izigame.me

I love this game, but the plot and the port do it no favors. Character creation and customization of both your self and your constant companion ("Accessory") is great, and carving parts off of enemies is satisfying. The setting is unique and interesting. However, a solid backdrop and enjoyable gameplay are held back by a boring plot that takes too long to move anywhere, awful adaptation to standard PC controls, and a disappointing lack of enemy and environmental variety.
First of all, if you plan to use a mouse and keyboard then expect to be disappointed; camera control with the mouse is handled very poorly, with motion being translated imprecisely and inconsistently. You can tweak some of the "Camera" settings to make it slightly more bearable, but anyone used to standard first- or third-person shooters will struggle. I'd like to believe this will be patched, but other examples of PC-ported Japanese games don't bode well for the possibility (see Earth Defense Force World Brothers, and some of the Sword Art Online games that have shooting elements and suffer the exact same problem). If you plan to play with a controller, you'll probably be fine. I enjoyed the original plenty back on the PS Vita which used the standard dual analog stick configuration. I was just hoping to enjoy playing with the more precise controls afforded by PC.
The game's plot is nothing worth noting, and many of the characters are one-note trope factories, with one of the worst offenders being Mattias. You're saddled with this annoying butt-monkey of a companion from the beginning, who is contrived by the plot to get you into situations no sensible human would enter. Next you have Beatrice, your little woobie Mary Sue that you're expected to want to protect and care for because she's too pure and innocent for this world. Naturally, the plot revolves around her and her Mysterious Past. My main problem is that they take way too long to get you from plot point to plot point, often with no significant gameplay in between. This is particularly evident in the beginning of the game, where you you have to do a lot of running around while ALSO being restricted by the rules of lowly Sinners (i.e., running for more than 5 seconds is forbidden, moving more than 20 meters from your Accessory is forbidden, no fast travel, etc.). It's 1-2 hours before you start having a decent number of missions you can engage with.
All the negativity aside, I do love the extensive character and gear customization options. I'm a sucker for customizable companions, and the Accessory in this version is even better than in the original PS Vita release in the West due to the customizable text-to-speech dialogue you get to define. Yes, its pronunciation is hilariously inconsistent and bad at times, but you can work around that by spelling out words phonetically in the dialogue lines you define. It was a curious decision not to fix these problems in dialogue explicitly used in the game's main story, but honestly it's just funny to me to hear (for example, Percy Propa, the game's little bear mascot, pronounces "people" as "pee-OP-lee").
Gameplay is a fun and frantic third person romp somewhat reminiscent of Monster Hunter with Guns, but far less refined. You can cut parts off of large enemies, which I find to be very satisfying. However, the variety of enemies and environments to fight in is very limited, so you might bore of it somewhat quickly. Thankfully the game doesn't overstay its welcome too much (unless you actually try to reduce your sentence to 0).
Bottom line: If you enjoyed it on PS Vita and plan to use a controller, you'll probably be happy to have it here on PC. If you are exclusively a keyboard and mouse player or someone looking for a great plot, though, you're gonna have a bad time. For everyone else: maybe check it out on sale, or after a patch or two. (If they ever fix the mouse controls, I will happily update this review to be positive.)