A Witch’s Tale
Dec. 27th, 2011 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckro1,000 years ago, Queen Alice used rune magic to seal up the evil Eld Witch. Today, power-hungry magic student Liddell accidentally releases the Eld Witch in her desire to learn rune magic and become the bestest witch ever. In classic video game tradition of “you break it, you fix it,” Liddell, the vampire guardian Loue and an army of dolls set out to re-seal the Eld Witch before she has her revenge on Queen Alice.
A non-tactical Nippon Ichi game! Will wonders never cease? (It was actually only published by them, though a lot of the “creepy” sensibilities are similar.)
The graphics are Nightmare Before Christmas inspired, and the general feel is an Alice in Wonderland pastiche. Liddell was Alice’s last name in the book, and your first puppet is a cat named Dayna, versus Alice’s cat Dinah. Recurring characters include the white rabbit, the mad hatter (who I thought might be hitting on Liddell), the march hare, the dormouse, the dodo, the jabberwock and, of course, the Cheshire cat.
The controls are all touchscreen based, which is unnecessary. There are plenty of points (particularly conversations, but also the battle system) where the buttons would have been more useful. I’m reminded of Magical Starsign in a number of respects.
The battle system is a bit slow, and not terribly complicated. You start with an elemental spell of each type, and there’s a lot of guessing which enemy will be vulnerable to which type of magic. (Or you can just beat them to death, which I found easiest for the first few worlds.) As the game goes on, the MP cost of spells doesn’t increase (even when you get the higher-level spells at levels 20 and 40) and your max MP skyrockets, meaning it becomes worthwhile for Liddell to cast every turn and for the player to remember the elemental weaknesses of each monster (which are often the same one or two spells for all the monsters in an area). Also, some of the puppets seem to have elemental physical attacks, but you’re generally just better off with the strongest attacker/caster you have.
The puppets that are your party members reminded me of Chrono Cross in that you effectively only have two party slots to fill but there are two dozen characters who eventually join (including six just before the final battle). Fortunately, there’s “leaked experience” so that the unused puppets can kinda keep up. (Fighting most of the battles I encountered, I never needed to grind.) You can get super puppets from finishing worlds that are typically stronger than your main party, but they don't gain xp.
The “Abyss” spells (activated by dragging the rune to the center of your rune wheel, rather than to an enemy) cost 99 MP and hit all enemies for big damage. Your rising MP total makes them worthwhile by the third world, especially for boss battles (and your MP refills every time Liddell gains a level, which is often after boss battles). A new element unlocks as you finish each world. The one downside is that you need to trace runes to use those spells (kinda like the sealing runes in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow), but that’s not actually difficult.
Each world involves finding three items and trading them to Baba Yaga for a key. Then you use the key to enter the palace, confront whatever elemental servant the Eld Witch corrupted with her curse, and free the Princess, who gives you a new spell and points you to the next world.
The hub world, Shadow Town, is only useful for trading vendortrash for items (which you can also do in Baba Yaga’s shop in any world), visiting the inn (not typically necessary because you recover when you gain levels) or resurrecting broken puppets (which requires Rainbow Yarn, a seriously rare item before world 4).
The big sidequest is card collecting—standard playing cards that increase your stats. They’re sometimes in chests, but Cards are also the game’s metal slimes. They're pegged encounters that take one damage from everything but crits, and if you manage to beat them before they flee, they drop a card and lots of xp. This game’s mimic monster is Death. Death hides in treasure chests and follows the same sequence every time, always costs you half your mp, and seems to increase in hp but not rewards. There’s also a “Burst” mode of battle that randomly appears and makes most of your hits critical, and doubles the XP you recieve.
There’s no equipment system, so effectively everything runs on levels because the card bonuses aren't that big. No money, only trading vendortrash, and that's limited. But that’s okay, you really only need items for boss battles.
The frequency of save points is erratic. Some worlds have them easily available enough that you’ll see one every ten minutes; the last world (though it’s short) makes you play about half an hour before you see one.
But the game’s most irritating feature is that you don’t get the full plot unless you play a New Game Plus. The first ending leaves everything mysteeeerious, then you need to go through it all again to find out what’s actually happening.
Overall: It’s an okay game, but the clunky control scheme and obvious padding show that the developers just didn’t have enough game to use their beautiful graphics on and justify consumer dollars. If the battle system moved as fast as the Dragon Quest remakes and the New Game Plus wasn’t required to get the full plot, this would be a ten-hour game at most. There are plenty of games worth playing before it.
A non-tactical Nippon Ichi game! Will wonders never cease? (It was actually only published by them, though a lot of the “creepy” sensibilities are similar.)
The graphics are Nightmare Before Christmas inspired, and the general feel is an Alice in Wonderland pastiche. Liddell was Alice’s last name in the book, and your first puppet is a cat named Dayna, versus Alice’s cat Dinah. Recurring characters include the white rabbit, the mad hatter (who I thought might be hitting on Liddell), the march hare, the dormouse, the dodo, the jabberwock and, of course, the Cheshire cat.
The controls are all touchscreen based, which is unnecessary. There are plenty of points (particularly conversations, but also the battle system) where the buttons would have been more useful. I’m reminded of Magical Starsign in a number of respects.
The battle system is a bit slow, and not terribly complicated. You start with an elemental spell of each type, and there’s a lot of guessing which enemy will be vulnerable to which type of magic. (Or you can just beat them to death, which I found easiest for the first few worlds.) As the game goes on, the MP cost of spells doesn’t increase (even when you get the higher-level spells at levels 20 and 40) and your max MP skyrockets, meaning it becomes worthwhile for Liddell to cast every turn and for the player to remember the elemental weaknesses of each monster (which are often the same one or two spells for all the monsters in an area). Also, some of the puppets seem to have elemental physical attacks, but you’re generally just better off with the strongest attacker/caster you have.
The puppets that are your party members reminded me of Chrono Cross in that you effectively only have two party slots to fill but there are two dozen characters who eventually join (including six just before the final battle). Fortunately, there’s “leaked experience” so that the unused puppets can kinda keep up. (Fighting most of the battles I encountered, I never needed to grind.) You can get super puppets from finishing worlds that are typically stronger than your main party, but they don't gain xp.
The “Abyss” spells (activated by dragging the rune to the center of your rune wheel, rather than to an enemy) cost 99 MP and hit all enemies for big damage. Your rising MP total makes them worthwhile by the third world, especially for boss battles (and your MP refills every time Liddell gains a level, which is often after boss battles). A new element unlocks as you finish each world. The one downside is that you need to trace runes to use those spells (kinda like the sealing runes in Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow), but that’s not actually difficult.
Each world involves finding three items and trading them to Baba Yaga for a key. Then you use the key to enter the palace, confront whatever elemental servant the Eld Witch corrupted with her curse, and free the Princess, who gives you a new spell and points you to the next world.
The hub world, Shadow Town, is only useful for trading vendortrash for items (which you can also do in Baba Yaga’s shop in any world), visiting the inn (not typically necessary because you recover when you gain levels) or resurrecting broken puppets (which requires Rainbow Yarn, a seriously rare item before world 4).
The big sidequest is card collecting—standard playing cards that increase your stats. They’re sometimes in chests, but Cards are also the game’s metal slimes. They're pegged encounters that take one damage from everything but crits, and if you manage to beat them before they flee, they drop a card and lots of xp. This game’s mimic monster is Death. Death hides in treasure chests and follows the same sequence every time, always costs you half your mp, and seems to increase in hp but not rewards. There’s also a “Burst” mode of battle that randomly appears and makes most of your hits critical, and doubles the XP you recieve.
There’s no equipment system, so effectively everything runs on levels because the card bonuses aren't that big. No money, only trading vendortrash, and that's limited. But that’s okay, you really only need items for boss battles.
The frequency of save points is erratic. Some worlds have them easily available enough that you’ll see one every ten minutes; the last world (though it’s short) makes you play about half an hour before you see one.
But the game’s most irritating feature is that you don’t get the full plot unless you play a New Game Plus. The first ending leaves everything mysteeeerious, then you need to go through it all again to find out what’s actually happening.
Overall: It’s an okay game, but the clunky control scheme and obvious padding show that the developers just didn’t have enough game to use their beautiful graphics on and justify consumer dollars. If the battle system moved as fast as the Dragon Quest remakes and the New Game Plus wasn’t required to get the full plot, this would be a ten-hour game at most. There are plenty of games worth playing before it.
