The Tale of Onogoro

I was genuinely getting into Haru as a character—until she dry fired a compound bow right in front of me. It’s clear she never took her miko training seriously. That bow is toast. No amount of sacred energy is fixing shattered cams and frayed cables. If this is the level of care she puts into divine equipment, I’m not sure she should be trusted with the fate of the world.

That said, I’ve got to give credit for the little details—the sound of the shackle when she moves her leg is a really nice touch.

Just wanted to say that I just beat the game, and I absolutely loved it! I loved the story and everything, and possibly looking forward to a part two? :3

The idea is solid, you have an action puzzle game with a selection of bosses you have to guide an NPC around and protect. If the devlopers had let a single tester near it it could be good. As is though the puzzles are simply "Read the developers mind, there are no clues" and the bosses involve getting split second timing to block attacks when your controls have literally tens of seconds of lag involved. This is because you have to synchronise with the NPC you are protecting and her animations take ten to twenty seconds to play out. The attacks you have to block are telegraphed about 5 seconds in advance so you have to know in advance what the enemy will be doing to time your blocks perfectly. Given trial and error it can be done but the things you are doing are also trial and error and the result is simply miserable. On top of this the game looks awful, with anything outside of a pinpoint lens directly in front of you shown at unbelievably low resolution.

Haru, the main character, is absolutely adorable and I loved her from the start. The puzzles were challenging (I know I got a few headaches along the way!) but they were always solvable without needing to fallback on a walkthrough. The story was great and I got really emotionally invested!
I’d absolutely love a sequel where we go back to help Haru again, with more ways to communicate with her this time! Maybe voice recognition?

Love this game for its concept and world-building. The graphics and art style sells this whole anime fantasy world where you need to work with a holy maiden. Rare to see dynamic shadows in a quest game! The game play, consisting of almost exclusively point-and-shoot physics based puzzles, is interesting enough to keep you interested for a good chunk, which is through to chapter 4 of 6. The bosses feel epic enough and require you to apply your lessons from each level.
After that, the repetitive gameplay from chapter 4 onwards feels rushed. Pointing and shooting feels bland, and I wished I could interact using my hands - the healing mechanism felt buggy since it’s hard to know when you can activate it - at times, the animation gets cut short and my health continues to fill up.
You also start to notice that the narrative is delivered only from your anime waifu and her rival. Yes, dialogue can be skipped but then I have no other way of getting more of the story. And exploring the environment and getting ambiguous stars don’t feel rewarding as it doesn’t tell you more about this world you’re fighting for.
And then to rehash the bosses for the final chapter, and put you through a boring final boss fight? I really don’t get it, because the unrewarding fights should have been replaced with a better emotional wrap-up. I didn’t feel bad for either of the characters by the end, and I couldn’t wait to get out of their world.
Finally, some bugs were unforgiving. In a later chapter 4 puzzle, one of the bouncer/rolling flaming ball puzzles has more than one “solution”, of which one is less than ideal (not great when this had not been the case until now). In the Hime boss fight, after using the lodestone to line your path to get your amplified fire ki to destroy her fire nuclei, the next lodestone doesn’t activate. Then we have Takemikazuchi, by far the worst offender. The pointer, at such great distances, felt janky when trying to get an amplified ki. The lightning device felt frustrating to use when the window of attack is probably 1 second. At times, it was hard to tell when you need to activate the device.

Cute snime girl!!