Recent reviews by I'm Ven :)

I am thoroughly enjoying my time with Monochrome Mobius, but I for sure can't give a blanket recommendation for this game. It's competent, with a few novel ideas like the Action Ring, being a fun twist on the visible turn order mechanics of other RPGs.

This game is part of the greater Utawarerumono series, a trilogy of visual novels broken up by some very fun SRPG segments. While I wouldn't say that familiarity with that world and its characters is downright *required* to enjoy this game, the game doesn't make much effort to get you caught up, should you be unfamiliar. There's an in-game glossary, but I doubt that'd be enough for someone wholly unfamiliar with the IP.

Game runs really well, and the characters look fantastic, but you can tell this game had a lower budget and knew where to spend it. Things like generic NPCs and some environment textures being almost laughably low resolution can absolutely bother some folks. It's amusing for me, but it might be a dealbreaker for you and make exploring the thoroughly-thought out world of the Utawarerumono franchise less enjoyable.

It's also a bit on the simple side, which for me personally isn't a bad thing. Makes it more focused, comfy, and a bit easier to zoom through, but if you're looking for something with tons of side content or minigames that you can lose dozens of hours in, Monochrome Mobius is not that game.

If those cons listed above don't deter you, I think you can really get into Monochrome Mobius and appreciate what this game has going for it, with the love and effort put in to expand the rich world that the Utawarerumono games had already established.

Not for everyone, not even among JRPG diehards, but for me, this is what am wanting in a game right now.

EDIT:

Since the original posting of this review, the game has been patched a number of times to reach proper localization standards. None of the issues listed in the original review remain, except for a few awkward sounding lines, but nothing too unforgivable.

However, I still personally am not that happy that it was this bad at launch, so I do intend to leave my rating and the original content of this review as it was first presented below.


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ORIGINAL:

The long and short of it is: For 25USD, you'd think they'd actually translate the Command Lists.

The Long of it is:

I'm glad this game has a western release, as a fan of Umineko, alongside the real game proper, but this release is so LAZY. I haven't had the chance to check the improved netplay, but I'm gonna run on some decent faith that it's actually better here, but.

My biggest gripe is how absolutely garbage the localization is. The text in the arcade mode ranges from acceptable to "Did literally anyone look at this? Once?". Stuff like the UI and the Credits, okay, you can kinda get away with not translating those, especially the former, since they're part of that Engrishy charm, sure.

But the Command List is not touched at all from the Japanese version. I cannot read Japanese. I bought the English release of this game. I cannot read how to use most of the character's moves. Plenty I can just gleam or guess with trial and error, but basically any move that has a pre-requisite other than "is a super" is completely lost on me.

I paid 25 dollars for a fighting game, and I cannot figure out how to play most of the characters. That is just completely unnacceptable. I'll likely refund this because I cannot play it. All the resources for this game are also in Japanese, so its not like I can go elsewhere to look at a moveset.

If they fix this, that'd be great! But if they don't really soon, or at least acknoledge they left a lot of the game untranslated, I'm just getting a refund. I'd rather not! But I likely will. Completely, utterly unacceptable for a 'localization'.