Took me roughly 27 hours to complete both the light and darkness routes in Witch Spring 3 as well as watching the one exclusive scene in the true route (since it's just a combination of both aforementioned routes) and complete nearly all of the post-game.
I won't go super into detail with my final review of Witch Spring 3 since I just already talk about a lot of my thoughts as I was going along. However, it's a really emotional and unique spin on a witch named Eirudy, who is actually a deity, that lived in solitude and loneliness due to the hunting and hatred of witches. However, she soon meets new friends, humans and deities alike, that help her put an end to the witch hunting.
The gameplay is turn-based and you get a lot of options from melee combat with your sword, magic combat, and summoning dolls. There is no level system, instead, the only way to get stronger is by training Eirudy and raising her stats. You can raise her stats based on what build you want and the higher certain stats are, the more abilities Eirudy will unlock. You can also level up dolls based on how much vitality you have and you gain vitality based on defeating enemies.
My only complaint is...crafting just seems to be there just to be there. I personally didn't find it all that useful during my playthrough and only use it if I happened to have the right materials or for story reasons.
The story is the main selling point with its excellent Japanese voice acting and solid OST (there are also Korean voices but I never tried it, no English dub though).
Based on which route you choose, the story beats can range from heartwarming and wholesome to heartbreaking and devastating since Eirudy's development as a character and forming new relationships with the overall cast elevates the thematic plots.
Overall I just found Eirudy to be very loveable and the supporting cast is overall great with various personalities and motivations. It's not incredibly deep or thought-provoking but the straightforward story works very well for the type of tale the game wanted to tell.
Not to mention, there is a surprising amount of world-building and lore, especially in the post-game. The main story of Witch Spring 3 is very stand alone but the post-game seems to connect the other games with returning characters, including games that didn't exist at the time, and hints there is a much bigger world beyond the scope of Witch Spring 3 within the series. It definitely made me more interested in the rest of the games if anything.
The biggest flaw of Witch Spring 3 is just a lack of overall polish and it just generally feels very amateur and cheaply made. There are constant spelling and grammar errors in the text. The UI can be confusing due to the lack of names and descriptions. It's just pictures and sometimes you can misclick on the wrong selection.
Which is rough to deal with, especially during combat. The map system is clunky and you can get lost easily despite the fairly small world in the game. And the UI elements are just very plain and generic with no unique flair.
While these issues are minor by themselves, they all add up to just overall bad graphic design and it just hinders the game more than it should. Since you spend a lot of time navigating menus and reading and it just feels very clunky and undefined. I just generally feel like it's the one overall element that prevents Witch Spring 3 is a really great game.
Despite not every gameplay element working as well and it needed much more polishing and refinement with its overall graphic design. Witch Spring 3 is a beautiful and soul-wrenching story about a witch choosing her path to either stay kind and sweet to humanity despite her hardships or to truly become hated by everyone and lose all empathy for humanity by killing them instead. If you can deal with the clunkiness of playing through the game, then I can definitely recommend one of the most emotional tales I've experienced in recent memory to anyone.
I won't go super into detail with my final review of Witch Spring 3 since I just already talk about a lot of my thoughts as I was going along. However, it's a really emotional and unique spin on a witch named Eirudy, who is actually a deity, that lived in solitude and loneliness due to the hunting and hatred of witches. However, she soon meets new friends, humans and deities alike, that help her put an end to the witch hunting.
The gameplay is turn-based and you get a lot of options from melee combat with your sword, magic combat, and summoning dolls. There is no level system, instead, the only way to get stronger is by training Eirudy and raising her stats. You can raise her stats based on what build you want and the higher certain stats are, the more abilities Eirudy will unlock. You can also level up dolls based on how much vitality you have and you gain vitality based on defeating enemies.
My only complaint is...crafting just seems to be there just to be there. I personally didn't find it all that useful during my playthrough and only use it if I happened to have the right materials or for story reasons.
The story is the main selling point with its excellent Japanese voice acting and solid OST (there are also Korean voices but I never tried it, no English dub though).
Based on which route you choose, the story beats can range from heartwarming and wholesome to heartbreaking and devastating since Eirudy's development as a character and forming new relationships with the overall cast elevates the thematic plots.
Overall I just found Eirudy to be very loveable and the supporting cast is overall great with various personalities and motivations. It's not incredibly deep or thought-provoking but the straightforward story works very well for the type of tale the game wanted to tell.
Not to mention, there is a surprising amount of world-building and lore, especially in the post-game. The main story of Witch Spring 3 is very stand alone but the post-game seems to connect the other games with returning characters, including games that didn't exist at the time, and hints there is a much bigger world beyond the scope of Witch Spring 3 within the series. It definitely made me more interested in the rest of the games if anything.
The biggest flaw of Witch Spring 3 is just a lack of overall polish and it just generally feels very amateur and cheaply made. There are constant spelling and grammar errors in the text. The UI can be confusing due to the lack of names and descriptions. It's just pictures and sometimes you can misclick on the wrong selection.
Which is rough to deal with, especially during combat. The map system is clunky and you can get lost easily despite the fairly small world in the game. And the UI elements are just very plain and generic with no unique flair.
While these issues are minor by themselves, they all add up to just overall bad graphic design and it just hinders the game more than it should. Since you spend a lot of time navigating menus and reading and it just feels very clunky and undefined. I just generally feel like it's the one overall element that prevents Witch Spring 3 is a really great game.
Despite not every gameplay element working as well and it needed much more polishing and refinement with its overall graphic design. Witch Spring 3 is a beautiful and soul-wrenching story about a witch choosing her path to either stay kind and sweet to humanity despite her hardships or to truly become hated by everyone and lose all empathy for humanity by killing them instead. If you can deal with the clunkiness of playing through the game, then I can definitely recommend one of the most emotional tales I've experienced in recent memory to anyone.