Oh boy did game reviewers put a hit on this one. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.
The game is a roguelite visual novel with light RPG elements and a time loop mechanic. Emphasis should be put in the fact that it's a roguelite visual novel, as it comprises about 90% of the gameplay.
The premise is that Kegai, spirits which rise from the underworld and possess people, invade the realm of mortals and cause mayhem. The situation is so bad that people grew desensitized to hearing that an entire country has fallen to them in the news. In order to escape them, humanity launches a space station that seems to be able to escape from the Kagai at first, until it too gets destroyed and seemingly only Nini aka Novus Nemo aka Taichiro Oyama (a nickname, a western and a Japanese name respectively), the protagonist manages to get out alive. Afterwards, he trains for about a year in order to get acclimated to Earth's gravity and goes on to live with a distant cousin on a remote Japanese town that has thus far been spared from the Kegai. I emphasized the three names the protagonist goes by because not only do some characters refer to him by only one of them, some others have nicknames for him, so all this information starts to saturate the cerebral cortex.
Shortly after Nini arrives, the Kegai manage to invade the town and start possessing people, one at a time. It's Nini's job to defeat them and save the world.
Gameplay wise, you have to live Nini's day to day life, build relationships with the people in town, determine who the Kegai have possessed, fight them and, depending on your relationship with them, possibly save them.
If you fail to root out the possessed or if you fall in battle, the titular mechanic of the game enters play and you get sent back to when Nini first arrived in town, your relationships and stats get reset back to their initial state and you must begin the loop anew. The possessed characters get somewhat randomized, so there is some variety in the order you face the bosses.
HOWEVER, this being a roguelite, you can earn blessings from the gods, which act as stat and relationship boosts. You obtain these by exploring and interacting with other characters. They are permanent upgrades and persist between loops. Other characters can gain them as well. Plus, your stats and relationships grow faster until they reach the value they attained in the previous loop. These mechanics alleviate the penalty from failing and starting the loop anew.
You can take up to two party members from among the town residents to fight the Kegai. To do so, once the culprit has been determined, a portal to a mirror dimension opens up. At this point, you go talk to the characters you want to fight with, go to the portal and begin the RPG part of the game. Normal battles are very generic, you basically face the same kind of enemy over and over and they are all palette swaps of each other, depending on who got possessed. Once you complete a few trials, you can unlock the boss (both your hp and mp fully restore when you do this) and fight them. The relationship you have with the character that got possessed, as well as the relationship with your party members AND the relationship of all characters in the battle with one another will determine how effective you are in combat. You cannot control your party members directly, but you can glean what they and the boss intend to do. This is useful, as this will help you determine when the best time to attack, buff or defend is.
If you kill the boss instead of saving them or if one of your party members dies in battle, they are gone for the rest of the loop. However, you can restart the loop pretty much at any time as long as you are not in the mirror dimension, should you wish to do so.
Now, you might be wondering: if the possessions are random, wouldn't it be frustrating if one of the party members you've been working with got possessed? This was a concern of mine, however, it becomes clear early on that there is a very clear distinction between the potential victims and the characters that can join your party so the random aspect of the game doesn't become unfair and punishing. In fact, I would recommend choosing a couple of characters at the start of each loop and sticking with them for the duration of it.
For reference it took me three loops to beat the game, though I wasn't able to save all the characters. At the end I was presented with a choice that impacted the ending. I do not know if saving or killing everyone further alters the ending, though I have a feeling this might be the case. Regardless, the game has a New Game+ option which basically acts as another loop, should the need for testing these hypotheses arises.
In my experience, the first couple of loops felt like I was getting used to the mechanics, while in the third I was able to exploit them and come out on top. One fault this game has is that the mechanics feel obtuse and poorly explained. Even after beating the game, I feel like I do not fully understand them. It feels like trial and error is needed in order to grasp them. More clarity would have been appreciated.
I would now like to address some of the complaints I came across in the reviews:
One reviewer mentioned that regular battles don't give any rewards and so they skipped them all. This is incorrect, as regular battles reward blessings (which are the permanent upgrades) upon completion, up to a point since there are only a finite number of them per character and they become harder to get as you get more and more.
Another mentioned having a hard time figuring out who the victims where and being stuck and unable to progress past a certain point, even after emailing the publisher XSEED about this. I find this one difficult to believe, since the game gives you more than enough clues to figure out who and where the possessed are, and even though the order they appear in is randomized, the events leading up to the possession of a certain character are always the same, meaning once you see one of them and figure out the victim, you will be able to use this information in every subsequent loop and find the same victim in the same place again.
I can only think of two instances where maybe the player could be unsure as to where to go in order to proceed, however, 3 minutes of basic exploration should be enough to be able to progress.
IN CONCLUSSION: I feel like this game was largely reviewed unfairly. Like I said at the beginning of the review, this game is a roguelite visual novel RPG with a time loop mechanic. If the concept sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you check this game out, ESPECIALLY if you find it on sale. Otherwise, I doubt it will get you into any of those genres.
Being a roguelite with a time loop should inform the player that they'll be playing the same events over and over again, so some repetition should be expected and complaining about it is absurd.
Games should be enjoyed for what they are, not for what you or someone else expected them to be.
That said, Nanachi is a piece of shit and Machina is best girl.
Peace!
The game is a roguelite visual novel with light RPG elements and a time loop mechanic. Emphasis should be put in the fact that it's a roguelite visual novel, as it comprises about 90% of the gameplay.
The premise is that Kegai, spirits which rise from the underworld and possess people, invade the realm of mortals and cause mayhem. The situation is so bad that people grew desensitized to hearing that an entire country has fallen to them in the news. In order to escape them, humanity launches a space station that seems to be able to escape from the Kagai at first, until it too gets destroyed and seemingly only Nini aka Novus Nemo aka Taichiro Oyama (a nickname, a western and a Japanese name respectively), the protagonist manages to get out alive. Afterwards, he trains for about a year in order to get acclimated to Earth's gravity and goes on to live with a distant cousin on a remote Japanese town that has thus far been spared from the Kegai. I emphasized the three names the protagonist goes by because not only do some characters refer to him by only one of them, some others have nicknames for him, so all this information starts to saturate the cerebral cortex.
Shortly after Nini arrives, the Kegai manage to invade the town and start possessing people, one at a time. It's Nini's job to defeat them and save the world.
Gameplay wise, you have to live Nini's day to day life, build relationships with the people in town, determine who the Kegai have possessed, fight them and, depending on your relationship with them, possibly save them.
If you fail to root out the possessed or if you fall in battle, the titular mechanic of the game enters play and you get sent back to when Nini first arrived in town, your relationships and stats get reset back to their initial state and you must begin the loop anew. The possessed characters get somewhat randomized, so there is some variety in the order you face the bosses.
HOWEVER, this being a roguelite, you can earn blessings from the gods, which act as stat and relationship boosts. You obtain these by exploring and interacting with other characters. They are permanent upgrades and persist between loops. Other characters can gain them as well. Plus, your stats and relationships grow faster until they reach the value they attained in the previous loop. These mechanics alleviate the penalty from failing and starting the loop anew.
You can take up to two party members from among the town residents to fight the Kegai. To do so, once the culprit has been determined, a portal to a mirror dimension opens up. At this point, you go talk to the characters you want to fight with, go to the portal and begin the RPG part of the game. Normal battles are very generic, you basically face the same kind of enemy over and over and they are all palette swaps of each other, depending on who got possessed. Once you complete a few trials, you can unlock the boss (both your hp and mp fully restore when you do this) and fight them. The relationship you have with the character that got possessed, as well as the relationship with your party members AND the relationship of all characters in the battle with one another will determine how effective you are in combat. You cannot control your party members directly, but you can glean what they and the boss intend to do. This is useful, as this will help you determine when the best time to attack, buff or defend is.
If you kill the boss instead of saving them or if one of your party members dies in battle, they are gone for the rest of the loop. However, you can restart the loop pretty much at any time as long as you are not in the mirror dimension, should you wish to do so.
Now, you might be wondering: if the possessions are random, wouldn't it be frustrating if one of the party members you've been working with got possessed? This was a concern of mine, however, it becomes clear early on that there is a very clear distinction between the potential victims and the characters that can join your party so the random aspect of the game doesn't become unfair and punishing. In fact, I would recommend choosing a couple of characters at the start of each loop and sticking with them for the duration of it.
For reference it took me three loops to beat the game, though I wasn't able to save all the characters. At the end I was presented with a choice that impacted the ending. I do not know if saving or killing everyone further alters the ending, though I have a feeling this might be the case. Regardless, the game has a New Game+ option which basically acts as another loop, should the need for testing these hypotheses arises.
In my experience, the first couple of loops felt like I was getting used to the mechanics, while in the third I was able to exploit them and come out on top. One fault this game has is that the mechanics feel obtuse and poorly explained. Even after beating the game, I feel like I do not fully understand them. It feels like trial and error is needed in order to grasp them. More clarity would have been appreciated.
I would now like to address some of the complaints I came across in the reviews:
One reviewer mentioned that regular battles don't give any rewards and so they skipped them all. This is incorrect, as regular battles reward blessings (which are the permanent upgrades) upon completion, up to a point since there are only a finite number of them per character and they become harder to get as you get more and more.
Another mentioned having a hard time figuring out who the victims where and being stuck and unable to progress past a certain point, even after emailing the publisher XSEED about this. I find this one difficult to believe, since the game gives you more than enough clues to figure out who and where the possessed are, and even though the order they appear in is randomized, the events leading up to the possession of a certain character are always the same, meaning once you see one of them and figure out the victim, you will be able to use this information in every subsequent loop and find the same victim in the same place again.
I can only think of two instances where maybe the player could be unsure as to where to go in order to proceed, however, 3 minutes of basic exploration should be enough to be able to progress.
IN CONCLUSSION: I feel like this game was largely reviewed unfairly. Like I said at the beginning of the review, this game is a roguelite visual novel RPG with a time loop mechanic. If the concept sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you check this game out, ESPECIALLY if you find it on sale. Otherwise, I doubt it will get you into any of those genres.
Being a roguelite with a time loop should inform the player that they'll be playing the same events over and over again, so some repetition should be expected and complaining about it is absurd.
Games should be enjoyed for what they are, not for what you or someone else expected them to be.
That said, Nanachi is a piece of shit and Machina is best girl.
Peace!