izigame.me

Alright so, I make this review with the caveat that I can enjoy these games. And tend to. I have played many Kairosoft games over the years, starting with Game Dev Story. But it should also be stated, that these games are not good simulation games, and furthermore, all of the Kairosoft games are nearly identical. I'm going to go through specifically what I do not like about that are different about this iteration on "The Kairosoft Game". But let's note up top, if you already don't like Kairosoft games, you're not going to like this one, no matter your opinion of the theme this time around.
-Some combinations, as always, are absolutely rubbish. A Battle Manga about Monsters set in a city is a "Normal" combination. Ghosts in an apartment is Good? Okay. Some are self explanatory, but others are like uhhh no that should definitely work.
-A tooltip came up that said certain arcs go in certain places. I understand where Prologue arc should go but... For people with only a passing knowledge of the terminology for different arc types in manga, serialization can be confusing. What the hell is a Vibrant Arc? Linking arc; what is it linking? Fierce arc, okay what the hell is this? No idea. Guess you'll have to look it up like we're making minecraft pants in 2010 again.
-I hate how PP works, the current for enhancing your mangas. You need to spend your max PP to increase the max PP you can spend at once. YOur max PP also determines what the arc is for serialization, and for one offs it determines ?????????????????. They don't really explain it lol, but it seems like numbers are bigger for one offs.
-The personality of your IP's is, as always, extremely understated and lost. Think of a cool idea with a nifty headcannon? Too bad, once the serialization is done there's no sign of it ever again. I think if they came up with an idea to give YOUR ideas have more personality, these games would take off again past being just a gimmick.
-Messages like "It's selling really well!" coming up 100000 times throughout the course of a playthrough are absolutely redundant. Just give me the money/fans/whatever, I do not care and should not have to click through this.
-The game is glacially slow. And there's a fair amount of waiting around once you get your work speed to a good amount because of the publisher work cycles in this game. As well, money comes in slow given the way publishing works in this game, so the game seems unfairly paced at times. (As I was writing this, I unlocked fast mode. That said, it is still slow. It's a pacing issue with how the game is structured. Also that should be in from the start!)
-This one has weirdly inconsistant UI. Mostly it's the text. Some text is classic Kairosoft pixel text, and some text is just Arial sometimes with drop shadow. Depending on the exact menu, this can REALLY look out of place. This is obviously a localization and translation issue. But it's still jarring.
I remember enjoying Game Dev Story, Dungeon Village, and uhhh the Newspaper One. And I enjoy this -to a degree-. But this is going to be the last Kairosoft game I play for a long, long time.