It's a pretty great game with phenomenal art and environment variety, although the enemies don't have much variety to them. The game is initially quite difficult, then gets easier when you get the mechanics down, then promptly ramps up in difficulty when the game throws curve balls in the mix. Some of the boss fights can be insanely difficult, but its intensely satisfying when you manage to beat them with a sliver of health to spare. The game is very much a hardcore dungeon crawler, without as much focus on RPG elements other than basic stat upgrade and item management. The story is quite barebones, although the Girl, who is the only real character throughout the game, has a good amount of character development over time and I grew quite attached to her. The banter was also quite good, and the game clocks in at about 40 hours for a single playthrough, though there is not much incentive for a second. The atmosphere in the game is quite great as well, and the progression feels natural, making the game feel like a genuine journey in a fantasy world.
In conclusion, while I would be hesitant to recommend this game to a casual jrpg fan, anyone who has an itch for a hardcore dungeon crawler and knows japanese will find the game to be quite rewarding, just don't look for a thought-provoking and intricate story. Also, as a side note, you can turn on subtitles in the settings for when the Girl is talking, which makes it a lot easier to get what she is saying.
Note: Does require some amount of fluency in Japanese to fully enjoy. There are times when spoken Japanese is being heard at the same time that there's a separate but usually related text discussion/reaction etc. Text is logged so you can re-read, but the spoken portions are spoken then gone.
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Oh man this game is so great. I never thought I'd enjoy an old-school first person dungeon crawler but this is one of those gems of a game that is just made top to bottom with love.
It evokes some of the same feelings I had when playing Ico/Shadow of the Colossus - really getting sucked into the environment due to the graphics, ambience, and great level design. There are times when I'll stop exploring just to look up and spoons and just take in this amazing world. Different "zones" have a really wide range of themes, some are wide open, sprawling areas and some are dingy lava lit tunnels that span several floors. It's hard for me to really capture in words how well this game captures these when the tropes are common to other games and genres.
Combat does occur and is very puzzley. Figuring out this portion of the game is worth the ride fare as well. I don't want to spoil too much because a lot of the fun is learning the system and then having to adapt when new twists are thrown in.
Character development is also a thing that happens beautifully, but is better without spoilers.
im loving this game even though i cant read it. its a fun dungeon crawler with a turn based rpg battle system. it could be my 3ds bit the 3d doesnt wanna work correctly with this game. i recommend this if you liked Ico definetly. it starts off as 8-bit like graphics bit eventually transfers over to the good3ds graphics. i've read the battle system gets more complicated as you progress through the the game but i just got it like 3 days ago. important info!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! requires a japanese 3ds to play japanese 3ds games. later