Episode I: The Phantom Grimace

This is another Kemco-published game that was originally a Japanese mobile game with ads and an in-game shop that gets sold as a single complete package on PC. I'm giving this game a pass almost entirely for being cheap because I got it in a bundle and it's a budget version of the very specific Gust Atelier-series subgenre I specifically adore. If that's not your highly specific taste, you're probably going to bounce off this one. (And if you haven't played games like Atelier Sophie or Ryza, go play those, instead.)

I'd consider this game nigh-unplayable if you do not have a controller. (Specifically, it seems to require it be an X-Input controller like an XBox controller, but most 3rd party controllers like my Logitech f310 controller have a switch on the back to toggle it.) In spite of being made for touchscreen and having giant buttons for everything on the screen at all times, the mouse is COMPLETELY NONFUNCTIONAL in this game. The keyboard controls are also weird, expecting you to press WASD to move while hitting buttons like Z, C, Alt, 3, and Enter as the command buttons, and there's no way to rebind keys. I've had problems with the game not recognizing my controller when it starts up sometimes, but flicking the switch back and forth to make it X-input seems to make it recognize it again. (Also, the tutorial expects you to use a Playstation controller, like telling you to hit the square button to do a thing.)

Gameplay has a distinctly regimented cycle. You wake up; go to the tavern; spend half the money you made yesterday just eating breakfast because picking cheaper options takes too long; go to the guild and take on new quests; go to the dungeon exactly one time per day to run around smashing ore piles for stuff and maybe fight monsters, which appear on the map but all look like the love child of the Pokemon Muk and Grimace who walk towards you so slowly it's easy to go around but which drop more loot and respawn infinitely for easy grinding; return and go to the temple to restore HP/MP for money; fight five battles in the arena for points you exchange for more mats; go home and make stuff in batches of 10+ because you need to gain experience with every item up to 100% so they get a 25% bonus to stats and sales; put whatever you want to clear from your inventory the most on the "shelves" and hit the button to open the shop, where childhood friend girl just sells a random amount of things. (Monsters don't drop money, so this and selling loot for half off is your only means of making money.) Maybe rank up your shop after you sell a hundred or so things. As soon as the shop time is over, you immediately go to bed, and the cycle begins anew.

There's also a "rune" system to slot in bonuses to each piece of equipment. (Two per item, and characters can have up to six equipment slots if they can use a shield.) Runes do everything from basic +10 ATK or DEF (when slotted into equipment that only gives 14 to start with) to 20% chance to inflict blind to MP regeneration every turn, which is mandatory for caster classes. You can directly transfer runes from one piece of equipment to the next, which destroys the item the runes were pulled from. (But anything you can make once you can make by the dozens, so who cares?!) Unlike everything else, you can't manufacture runes, and they need to be found or bought.

I hope you like that cycle and the theorycrafting, because it's basically the only selling point. Kill Grimace over and over in dungeons to get mats you craft and sell for profit. If that's fun for you, you'll be able to enjoy this game.

Don't play this game for the plot (or "plot" either, although some of the adventurer sprites are cute.) This is the kind of game where the introduction goes like this: "Sucks your dad died." "Thanks." "What're romantically-available childhood friend characters for? Say, what is the overarching goal of this game?" "I'm going to rank up my shop and clear dungeons as a blacksmith adventurer!" "Cool, I'm just going to live in your shop as unpaid labor for the rest of the game." Maybe it's something about being Japanese, but they do not give half a ♥♥♥♥ about being cliche and just presuming you know the drill so they don't have to bother hiding it. Practically the only characters with speaking lines are in the thumbnail, and all but one is associated with one building in the town map. Enjoy the unique worldbuilding of "adventure town #2351732" this time with desert flavor! Meet unique NPCs like "gruff guildmaster guy," "sexy tavern lady," "grandfatherly priest," or everyone's favorite, "romantically available childhood friend!"

The actual gameplay revolves around your renamable redhead protag-kun and four party members who have no introduction, lines, or role in the story but are the core characters who push you through the game. (You can change their names and select gender, but appearances are fixed by class, which can be changed mid-game.) Classes require unlocking through quests, so you start the game with 5 characters and 5 classes open.

Quests are things like "kill 4 of this monster" or "bring me 10 of this thing you can craft." The plot-advancing special quests are something like "go to the end of the dungeon you just unlocked." It was actually a letdown to me at first, because they framed it as "inspect to make sure nothing odd is going on in the dungeon - this is a quest you can't cancel" so I thought "oh, the plot is starting now, I'm going to find some suspicious bad guys in the place they want me to inspect" but then I just go to the end of the dungeon I'd already been through twice and says "looks like this is the end - quest clear!" There are EVENTUALLY some boss monsters at the end of dungeons when you take quests, but this one really drip-feeds the anemic "plot."

About the old real money store - like some of the other Kemco games, there's still a vestigial shop button, but the "gems" you are gained through pseudo-achievements like "kill 100 reptile-type monsters" or "make 10% of the total types of equipment" giving you one gem to buy things like unlocking upgrades you then have to buy in the in-game item shop with in-game money. This means it's not really pay-to-win anymore, but some items cost 60 gems, so you're basically not gaining them all in one playthrough.

It's very, VERY paint-by-numbers. Again, I'm only taking what this game's dishing out because it was dirt cheap and this specific formula is my jam. There are better examples of this formula (like the Gust games, or go play Recettear if you want an action-explorer,) but this is something like the fast food version of what other games serve as higher-quality dine-in experiences. It's cheap, uninspired, but serves its role fine enough.