So as I'm writing this, I played this with my friends last night and felt like I can give a review of it as we did play three games and explored many of the mechanics.

First off, the game essentially plays like Mario Party and similar kinds of games with a board and having to roll dice to complete your objective, being to collect coins and earn stars. First one to three stars wins the game and ends it at the same time.

You also have access to cards that you can buy with the same coins to give yourself a boost in combat, which happens when you land on the same space as someone else, but you can opt out of combat if you either want to be nice or you don't have the attack cards that you think you'd win. Whenever you win a combat, as long as you're attacking, the enemy loses hit points equal to your attack - their defence score and as they all have limited health points, you can knock someone out, but they're still in the game. They just lose a turn as their character recovers, but the winner who knocked them out gets half of their coins too so combat can be an advantage.

You also have many different cards that can cause damage via either directly attacking a player or laying a trap for anyone who lands on that certain spot, along with others that manipulate your movement. Including forcing the dice to roll any number in case you want to only take 1 step instead of 6 or any other number.

Now the art style, is clearly aimed to draw the male gaze. Especially with certain character's outfits and is intended to entice people in with the selection of characters being cute girls that you can play as and even unlock an alternative costume that, in most cases, strips them down to a bikini, but not always. You also have the other kinds to fill in other interests. Including some guy named "uncle" who seems to have a smart phone for a face...

You unlock these costumes and additional emotes by, you guessed it, microtransactions. I find that they don't appear to be TOO aggressive here, but I've only just started and for completing the tutorial you get a free character!

They even have a season thing and a achievement system that rewards you with in-game currencies and yes, they have multiple currencies and attempt to exploit, what is known as a "Confusopoloy" by trying to convince you that you are making more progress than you think. Especially as all these awards come in the form of things to buy in the in-game store (which are timed) and also the cassette tapes which are used in a Gatcha system. You get a lot starting out and after those three games and claiming the rewards I had enough that I actually unlocked multiple characters, but you always unlock them at the base level and you need the items to gift them to make them happier and build up your bond. Some even have preferences, which is highlighted by a excited smiley face on the item before you get to select it, so you aren't wasting items upsetting people, as I've seen in games with similar mechanics like Danganronpa and Dragon Age Origins. In fact, I didn't see any items that caused negatives on any of the characters, but maybe I just having found those items yet as they have SOOO many items you can get in the Gatcha style game.

Ultimately it was a lot of fun to have with friends as you can stab each other in the back and beat on each other, but with the focus on microtransactions and such I'm going to personally step away and focus on the games I want to currently finish as I've been on the bad ending of microtransactions and I don't want to end up emptying my account every month like I used to.

For those who want a good look at the gameplay, it's my friend's stream of the game where we're playing together: Gameplay with SillySandyAJ