't appear alone.
Heck, forget the post-game dungeons. The last boss is literally "Beat him up and occasionally revive a character that gets killed by his single-targeting super-powerful move". He has a move that hits your entire party, but he is by himself and it isn't enough to kill you...So you can just heal that off.
Of course, for people who can't stand that, you can always lower the difficulty level.
All in all
I think this was actually a fairly fun game to play, in its trashy rights. It certain is no masterpiece like Xenoblade 2 or Octopath Traveler. Certainly not a challenging, cool game like Etrian Odyssey.
But if you are looking for one you can just sit down and enjoy playing with cute girls, I think it is a good buy.
Just make sure you get it cheap though.
One other thought
Something I found interesting is that the game reacts to touching on the touchscreen. I guess this is because the original game was on the Vita and thus they could re-use the same control schemes?
However, one strange thing is that the only way to touch the characters outside of the touching challenge mode is by using this touchscreen. However, if you are in TV mode, obviously, you can't touch the touchscreen. Therefore, you have to play in the handheld mode in order to listen to the girls react to you touching various parts of their body.
On the other hand, the touching challenge mode reacts to both touch and the control pad.
Didn't have enough time to somehow add a control pad mode for the normal touching?
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