So I gave Rakuen a try, and... To put it shortly, this story should never have been in the form of a game. It's purely focused on the story with no action or combat or anything whatsoever. You just walk around the place interacting with various things to uncover and advance little bits of the story. Now, aside from the fact that you're a potentially terminally ill boy in a hospital (I didn't actually learn a single thing about why he's hospitalized during the time I played), I never really reached any part where the story would pick up.
The first two hours that I played were doing a piss poor job at keeping me awake. I couldn't grasp what the story was going to be about - there was no big initial problem that needed fixing, instead you just walked around the hospital talking to people, looking for your stolen book, which continued for a good hour. I guess this served as some form of introduction to the characters, but gosh, was it forced. Then the next hour out of the two was spent in the game's alternate fantasy world, where certain characters correspond to the ones you saw at the hospital. And so the first two hours were spent on mind-numbingly boring things with no apparent reason behind them from the story's perspective. Again, a forced introduction, I believe.
It was only after that that the game gave a promise of what the rest would be about. I was to help the people I had met at the hospital in exchange for one of my wishes to be granted. But, sadly, by that point I had lost hope in the game. But this is still a rather highly rated title, as far as the story-only games go, so I didn't just want to leave it at that, and proceeded to read elsewhere what I was missing out on.
No spoilers from me, but the game is supposedly pretty sad towards the end, probably more so if you actually bothered to experience it. And while I wouldn't shun this game for the story, despite it having its flaws as well, I would most definitely call any gameplay attached to it a load of crap. I am not sure why the developers went the route of making this a game, when there was practically no effort put into making it bearable to play. Even for an RPG Maker game, the setup of the menus, interactions with items in the game, the placement of those items... It was terrible. Were you to write this story as a book, it would be a light 100-150 page read, not the 8 hour sleep-inducing semi-errand-simulator it is. The text runs too slow, there are too many tasks that need to be done that don't connect enough to the story, the distances are too long, and navigating the menus feels unnatural, which is even worse when this makes some of the characters sound like broken record boxes.
If you really want to know what this story is about and don't want to just read someone's compilation of it, then I guess you can play it. Otherwise I'd stay far away.
I cleared out a few games from the list that clearly had problems and that I no longer wished to try out. Coupled with the other game I played today, that should bring my total down to 102 games. (Plus some visual novels, and VR games I can't play.) That's just about 2 per day for the rest of the summer if nothing gets added to the list, which of course it will.
But that other game I mentioned was Hyper Knights. To describe it through other existing and popular games, it's a clear mixture between Mount & Blade's campaign mode and One Finger Death Punch. So you got a bunch of villages, outposts, and castles, which stock you with gold and troops to fuel your expansion. You can also hire knights to lead larger armies for automated conquest or more solid defense of your own lands. The enemy responds in kind. There's a lot going on on the map at all times, but the AI takes good care of it all.
When you personally enter a battle, however, your knight is not like all the others. You have a dash, two attack keys, and a power key. Each enemy has some keys above their head that each correspond to one of the attack keys you have. Like in OFDP, you have to hit the right key to deal damage to the enemy. The power key allows you to choose a power that can be an AoE, multiple dashes, shield, shockwave, or a bunch others - basically a super strong attack.
There's not terribly much content there, but given the mechanics I've described, it'd be at least as fun as OFDP, right? Well, it very well might be, were it not that some of the powers are way too strong, basically making the game devolve to charging those powers, then using them to win. But even worse than that is that unlike OFDP, there is no penalty for hitting a wrong button. So the strategy is just to mash the two attack buttons alternately until you get the special power, everyone's dead, or your fingers are too tired.
So, due to these pretty major flaws, I can't actually recommend this game, but I did have a few hours of fun playing it. It's quite the grind, and that couples well with the mindless combat system, so if you want to switch off your brain for a few hours and beef up your fingers, get tapping.
I cleared out a few games from the list that clearly had problems and that I no longer wished to try out. Coupled with the other game I played today, that should bring my total down to 102 games. (Plus some visual novels, and VR games I can't play.) That's just about 2 per day for the rest of the summer if nothing gets added to the list, which of course it will.
But that other game I mentioned was Hyper Knights. To describe it through other existing and popular games, it's a clear mixture between Mount & Blade's campaign mode and One Finger Death Punch. So you got a bunch of villages, outposts, and castles, which stock you with gold and troops to fuel your expansion. You can also hire knights to lead larger armies for automated conquest or more solid defense of your own lands. The enemy responds in kind. There's a lot going on on the map at all times, but the AI takes good care of it all.
When you personally enter a battle, however, your knight is not like all the others. You have a dash, two attack keys, and a power key. Each enemy has some keys above their head that each correspond to one of the attack keys you have. Like in OFDP, you have to hit the right key to deal damage to the enemy. The power key allows you to choose a power that can be an AoE, multiple dashes, shield, shockwave, or a bunch others - basically a super strong attack.
There's not terribly much content there, but given the mechanics I've described, it'd be at least as fun as OFDP, right? Well, it very well might be, were it not that some of the powers are way too strong, basically making the game devolve to charging those powers, then using them to win. But even worse than that is that unlike OFDP, there is no penalty for hitting a wrong button. So the strategy is just to mash the two attack buttons alternately until you get the special power, everyone's dead, or your fingers are too tired.
So, due to these pretty major flaws, I can't actually recommend this game, but I did have a few hours of fun playing it. It's quite the grind, and that couples well with the mindless combat system, so if you want to switch off your brain for a few hours and beef up your fingers, get tapping.
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