Bejeweled or Beware
Title: KotoDama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa
Genre: Adventure, Visual Novel
Modes: Single player
Developer: Art Co., Ltd
Publisher: PQube
Platforms: Switch (Reviewed), PC, PS4
Release: June 4th, 2019
You arrive at Fujikawa Academy as a new student along with your pet demon cat. You meet a bunch of students that tell you about the seven mysteries, and you join the group to unlock them. Oh, and you have the ability to interrogate people with the “power of words”, KotoDama. And when I say interrogate, I mean play a perverted gem match up mini game. Yeah, it’s one of those games…
The Tip and The Top
The story could have been good. It’s an interesting concept: you meet up with a group of students who tell you about the strange happenings in the school. You have special powers to help them unlock the mysteries. It’s a great concept. But that’s where the positives end. The actual execution is painful.
The Flip and The Flop
So the power you have is called KotoDama - the power of words. Your demon cat tells you to imagine the person you are interrogating, and you play this minigame to get them to tell the truth. The minigame is a matching game, similar to Bejeweled, where you match colored orbs. And each color match of three or more that you make causes a meter to go up. Each match you complete also makes the person you are interrogating convulse with, well for a lack of a better word, pleasure. And when the meter fills up after a few matches, the subject loses a layer of clothes. You’re goal is to “strip them down to the truth”. Yup, this is a perverted bar game. While you never do see any characters completely naked, the mere fact that you are undressing these characters makes you feel icky.
And that’s the entire game. It’s the same thing over and over again. Not only will you feel embarrassed playing it, but you do the same minigame all the time. It’s not in the least bit interesting.
And apparently you can’t save this game. The quick save functionality doesn’t work. Which means that all that pain you went through to get to any part of the story, you’ll have to do it all over again! No thank you!
Final Grade: D
I fail to see who this game was intended for. This could have been interesting, instead, it just feels sleazy. The mechanics aren’t interesting. It’s a slog to get to anything interesting and when you do want to take a break and do a quick save, that doesn’t even work. This game feels broken - a mishmash of fanservice thrown into a bejeweled clone game.
Review copy provided by PQube