The friends of Ringo Ishikawa is a very humble attempt at a life sim ala Shenmue with RPG and beat em up elements, and for that, it's interesting. Not just a humble life sim, but a humble game as a whole. The sprites are limited, with most characters using the same assets, as if they were all done using an in-game character creator, and the music is all royalty free lo-fi beats.
The early hours are great, you get to soak in its melancholic atmosphere and it tells you very little, confident to let the player figure out its systems, though this is an issue with school clubs since it doesn't tell you that you need to be there before the scheduled time.
This is where the problems begin, people will tell you that the story will be different for everyone, and that's not really true, it's always the same. There's only some events you can miss (easily), some of them with no acknowledgement, like missing an important looking duel from a rival.
The story structure seems to be that events trigger when you're at a specific place around a certain time, rather than being tied to an objective or having a limited number of days. Some eat up a whole day which may fuck up your plans. As the game goes on, they get more and more scarce, and it took me two whole in-game weeks for each of the last two to trigger, in that time I had already done most of the side-content, not because I went out of my way to do it, there's just very little to do in this game, so I was stuck just wandering at every hour and place to try to trigger them. The story is sort of a character study and has some kinda poignant scenes, like the ending, but considering how much of a time investment this game is (21 hours for me, like half of them with nothing), it doesn't feel worth it.
I get you're supposed to feel empty and with no purpose, but the player doesn't start that way, and you get very little acknowledgement for the things you do acomplish. What happens if you read all the books in the library? Two of them (at random) give you stat boosts and an achievement but that's it, not even a comment about the books (they're "about nothing") or from Nami. What happens if you beat all the rival schools? Nothing, just an achievement. What happens if you just don't eat and starve every day? Nothing I can notice either, it doesn't seem to affect your health or stats. It's rare that I wish a game had branching stories and multiple endings, but it'd improve the game a lot, since the basis for a lot of stuff is already there, as it is, it just wastes your time.
Combat is also nothing, focused mostly on having big stats. Even blocking isn't manual, you just hold a button and if your stat is high, you have a bigger chance of blocking. Special moves you unlock in dojos from time you waste training, do less damage than normal attacks. Every encounter is the same, there aren't any bosses with unique moves or anything of the sort.
There's lots of weird bugs too, one time I got trapped at school at night, or Ringo just stopped wanting to sleep.
Normally I don't like giving scores, but I really think that the praise this game has here is undeserved, as someone that legitimately wanted to give it a chance. It just has too many problems. At the end of the day, I can only recommend it to die hards of life sims that want to see a modest, indie attempt at one. Keep an eye out for the dev though, I feel like he could do something truly great one day if he keeps at it.
The early hours are great, you get to soak in its melancholic atmosphere and it tells you very little, confident to let the player figure out its systems, though this is an issue with school clubs since it doesn't tell you that you need to be there before the scheduled time.
This is where the problems begin, people will tell you that the story will be different for everyone, and that's not really true, it's always the same. There's only some events you can miss (easily), some of them with no acknowledgement, like missing an important looking duel from a rival.
The story structure seems to be that events trigger when you're at a specific place around a certain time, rather than being tied to an objective or having a limited number of days. Some eat up a whole day which may fuck up your plans. As the game goes on, they get more and more scarce, and it took me two whole in-game weeks for each of the last two to trigger, in that time I had already done most of the side-content, not because I went out of my way to do it, there's just very little to do in this game, so I was stuck just wandering at every hour and place to try to trigger them. The story is sort of a character study and has some kinda poignant scenes, like the ending, but considering how much of a time investment this game is (21 hours for me, like half of them with nothing), it doesn't feel worth it.
I get you're supposed to feel empty and with no purpose, but the player doesn't start that way, and you get very little acknowledgement for the things you do acomplish. What happens if you read all the books in the library? Two of them (at random) give you stat boosts and an achievement but that's it, not even a comment about the books (they're "about nothing") or from Nami. What happens if you beat all the rival schools? Nothing, just an achievement. What happens if you just don't eat and starve every day? Nothing I can notice either, it doesn't seem to affect your health or stats. It's rare that I wish a game had branching stories and multiple endings, but it'd improve the game a lot, since the basis for a lot of stuff is already there, as it is, it just wastes your time.
Combat is also nothing, focused mostly on having big stats. Even blocking isn't manual, you just hold a button and if your stat is high, you have a bigger chance of blocking. Special moves you unlock in dojos from time you waste training, do less damage than normal attacks. Every encounter is the same, there aren't any bosses with unique moves or anything of the sort.
There's lots of weird bugs too, one time I got trapped at school at night, or Ringo just stopped wanting to sleep.
Normally I don't like giving scores, but I really think that the praise this game has here is undeserved, as someone that legitimately wanted to give it a chance. It just has too many problems. At the end of the day, I can only recommend it to die hards of life sims that want to see a modest, indie attempt at one. Keep an eye out for the dev though, I feel like he could do something truly great one day if he keeps at it.