(review written as of version 1.14)

Came for the long-haired twintail redhead, stayed for the gameplay.

But in all seriousness, even the heroine wouldn't be enough for me to buy this right on the first day of Early Access. I've always been a fan of RPG, hack'n'slash, and platformer games, and the trailer videos successfully enticed me to buy the game and play it right away.

This game is by no means mindblowing, but it was definitely a fun ride for the first three areas that I cleared in update 1.x.

Talking about the battle system, you (Hisako, the heroine) will be deployed to an area with three types of weapons (a melee weapon—with light (saber, rapier, estoc, etc) and heavy (ax, great sword, etc) variants that differ in damage, attack speed, and attacking mechanics—, a "machine gun"—though, if I may nitpick on semantics, it's simply your main ranged weapon, which may include an assault rifle and the likes—, and a launcher, which is a "secondary" heavy ranged weapon with a far bigger firepower than your main weapon, but with very limited ammo/capacity—stuff like grenade or rocket launchers and the like). You will have to do quests after quests while rescuing refugees that are scattered throughout the area, and get the souvenirs (items marked with a yellow coin bag in the minimap).

Your enemies are mostly mutants of various types with their own specialty (melee mutants, gunners, grenade throwers, elementals and so on), though there will be occasional non-mutants as well, even including a tank, as you can see in one of the preview images. Each type of monster has enough uniqueness by themselves; at least I don't feel that there is a carbon copy between them. The boss battles at the end of every area are pretty challenging but still in the range of fairness, and I had a good time with them.

This isn't a completely mindless hack'n'slash & shooter, though, as if you want to earn the souvenirs, or occasionally, rescuing the refugees, you will have to solve puzzles that usually involve moving or destroying certain objects, and playing around with levers. These are mostly optional (especially the souvenirs), but you will earn rewards for doing them that improves Hisako's stats, and notes about the refugees and souvenirs which can be read in the record book, which is basically a logbook/record/database in other games.

More importantly, your weapons have a durability value (for melee weapons) and a limited ammo capacity (for ranged weapons), and once they drop to 0, your melee damage takes a massive cut, and your ranged weapons are unusable. You can only restock at save points that are scrambled across the area, and, in my experience of playing the Normal difficulty, you actually have to be rather careful with your weapon usage. It isn't strict to the level where you're finished for good if you used just one or two more bullets than necessary, but you can't casually spray and pray either.

There is also a stamina system, represented by a regenerating stamina bar, that limits Hisako's actions such as using her weapons or performing jumps and dodge rolls. It means you can't continuously and frantically attack and do special actions, as depleting your stamina bar will interrupt them and you'll have to wait for it to fill for a moment, which can be troublesome if you're, say, trapped in the middle of a swarm of enemies.

When it comes to weapons, as what I've said above, there is quite a variety across all three weapon types. These weapons may come with a special effect or stat increase, such as boosts on health or attack power, stamina usage reduction, the ability to heal for every kill you make, spawning a drone that will accompany Hisako and deal damage to enemies, and much more. These effects aren't bound to weapons, as they are also available in items called attachments which you can use, two at a time for each weapon type, to further improve your weapons.

Remember that there is also a weight limit, and each weapon & attachment has their own weight value (though I personally never had a problem with this). In addition, there is also a weapon upgrading/modifying system (Reinforcement/Modification), which can increase your weapon's attack power and change its effect, respectively, and costs money plus reinforcement & modification gears, which you can loot from enemies or item boxes along the way.

I find this whole weapon thing to be slightly complicated in a good way, though I got somewhat overwhelmed by the management for attachments when I started playing (and still is, sorta). It's fun to play around and choose what kind of weapon and attachments can complement my playstyle well.

Hisako herself can also level up once she earns enough XP. Each level up improves her health & weight limit, and also gives her a skill point, which you can spend in the skill trees to unlock the special abilities for each weapon and various other benefits, such as an increase in critical hit chance, maximum health points, weapon durability & magazine capacity, and much more. I'd say the skill tree being split into three based from weapon types is kinda jarring, considering you have to unlock each weapon's specials before you can proceed further into the more general skills, but I guess it's acceptable enough. Admittedly the aforementioned specials only cost one point per weapon type, so it might just be a slight personal annoyance.

Moving on to the story... Basically, the society collapsed and was forced to refuge underground after the mutants attacked, Hisako was told about school by her grandma, grandma gave her a school uniform, then she settled for a journey to the surface to build a school with the help of fellow refugees while doing stuff. I think that sums up the whole plot enough. Story is not exactly the strength of this game, but it's there and I guess it works. Nothing to write home about the music, either; don't expect to find any epic stuff here, though at least the game is not horrible in that department.

Character interactions are there, and they're okay. No further comments about the characters (especially their personality and development) because the game isn't even halfway there and I'm bad at describing people, but I'm not going to expect a lot. I hope I'll be proven wrong, though.

As what you might assume from its Early Access status, the game is riddled with a ton of bugs. There are a few that are gamebreaking (the most obvious one being crashes when trying to enter an area, though I think it's already fixed as of now), followed by a lot of minor ones that can be seen in the bug report thread, that can be an annoyance if you encounter all of them through a single sitting. I can assure you that they are not bad enough to make this game unplayable, though, as I did manage to finish everything currently available without feeling particularly displeased.

The English translation itself is, honestly, only acceptable when it comes to the English script. I can't comment about the actual translation quality since I'm not fluent in Japanese, but there are numerous typos and glaring grammatical errors, especially in the dialogues and cutscenes. I don't think I've encountered anything that is outright misleading (though some are confusing and/or ambiguous, like the description for the HardBlade effect and the Train option in the save point menu), but they accumulate enough to become a little headache at times. It's enough for the game to be playable from start to finish in English, but it can definitely be much better.

All in all, to end this review, I really enjoyed how the combat system and weaponry works, but everything else feels average at best. Not that they are horrible, though, but there are definitely rooms for more improvements, especially since this is still in the Early Access phase. Maybe give this a try if you're a fan of games with a similar battle system, and if you like cute anime girls doing badass things.