天下制覇

Don’t mind me, just going through some recent trials now that I’m finally done with papers and finals for the term. 

First up is World of TWAIN from AQLoop, one of my favorite doujin SHMUP makers in recent years. As the name would indicate, it’s based on the characters and world of TWilight refrAIN. Describing the game itself is a little iffy though. In brief, it’s an RPG to SHMUPs as the Tales series is to Beat Em Ups. That at its core has a lot of promise, especially with the ability to control the whole party on the fly, using characters as shields for the others and positioning everybody appropriately.

Unfortunately, the trial doesn’t really live up to any of that since it’s easy as snot and almost every attack is close range only, which makes… say… dodging, completely impossible. But I guess that’s okay because through the whole trial, I think only one character had a low enough defense to even take damage from the enemy bullets. This is also frustrated by a clumsy control scheme. The arrow keys would have been vastly perferred, especially on a laptop like me. Plus, accidentally clicking on other party members switches control to them, making controls even more annoying. Still, I really hope they fix the issues for their expected December Comiket release as it is an intriguing game concept.

You can pick up the trial here.
http://blue.sakura.ne.jp/~loop/game/twainrpg/index.html

 Next up, and much more satisfying, is the debut title from Chariot, the somewhat interestingly titled Virgin and Beelzebub and Tactics. As the name might suggest, it’s a… tactics… game, based heavily off of Advance Wars, but designed as an RPG, and filling out the rest of the title is the story itself; your usual "possessed by a demon, summoned to another world, cute devil overlord offers to do you if you’ll kill angels for her" schtick. Friends and family get sucked up along the way and pick up their own magical weapons and armies of catgirls.

The game uses the Advance Wars system blended with more traditional SRPGs. Units have set ‘army’ sizes of 1,000 no matter the level and attacks reduce army size and power. Units don’t lose attack power as quickly though due to attrition and even just the leader alone will do a good 100+ damage, thankfully preventing some of the Advance Wars silliness involving swarms of weakened units. Attacking units also deal permanent  damage (at least until the end of the battle) to a unit’s maximum army size, reducing their total strength even after healing. There are also all manner of skills, spells, and abilities to employ as well.

It’s not all promising though. Units are a tad generic for starters. There’s very little difference between your army of maids, your sister’s army of catgirls, catgirl generics, lizardmen, etc except skills they get. The ‘currency’ systems in the trial also seem very unfinished. Experience is pooled and then used to manually ‘buy’ levels for characters between battles, which is a little weird with how costs to level increase geometrically. Money, on the other hand, can only be used in the trial to heal the ‘permanent’ damage from battles. There is an overworld map you use to select battles, but still nothing to use all that money for. Character voices are also a bit… off… especially when it comes to generic monsters. The lizardmen sound like members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Regardless, I really liked most of the demo. It was challenging enough, even in its introductory levels. As a studio’s first game, it looks promising. It’s due out at the end of the month.

You can pick up the trial here.
http://www.chariot-soft.com/srpg/dl/download.html

And finally, a game I don’t even want to talk about and won’t deign to record, Softhouse Chara’s newest sim, Bad Pun About Hot Springs Inn. You ‘run’ a hot springs inn by watching numbers pop up across the screen. There are also terrifying-looking generic characters, like most of Softhouse Chara games. I think Softhouse Chara just gave up partway through developing this one and decided to just fancy up a bunch of spreadsheets before nipping off to the bar.

If you’re curious though… the trial’s here.
http://shchara.co.jp/04develop/yukion/00top.htm