This game is a very good one and it does have some content that may shock people but executes it pretty well and isnt too edgy about it just to shock. The story had me in tears at some points especially the final true ending and all of the characters are designed and written very well. the ost is pretty good for the most part especially for some of the battle themes and i even added some to my playlist. Now i have not played the reboot but i will make a review when an official english translation is ever released so i cant say this is still the case, but the battles in this game are very easy and dont really require any strategy or grinding so this makes the game a visual novel pretty much and thats totally fine as the story is so charming for a 6-7 hour game. The main villain in the game is written to make you just downright hate him considering the stuff he does and all of the other villains are pretty cool in their own regard with some having very tragic backstories (play all of the bonus content if you want to find this stuff out). Overall i can say that this game is one of the best RPG maker games ive played and almost anyone can enjoy it because of the short length of the game.
This review is dedicated to END ROLL: underappreciated in its time (that I played it) and a better game than this one on just about every level.
Wadanohara is nearly eight hours of a deeply, deeply repetitive game. One I stuck with for way longer than it deserved, hoping desperately to get over the hump and pull something wonderful out of the game, led by the recommendation of two separate friends and a--perhaps perverse--intrigue into the big content warning about the game's portrayal of sexual assault plastered on the vgperson translation page. I trudged through several hours of a monotonous journey to six separate shrines, eying the uniformity of each island i landed at, and going from fighting a couple of enemies in my way to not engaging with the combat system all together.
The combat... A RPG having particularly easy combat, hell even trivially easy combat, is not inherently a bad thing. LiEat might as well not have any combat with how trivial it is, but the crux of the game is about solving puzzles and experiencing the story, with combat being moreso a contextual action. Wadanohara on the other hand has massive swaths of the game where you are walking through hallways teeming with enemies that you only fight if you explicitly interact with them. Again, not an inherently bad idea, in fact that could be really nice to choose when you get to engage with the combat, but after fighting the enemies in just a few areas, I was already overleveled enough to kill every boss in 2 turns. This continued up to the final boss of the game, even though I did not fight a single non-mandatory enemy for the entire back half of the game, if not longer!
The lack of purpose to the combat made moments when areas were teaming with so many enemies especially frustrating because I could kill them near-effortlessly, but why would I when the reward for doing so was next to nothing. All the tension of those moments was essentially sapped out and I just had to walk down hallways until the next story beat. This is not to get into how much gear the game just halfhazardly throws at you to equip and replace over and over and over with essentially no fights worth fighting in between that gear being equipped and replaced with something slightly better. I might as well not have changed my gear out at all during the entire story.
Back to the structure, after exploring the six islands, I reached the second act of the story, which is where the game really feels like it focuses in, leading you down hallways with a lot more cutscenes and boss fights, which is what I was looking for! The game has some cute character designs, even if the characters themselves are largely paper thin. But getting to the end of the act, I figured the end was in sight... and then the third act stated.
Largely feeling like a retread of the second act, introducing a bunch of new characters and a new princess and new hallways to wander down, the game definitely introduces it's most interesting ideas here. Still, the ideas it introduces aren't fleshed out nearly as much as I was hoping for them to be, especially with the amount of monotony required to be trudged through to reach that point AND continue to be trudged through in the third act. The writing of the game in general is rather mediocre and frustrating. Outside of Wadanohara, Samekishi, and the main villain, the rest of the cast all blend in together, including Wada's own party members you spend the entire game with! And for the love of god, someone needs to take away ellipses from the creator. A solid half of the lines contain elipses in them, and so many of that subsect are JUST ellipses. It felt so agonizing and a massive fast of my time scrolling through that empty text.
I would also like to point out the aforementioned sexual assault portrayal as one of the things I wish the game handled better. I am a firm believer that depicting uncomfortable topics in media, especially when used to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience, is perfectly fine. The scene is set up during the second act of the game as one of the story's big reveals, one of its only big reveals. It seemed like the story was going to be able dealing with the ongoing trauma from sexual assault, including how our memories get warped in order to protect ourselves from trauma. Then the scene itself happened, and then it ended, and... didn't really have much impact on the rest of the game?
Looking at a couple of other things about the game post-finishing it, it seems the villains of every game the creator makes attempt to commit sexual assault? And the creator drew explicit art of the sexual assault scene for a tumblr ask? Knowing this stuff in post doesn't really change my thoughts on the game much (not that they can get too much worse LOL); The oddity of that scene does not permeate the rest of the game, the strange ballgag equip found on one of the islands notwithstanding. Still, it just feels so odd to have experienced a sexual assault in a videogame that, as far as I can tell, was there due to the creator's fetishes. Like, what do you do with that experience?!
There are some nice things about the game. The cut-in art is well drawn and the interactions between the two leads is generally cute if a bit rout. Nothing is able to overcome the game's overwhelming sense of mundanity though. I dragged myself through to the true ending, hoping for something worthwhile to grasp onto, and now here I am, wishing I followed through with my initial thought to drop the game an hour and a half or so in. Bleh.
Wadanohara is nearly eight hours of a deeply, deeply repetitive game. One I stuck with for way longer than it deserved, hoping desperately to get over the hump and pull something wonderful out of the game, led by the recommendation of two separate friends and a--perhaps perverse--intrigue into the big content warning about the game's portrayal of sexual assault plastered on the vgperson translation page. I trudged through several hours of a monotonous journey to six separate shrines, eying the uniformity of each island i landed at, and going from fighting a couple of enemies in my way to not engaging with the combat system all together.
The combat... A RPG having particularly easy combat, hell even trivially easy combat, is not inherently a bad thing. LiEat might as well not have any combat with how trivial it is, but the crux of the game is about solving puzzles and experiencing the story, with combat being moreso a contextual action. Wadanohara on the other hand has massive swaths of the game where you are walking through hallways teeming with enemies that you only fight if you explicitly interact with them. Again, not an inherently bad idea, in fact that could be really nice to choose when you get to engage with the combat, but after fighting the enemies in just a few areas, I was already overleveled enough to kill every boss in 2 turns. This continued up to the final boss of the game, even though I did not fight a single non-mandatory enemy for the entire back half of the game, if not longer!
The lack of purpose to the combat made moments when areas were teaming with so many enemies especially frustrating because I could kill them near-effortlessly, but why would I when the reward for doing so was next to nothing. All the tension of those moments was essentially sapped out and I just had to walk down hallways until the next story beat. This is not to get into how much gear the game just halfhazardly throws at you to equip and replace over and over and over with essentially no fights worth fighting in between that gear being equipped and replaced with something slightly better. I might as well not have changed my gear out at all during the entire story.
Back to the structure, after exploring the six islands, I reached the second act of the story, which is where the game really feels like it focuses in, leading you down hallways with a lot more cutscenes and boss fights, which is what I was looking for! The game has some cute character designs, even if the characters themselves are largely paper thin. But getting to the end of the act, I figured the end was in sight... and then the third act stated.
Largely feeling like a retread of the second act, introducing a bunch of new characters and a new princess and new hallways to wander down, the game definitely introduces it's most interesting ideas here. Still, the ideas it introduces aren't fleshed out nearly as much as I was hoping for them to be, especially with the amount of monotony required to be trudged through to reach that point AND continue to be trudged through in the third act. The writing of the game in general is rather mediocre and frustrating. Outside of Wadanohara, Samekishi, and the main villain, the rest of the cast all blend in together, including Wada's own party members you spend the entire game with! And for the love of god, someone needs to take away ellipses from the creator. A solid half of the lines contain elipses in them, and so many of that subsect are JUST ellipses. It felt so agonizing and a massive fast of my time scrolling through that empty text.
I would also like to point out the aforementioned sexual assault portrayal as one of the things I wish the game handled better. I am a firm believer that depicting uncomfortable topics in media, especially when used to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience, is perfectly fine. The scene is set up during the second act of the game as one of the story's big reveals, one of its only big reveals. It seemed like the story was going to be able dealing with the ongoing trauma from sexual assault, including how our memories get warped in order to protect ourselves from trauma. Then the scene itself happened, and then it ended, and... didn't really have much impact on the rest of the game?
Looking at a couple of other things about the game post-finishing it, it seems the villains of every game the creator makes attempt to commit sexual assault? And the creator drew explicit art of the sexual assault scene for a tumblr ask? Knowing this stuff in post doesn't really change my thoughts on the game much (not that they can get too much worse LOL); The oddity of that scene does not permeate the rest of the game, the strange ballgag equip found on one of the islands notwithstanding. Still, it just feels so odd to have experienced a sexual assault in a videogame that, as far as I can tell, was there due to the creator's fetishes. Like, what do you do with that experience?!
There are some nice things about the game. The cut-in art is well drawn and the interactions between the two leads is generally cute if a bit rout. Nothing is able to overcome the game's overwhelming sense of mundanity though. I dragged myself through to the true ending, hoping for something worthwhile to grasp onto, and now here I am, wishing I followed through with my initial thought to drop the game an hour and a half or so in. Bleh.
The rpgmaker horror community's worship of Mogeko and hatred of anyone that didn't like their work singlehandedly kept me away of the scene for years. Nice effort in being so dedicated to elaborate visuals and stuff, but everything else just sucked.
cute so far, i rlly like the characters
i loved this game and the atmosphere/setting so much, along with the characters and the soundtrack. too bad the creator is a weirdo
Kinda okay game, like all of the other okegom games you'll find cute characters, cute arstyle and funny moments.
The plot itself it's just okay.
But the gameplay...GOD I HATE IT, when you are forced to grind so much.. and make it so tedious thats a big nope for me.
The plot itself it's just okay.
But the gameplay...GOD I HATE IT, when you are forced to grind so much.. and make it so tedious thats a big nope for me.
sal is a gooner
Although story is childish, but I also played this when I was a kid so it gets a pass.
i have some opinions on dsp antis but im scared ill get doxxed and crucified by tiktok poisoned little 12 year olds with danganronpa pfps. i think wadanohara was a good game though.
idk why deep-sea prisoner has to make every villain ever a rapist but red sea wadanohara has a cool design. very nostalgic but as others have said definitely an okegom game
Pretty illustrations, memorable characters and beautiful story. The combat is very easy but i don't mind it. Definitely one of the games that i will never forget.
This review contains spoilers
kinda charming but honestly the dolphin rape scene was a bit unnecessary
eu amo wadanohara independente de qualquer problema que possam apontar sobre, rejoguei mais de 10 vezes e me marcou muito na época que joguei. é simples, a história não tenta ser coisa demais, a gameplay não é nada, porém me cativou e isso é tudo que importa.