WiDGe->
44f
I actually mowed through a lot of games over the last years. Well, if it wasn't for Persona 5 taking a full ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY ONE HOURS to get through, that would probably be more games. But yeah, I finished Persona 5 off and stumbled straight into this. I felt like I really enjoyed the entire Japanese schooltime aesthetic so it was a pretty easy choice.
Lots of good reception online. I'd never played a Vanillaware game before, so jumped in.
What I expected was this to be was some sort of narrative driven mecha strategy battle thing. And... well, it was. Kind of. In part. I wouldn't want to go in too much on detail but the game is split into two segments. The meat of it is actually a visual novel told from the perspective of 13 individuals. On the other side is the strategy mech thing. The two interweave - bits of people's stories gate off depending on how you have progressed with other individuals and/or the threat scenarios in the mech battles - so you can't play one side or the other - but I would say a majority of time is spent going through the visual novel.
And it is cool, you spend a lot of time going through the individual narratives, the twists, the turns, trying to piece together the threads and really understand what is going on. And then sometimes you end up in a blowy up things situation. The one thing that mainly struck me was how gorgeous the game looks. At all times it is visually striking - apparently a vanillaware trait. And I really enjoyed my time with the characters, so it was obviously doing something right.
I've since pivoted to their (also well received) latest game Unicorn Overlord, which is a total switch. This is more game than story events, and very different in execution.
This, I need to get back in to. Switch 2 has got in the way somewhat but I've got a SWOLED out in my office room that I'm going to set up for those moments where I need a little mental downtime.
Lots of good reception online. I'd never played a Vanillaware game before, so jumped in.
What I expected was this to be was some sort of narrative driven mecha strategy battle thing. And... well, it was. Kind of. In part. I wouldn't want to go in too much on detail but the game is split into two segments. The meat of it is actually a visual novel told from the perspective of 13 individuals. On the other side is the strategy mech thing. The two interweave - bits of people's stories gate off depending on how you have progressed with other individuals and/or the threat scenarios in the mech battles - so you can't play one side or the other - but I would say a majority of time is spent going through the visual novel.
And it is cool, you spend a lot of time going through the individual narratives, the twists, the turns, trying to piece together the threads and really understand what is going on. And then sometimes you end up in a blowy up things situation. The one thing that mainly struck me was how gorgeous the game looks. At all times it is visually striking - apparently a vanillaware trait. And I really enjoyed my time with the characters, so it was obviously doing something right.
I've since pivoted to their (also well received) latest game Unicorn Overlord, which is a total switch. This is more game than story events, and very different in execution.
This, I need to get back in to. Switch 2 has got in the way somewhat but I've got a SWOLED out in my office room that I'm going to set up for those moments where I need a little mental downtime.