Never have my first impressions of a game been as confused as with the first two hours of LWA: Chamber of Time. The initial sensory overload of menus and mechanics, no mention of story events and side-quests being locked to certain times of the day in-game (ala Majora’s Mask), the non-sensical map layout for the Luna Nova academy (this game’s hub world)… had it not been for the show’s delightful music and charming character conversations, I probably woulda abandoned ship early.

Once I did get around to familiarising myself with how the game’s structured (one half exploring the academy in 3D, the other being the side-scrolling beat ‘em up levels, with RPG elements in-between the two gameplay styles), it wasn’t toooo bad. I say it like that ‘cause, while running around an interactive version of the show’s main setting is a cool novelty at first, that initial magic sorta poofs into thin air when all you’re doing is going from point A to B to make progress in story events or side-quests, with the occasional press of two buttons to activate a spell… which also gets redundant after a while. It’s been a few years since I last watched LWA so my memory of it is kinda fuzzy, but for an anime that was so over-the-top and unhinged with its comedic scenarios and especially its action set pieces, it’s disappointing there weren’t any other things of note to do in the hub world, like turning Akko into different animals or take flying lessons on broomsticks. Y’ know, something to make Luna Nova FEEL like it’s brimming with whimsical activities of all sorts, other than simply talking to the locals and enchanting items on cauldrons (which I completely forgot about until just now as I’m scribbling this review). At the very least, every NPC and conversations are fully voiced in Japanese, and I’m pretty sure they got the show’s voice cast to reprise their roles in this game which is a mega plus, meaning more of Sucy’s psychotic cravings for mushrooms and voodoo magic!

Then there’s the other half, the beat ‘em up / dungeon-exploring levels, which are by far more interesting. For one, you get a CRAZY variety of magic spells to unlock as you level up characters, ranging from elemental attacks to stat-raisers, and each character has six slots reserved for these spells. Add that to having two support characters at your side at all times in the levels, and the all the possible combinations of offence and defense spells from a wopping catalogue of 81 are seemingly endless! Not gonna lie, I’m something of a sucker for grinding my party members in RPGs to the point of turning them into earth-shattering forces of nature, and seeing that pay-off by bringing showers of fireballs and lightning to armies of evil in this game wasn’t an exception… tho I will say it got repetitious after a while, especially near the end of the main story, where at one point you HAVE to backtrack to previous areas before going any further, and it’s simply uuugh. And on that note, the bosses can eat bricks and cement. Either they’re sitting ducks whose attacks barely touch you while your magic annihilates their health bars, or you can’t dish out any damage on ‘em until their weak spot is exposed for 15 seconds tops, to which you then proceed to kneel down and pray you won’t have to wait a whole dang minute to bully them some more. What’s worse, they like to fling out hordes of enemies you’ve already destroyed countless times too in-between the waiting times, all the while your characters (minus Constanze) shout the same voice line at the top of their lungs for each one of their attacks ad nauseam with no variations. “Repetitious” is the word of the hour, fellas.

All that said, to wrap it up, even though it sounds like I think this game is stinky doodoo, I don’t think it really is? Its average score of 2.4 on Backloggd set off some alarms of concern before playing, but after investing nearly 30 hours into it, if ya ask me, I’d say it’s a decent licensed game that loses its steam near the end by dragging itself for too long, but at least the delightful spirit of the anime IS felt throughout, and it does the heavy-lifting of what would’ve otherwise been a dull slog without the LWA identity.