Hikikomori No Chuunibyou Review (A0)
Hikikomori No Chuunibyou
is a little plateformer with combat element that I looked into almost randomly. It has a lot of good ideas but sometimes fails to executes them, making the game very frustrating sometimes.
Gameplay : So. This game is a 2D plateformer where the protagonist have parkour and fighting skills. You basicaly have to go from point A to point B to point A again to point C and so on. Of course your errand won't be without obstacle. You will have to go through lasers, surveillance drones and many other traps that sometimes have no reasons to be here. The run is quite enjoyable, you first feel like you can try to rush all levels because of the character's parkour assets but you will soon realize that is not the case because of the controls. You will eventually get the hang of it but still. They sometimes feel really inaccurate and some level with precise jump can become really frustrating to play. Plus, the condition to trigger the wall run are too specific (the wall which you want to run on have to be close from where you start the jump, too close), making the game more realistic in terms of wall running but in a game where some ennemies can hadoken and others can do Demon fang it feels out of place. Ah, while we are getting on it, there is combat too. The problem is : why. There is absolutly no point to introduce combat mechanism in a game like that, when you enter in a room where you have to fight, you cannot just run past them you have to knock them out and it breaks the rythme of the game, You have to stop and just spam the A button, because battle are very easy. Even boss fight are too easy.
Art : It is minimalistic, there is a lot of recycled sprite from precedent level is used but overall it's ok. It's not bad nor it's very good. However it can feel repetitive because of the abundance of recycled sprite for the background, particulary when you are inside,plus you have to do each level the other way so it doesn't help. thankfully (I guess) the game is very short so this feeling doesn't last.
Musics and sounds : I didn't hear a lot of different musics within the differents levels, actually during some cutscenes there wasn't any music at all. And in terms of sound design it's not very detailled, every sound in the game kind of sound the same, most ennemies doesn't have sound effect at all. Still musics and sounds aren't unpleasant, it just lacks variety, like for the art.
Story : This is the real bad point for me, you are basicly told to go from one point to one another for some stupid reasons, at one point I wanted to skip all the dialogue so bad but still paid a little attention to, it wasn't worth the effort.
Summary :
Pros :
- Lot's of good ideas
- Chalenging levels
- High speedrun potential
Cons :
- Floppy and unprecise controls that can get you angry sometimes (thankfully I was patient)
- Useless combat mechanism that will just break the fast paced rythm of some levels
- Have to replay most levels in reverse
- The story
- The lack of variety is compensated by the short life time of the game, I don't know how to feel about that
55/100 It is not bad, nor it is good but I still enjoyed it so I will give a positive mark. It is very short but the low price tag compensate for it (even if I usually don't take price tag in account, 3hour really does feel too short). Also keep in mind that I will give a positive review (above the 50/100 bar) for every game that made me entertained for the good reason but that there is similar game that are far better than this one. Still I won't give a negative review because there are other games that are better than that one. I just say that only if you have already look into most of the games that are similar to Hikikomori and you are bored then you should try it.