Another great pixel art horror-adventure by Stranga. Much like Red Bow, it's very light on anything that is actually frightening, opting for an eerie, aesthetic that calls to mind a slightly bloodier Spirited Away.

As with Stranga's other games, there's endearing characters and excellent environments at every turn. The plot stands on its own somewhat well, but becomes much better in the full context of Stranga's previous games Red Bow and My Big Sister (the remastered edition, in particular). Everything up to the ending is great without full context, but I imagine the ending would feel a bit dissonant without the context of the other games. As such, I'd highly recommend playing them first.

I found most of the adventure game style puzzles to be straightforward and not frustrating, serving their job to keep me engaged with the environments well. Only the final puzzle threw me for a bit of a frustrating loop. Unfortunately, for my tastes, the overall narrative puzzle required to unlock the full ending was even more frustrating. Unlike Stranga's previous games, the conditions required to unlock the full ending were sprinkled throughout the game's 4 hour run time and easy to miss. The ending was a bit of letdown without earning all of the scenes, so I didn't want to just leave things there. I opted to just watch the portions of the ending I missed on youtube rather than replay the game in its entirety, which allowed me to a experience a much more satisfying ending, but also left things off on a bit of a sour note.

Still, despite the frustrations at the end, Ashina was a great time. I can't wait to see what Stranga puts out next!

!! This review is for the prologue/demo !!
I really wanted to write this review and get my thoughts out, but there isn't a page for the demo for some reason. I'm not sure what of this changed in the full release, but based on my experience with this demo, I will not be purchasing it to find out. Take all of this with a grain of salt.

I did not enjoy my time with this game. One of the reviews on Steam wrote 'this is not the game for impatient people', but I think it's beyond that. This is a game that's afraid to be a game. I spent about 35 minutes running this game, and five minutes playing it. What do I mean? I mean the game's run time is full of cutscenes and long back and forths that are neither interesting nor endearing and did not leave me feeling satisfied. To make it worse, the dialogue actually auto-scrolls, even though there's a blinker in the corner showing that you can advance at any time. However, the text will auto-scroll the second after the last character is typed in the box, so the only purpose you get out of advancing it is if you want to skip mid sentence. To be fair, you're prompted that you can skip cutscenes at any time with esc, but if you do so, the game gives you no prompting to your objective. I understand the need to have a bit of an introductory exposition from time to time, but there has to be a better way to do it than this. For example, upon arriving into the spirit town for the first time, we get a long pan of the city that ends on the building that the character we're chasing just entered. Many games do this, especially early on. This is ok. What's not ok, is that despite the fact that we just saw exactly where to go to continue the narrative, the screen fades out and opens back up IN the building. The game is so afraid of letting the player play it that it doesn't even let them take control after showing them exactly where to go.

But the gameplay itself isn't much better! It consists largely of fetch quests, which I'm honestly fine with, but I know is a turn off for many. However, the controls are not only not typical, but they're also never explained, instead tucked away in the menu. This was an issue for me, as the UI has the character portrait in the top corner with an empty square next to it, which I assumed was for holding a single item, as I couldn't figure out how to open the menu, and then assumed I just didn't have an inventory. When I first grabbed the soda, I continued exploring around the apartment before giving it to the sister. Then, I found the knife. After checking everything else, I went back to the sister to give her the soda... and the dialogue acted like I wasn't holding the soda. I thought maybe the knife had replaced the soda as my single item, so I checked the fridge, and then where the knife was... and nothing. After some more of the same thing with the knife, I thought I had softlocked myself, so I reset the game. It was only the second time around that I realized you have to go into the inventory to use an item, which is still, in my opinion, a very bad design choice.

The dialogue is very amateur and tends to go in circles, with the characters basically saying the exact same thing but in different ways a few times before it finally moves on, not to mention that none of the things the characters say sound natural or believable. The main 'perpetrator' literally talks like DJ Spit from Smiling Friends but in a way that is not at all endearing or funny or even natural/believable-- it's just annoying and feels so out of place. In fact, I didn't really like any of the characters. Him especially though was probably my least favorite, which is interesting, because based on the way that part of the game is set up, it seems as if the game really wants you to like him and think that he's charming or fun.

The art is probably the best part of the game, but even then, I feel like a lot of the character sprites are very hard to read. In the tattoo shop, I couldn't even tell what the guy getting tattooed was supposed to be, because the dialogue made no sense and the sprite was hard to read. But I will say this-- the world felt very cozy visually and there wasn't a single inch of what I would consider wasted space, emptiness, or unnecessary design.

Anyway, rant over. It's very rare that a game is so poorly designed that it really heats me up like this.

All the charm and style you'd expect from a Stranga game. Admittedly between the timeline and my dreadful memory there were some story beats that confused me a little, but ultimately the locations and characters shine bright.

I'd also had some trouble getting through this because I was too easily distracted for the first couple hours - but once I really switched off and fully to committed to it I couldn't pull away.

I feel like I maybe enjoyed My Big Sister a bit more, but it's hard to tell if that's because I played it in fewer sittings and was less confused by the story :p

Well worth playing if you liked the other games in the series