Recent reviews by neizod

the game is beautiful, that's no mistaking it. but it seems like the dev focuses on miscellaneous aspects, instead of aiming for "education" as a main goal --- see the DLC, that's more "insta-filters" to beautify your photo, but no additional words to learn.

if you're looking for a photography game, then this game might be fine... or not. since the amount of content is extremely slim: there's only one street block for you to explore, plus that you cannot enter the interior of any building! walking around would take less than 10 minutes. take out your camera and shooting every photo would take another 10. and that's it!

and that goes for the language learning aspect too. you'll only encountered basic words on the street (store fronts, cars, 止まれ sign, cats & dogs), no depth into other categories (household commodities, sightseeing locations, museum, sports, even hospital & police office)

not a bad game. but with this price tag and lack of content, just save your money and actually travelling to japan. that'll be more effective language learning experience.

p.s. you might wanna completely ignore this game, not even write a review for it. since if you gave it a thumb down, the dev might capture your review and make fun of you on his twitter. --- actually, no need to go for twitter, just see dev's attitudes when he replies to other negative reviews.

grinding is the name of the game --- sounds tedious, but actually super fun! either grinding alone, with friends, or random strangers online. the game never ceases to amaze me <3

[2025 apr] but yeah, the origami monsters make my potato computer runs hot. wish they optimize it to the fullest!!!

unpolished game to the point that it's annoying to play.

control is not tight & responsive enough. boss fight feels clunky to the point that when you die, you blame the control, not your skill. (also the "save room" to "boss room" is unnecessary too far away.)

can't pause the game to bring up setting menu to adjust music volume and/or change control... need to exit to main menu first (and lost save progress... yeah, i've replayed the padded unskippable intro scene twice!)

fighting is too simple and too boring (for too long-- you'll only have a sword --getting a bomb later at 1/4 of the game). sword swing is not buffered, so your sword will sometimes sheathed in the scabbard, instead of cutting the enemies, leading to your death by sprinting into them...

exploration is stupidly discouraged: you can't pin the map, and map is not reflect what's the world really is, e.g., some hidden passage was not drawn on the map. these two issues combined produce a forgettable passage way that i've visited once, plan to go back when i have more ability, but fail to recalled it... very missed opportunity indeed!

also it's hardly to distinguish between foreground objects that you can stand on it w/ background wallpaper that you can walk pass through.

also, fatally, the only way to progress forward requires you to "bomb jump" when you're in a morph-ball form (yeah, i'm not gonna put that in a spoiler tag). but this technique was not forcefully taught before (when you acquired the bomb / morph-ball), and the way forward is hidden behind a fake wall that you don't know you can do this technique to jump over it!!!

i'd say skip the game if you're not that into the metroidvania genre, since it's not feature mindblowing novel mechanic anyway (unlike Hollow Knight (2017): branching path, or Vision Soft Reset (2019): timeline manip). but if you're a hardcore fan of metroidvania genre... maybe give it a try (but don't expect much...) also if you've arrived at this game from some website's recommendation list --- unsubscribe that website. they don't really into the metroidvania genre, or have to met the quota for recommendation, so they have to fill their list w/ these garbage.

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an interesting twist on the classic minesweeper!

if you love the base game, this one wont disappoint you

lorelei is not a bad puzzle, and i still like it to some extent. however, i don't think it is a good "game", and have to tone it down from that "Overwhelmingly Positive" a bit.

puzzles in this game are alright. but to be honest, they're not that challenging. well, some puzzles might give you revelations. but most of them are just navigating around the map to find the final clue to complete the piece.

here comes the main drawback of this game: there's no "run" in this game.

of course, there's the "coffee" mechanic (i'm not gonna put that in a "spoiler" tag, thank me later) that lets you run around the map a bit quicker. however, that's not ideally fast enough to save your precious time wandering around this gigantic complex interconnecting mansion. plus that you need to unlock the café first by finding many mandatory objects. in my playthrough, that's over half of the game already! (we're talking about a 20hr game)

and the frustration is amplified by the "one button" control design philosophy.

almost all of the modern games that you can control your character on a 2D plane, it's common to use wasd / arrows keys / left analogue to move, plus an interaction button (often X on the controller), an inventory button (Y), a run/jump button (A), a cancel button (B), and a pause game button (start). also recently, lots of games adopt a map button (select).

how does this game design the button? apart from 4-direction movement, there's only one omni-purpose button that takes care all the rest of the actions:

• want to open this locked door? press A when you're near the door.
  
• want to drink a cup of coffee? press A when you're near the coffee machine.
  
• want to talk to another person? press A when you're near that person.
  
• want to examine your inventory? press A when you're not near any other interactable object to bring up a pause menu, then navigate to "inventory" tab.
  
• want to re-read your collected document? press A when not near an object for pause menu, then navigate to the "document" tab and dig deep to your desired page.
  
• get lost and want to see a map? similar to examine document, but you need to flip through pages to the correct floor plan by yourself!

there's also no concept of "cancel". so if you're accidentally press A near a locked door while your intention is to bring up the pause menu, you'll be presented with a door-lock puzzle that you need to navigate to the "confirm" and press A again to submit your (wrong) solution, get greeted by "your solution is incorrect" dialog that lasts 5 seconds, in order to just exit the puzzle.

when you're deep into reviewing pages in the document, you cannot exit right away with just one cancel click, but need to press A to close that folder first, then navigate to "close document" and press A again to bring up a pause menu, then navigate to "close pause menu" and press A for a final time to go back to the game.

some lock puzzle are so absurd enough you need to input 5-7 Latin alphabets over a combination lock, but you can rotate each ring of the lock one way. --- don't overshoot the rotation!

why design the game to be this tedious? having dedicate buttons for each important action shall solve the issue easily. heck, more buttons should be add to provide quality of life instead! like when you're near a "shortcut" locked door, there should be a dedicate button that open the document and jump to the corresponding puzzle automatically, not this walk-away-from-the-door-to-use-A-to-bring-up-a-pause-menu-then-navigate-to-document-tab-and-press-A-then-navigate-to-the-book-of-shortcut-and-press-A-then-flip-20-pages-in-this-book-to-find-the-puzzle!!!

i don't think the developer respect your time enough with this design choice.

a truly masterpiece 😭😭😭

this game might be my most favorite thumb down visual novel.

main stories are pretty much slice-of-life rom-com. while they're not bad in themselves, i think they are too bland... that's a NegaTive point.

however, the final "true ending" route is one of the best route in vn industry. highly recommend this if you're willing to skim over other heroine's routes. --- i mean, if you like any of the main heroine in particular (for me it's Riri's route), then go for her, reading her route will not be a disappointing experience. but at the end of the day, you can CTRL skip every other heroines (won't miss anything) to unlock the final true heroine, then allocate yourself 5hr straight to fully read Kikka's route in one go.

puke