You could put Eva BGM over the most boring ahh shit and still have it be enjoyable, but they do spin a cute story here which I'd honestly have loved to see developed beyond the confines of being a pretty basic 3 hour VN here but alas. Specially enjoyed the choppily animated backgrounds like all the escalators in the NERV headquarters (I don't know why, they just ooze late 90s PC swag). I just wish I stayed put and didn't check the other endings I didn't initially pick because while one of them was fine, the other one had tits (they really couldn't help themselves huh) and the other other one (which wasn't even in the original version,afaik?) was just legit fucking dogshit.

Video review: https://youtu.be/hIBgVpIbpXk

So Konosuba is a pretty good series. I have yet to read the light novels, but I love the anime and consider it one of the better comedy series out there. It seems like a good fit for a visual novel, given I also like comedy VNs. But they didn’t exactly give this one the treatment it deserved.

So if you remember a few years back, there was this Re:Zero visual novel released. To sum it up, it was terrible. A story that simply rehashes part of the anime with a slight twist and some tacked-on gameplay on top of that. In that sense, I have to give this Konosuba game some credit. This is not a simple rehash of some random arc in the story or even an alternate take on one.

This is instead a full-fledged side story that could very easily have been an episode in the show or something like that. I respect that. It’s nice to have these anime visual novels try to do something original and something worthwhile. Unfortunately, that’s kinda where my praise ends. The rest of this game is shallow, tedious, and way too low-effort for the price they are asking.

This is literally a $50 visual novel where the majority of the game is simple PNGs placed on top of the simplest of backgrounds with practically no animation. There are a decent amount of CGs, but nowhere near enough to justify the premium asking price. And really, the UI looks like something I would find in a mobile game. I try to avoid discussing price in my videos, but this is just egregious.

If you’re wondering the length? Well, it should take you around 5-10 hours to clear and probably more if you go for all the endings. Each of the main heroines has two endings and the rest of the side ones just have their one ending, but if I am being completely honest, I could not be bothered to even attempt to go for all of those after finishing the main story simply because the game makes it so difficult to do so.

Upon beating the game, you will need to go back and basically grind through the tedious gameplay elements of crafting clothing in order to fulfill the conditions to get on a character’s route. To make clothing, you have to send your party out on quests and part-time jobs to earn material, which can then be combined to make clothing via a magical stone. That’s a very Konosuba setup, I will give it that, but I can’t say it makes for fun gameplay.

The cycle of sending out on jobs, receiving a random assortment of material, trudging through a random slice of life scene in-between jobs, and eventually using the material to craft an item of clothing was really boring for me, a shame considering I like this series so much. It’s some mobile game quality gameplay and again, this is being sold at a premium price tag.

Otherwise, I can’t say that the story itself is bad - I mean, it definitely doesn’t compare to some of the highs from the anime, but I also cannot deny that Konosuba fans might find something to like here. It’s just that it’s all wrapped up in this poorly made video game - the type obviously just using the franchise to sell copies and if the Konosuba title was removed from it, this game likely wouldn’t have an audience at all.

Overall
So no, I cannot really say I recommend this one. Tedious and grindy gameplay, poor production quality, and a story that - while decent as a whole - doesn’t really measure up to the quality you would expect from this series. If anything, I just want to go read the light novels.

Mystias Izakaya is a game i am unlikely to finish due to its large amount of content, but i feel satisfied with what i have played enough to write something up on it.

This game takes place in the touhou universe, where you play as Mystia running a travelling restaurant that stretches to various environments from several different mainline games. The core gameplay loop is managing your time to strategically purchase various ingredients and learn recipes in order to appeal to the guests at whatever area you are setting up in. In the second phase of the night, you focus mainly on cooking and waitressing until the end of the day where you get paid.

This loop certainly has a very addictive feeling to it, during my first few hours i really didnt want to put it down. It has the same appeal as certain flash cafe management games i played in my youth and i feel like it carried that feeling well throughout my playtime. There was something about the simplicity of what you had to do and the seemingly endless possibilities for improvement that motivated me to continue playing, for a while.

However i feel like it gets stale after a time. You hit a limit long, long before the story ends. Nights become challenging and very long, tiring. It starts feeling like something of an endless chore to get through.

The art is nice and leaves little room to be creepy but the story and writing in general is a huge miss. Im quite certain it is not a fault of the localization team, but there are several references to online popular culture that just completely take you out of it and makes you feel like youre playing a game made by weirdos, which you probably are at this point. In one line of inquiry Chen calls someone a NEET. An otaku NEET? something to do with NEETs but definitely very embarassing. There was an entire questline dedicated to giving a youkai a picture of Meiling's... "thicc" thighs. I also see recently there is dlc where Mystia is dressed up as Jotaro from jojo. So you can see why this game has become a problem for me.

Obviously the characters suffer from the same fate they do in other fan projects which is that theyre disgustingly one dimensional, completely overtaken by a fanon element and they will run that element into the ground. I dont like much seeing touhou done so dirty when this game and normal touhou are essentially two different beasts. I feel like it does little for the characters though it has so much emphasis on it, and it feels disgraceful somewhat. Marisa likes mushrooms! Meiling is lazy shes sooo lazy she sleeps all day Patchouli likes books and hates everyone else Remilia is a vampire Rumia darkness Sayori is sleepy blah blah blah.

The brevity of your encounters with characters is what makes the people in touhou shine the most, as well as their phsyical appearance and more importantly: their bullet patterns. When one of those things has already been established and you remove the other, youre missing a lot of nuance that comes with the rest of the elements. So its flat and completely cookie cutter characters. I feel like this game has a vast misunderstanding of the world of mainline touhou, and even if its irrelevant right now i also dont like the injection of men into the game. Touhou is special for that reason and its strange to revoke that reason with various nameless customers and villagers and whatnot. Who cares?

The dialogue is definitely the games largest flaw as well as how it protrays Gensokyo, but without that the gameplay feels somewhat meaningless and it all falls in on itself. For a good 30 hours its still quite fun to play and i will have good memories of it as it was gifted to me by a friend for my birthday. Im very happy i even got to play this at all and my friends definitely made my last birthday the best one ive ever had, so i feel somewhat bad about not liking the way it went, but its on the devs for talking about Hong Meiling's thighs so much. Pick it up if you like management games but do not expect a touhou fangame that lives up to actual touhou, for once.

Finally playing a Touhou game feels like I've crossed some kind of cursed boundary I can't recover from. I guess time will tell if I've ended up in some deep dark abyss of my own making.

What time doesn't need to tell you is that I think this game is really good! Short but sweet metroidvania, cool time stuff, baller bosses, it's one of those games that's so focused on the gameplay that I kinda end up just listing the features in it because they're all rad. Well worth whatever nonsense I was spouting above.

The Touhou franchise is a long-runner in the realm of gaming, sprouting from it's danmaku origins to cover a smorgasbord of genres so wide that if you can think of it, there's probably a Touhou version of it already. Team Ladybug has decided to throw their hat into the ring with Touhou Luna Nights, a 2D Metroidvania spinoff entry about time-stopping maid Sakuya exploring an other-worldly mansion.

In most games, the ability to manipulate time is usually reserved for either an exceptionally powerful character or an expensive late-game skill of some kind due to it's inherently overpowered nature, but in Luna Nights, the power to stop time is not only a core tenet of both combat and puzzle-solving, it's a borderline necessity for you to stand a chance against your opponents. Smart use of your limited time stop gauge is vital to your survival against the tougher foes you'll encounter in the mansion, and the ways the time stop mechanic is toyed with for use in both environmental puzzle solving and combat is nothing short of genius. It's an incredibly solid central mechanic where all the pieces for it fall right into place with nothing feeling 'off' or unnecessary.

The shift from danmaku to 2D metroidvania is a hard one to make while still keeping the charm of the original gameplay, but Team Ladybug managed to do it by carrying over one of Touhou's central mechanics: Grazing. By narrowly avoiding contact with enemies and projectiles (AKA, 'grazing' them), you will recover Health and Magic, and in a game like Luna Nights, where recovery items are hard to come by and Sakuya can barely take a hit, you're gonna have to learn to take full advantage of it. It encourages a do or die mentality and a playstyle all about living on the edge to survive, and it makes the moments of near-death all the more exhilarating when you manage to narrowly avoid a bullet and gain enough MP to deliver the killing blow in a grueling boss fight.

Overall, Luna Nights is the perfect bite-sized package: Its relatively short length, beautiful sprite work, phenomenal soundtrack, challenging difficulty and strong gameplay mechanics make it a worthwhile play for both veterans of the genre and newcomers looking to cut their teeth on a great entry point.