Okay that’s it, I don’t think I can keep this rate of posts up. The last ~2 weeks have been crazy here on JOBOCAN Game Reviews. I’m gonna slow down a bit now, but I did just finish this after grabbing it from a boxing day sale, so let’s talk about it!

It came out in early 2021, but I had other stuff I was playing back then and it took until now to finally jump in. I do like to try out all the stuff Nippon Ichi Software puts out, even though a lot of it hasn’t been amazing recently.

Let’s see if Nippon Ichi has a winner with this third-person shooter!

Developer: Nippon Ichi Software
Publisher: NIS America
Release date: April 13th 2021
Platforms: Switch, PS4 (Switch version played)
Genre: Third-person shooter

Review

You play as… some person. For some reason (you have amnesia so you don’t know the reason yet), you’re wandering in Hell, when you’re attacked by a Klesha. Kleshas are monsters you fight in the game, but this one becomes a Poisonette.  This makes the Klesha share your body, so she takes an arm and needs to stay close to you. If she uses your entire body, only your skeleton remains. And your arm becomes a cannon when she’s in chibi form. That makes her a Poisonette, and that’s what she ends up calling herself, instead of choosing a name. You start working in Hell, cleaning up different personal Hells that come up. Those come up when someone dies or has very strong bad/evil feelings that may lead to bad actions. Each Hell you go through has a “Belle” which, yes, means that, in this story, only women go to Hell. Weird. I don’t know why only women go to hell, but there you go. You (if you take the male character) seem to be the only exception.

There are many reasons these Hells are created. A girl has a habit of lying, a girl dies and has some regrets, one of them is killing a lot of small animals, one has really bad allergies. Some of it does get into some rather dark themes. Your job is ostensibly to find why they are like they are, and to change them (making them do better in the real world)… or redeem their soul before they continue through the afterlife or something (by talking to them, or finding significant objects for them, and seeing the memories of both them or people they knew), basically letting their soul finally rest in peace. For example, the one killing small animals, for some reason, believes her dead dog might come back to life if she floods heaven with souls. She’s about to do something pretty bad so you have to stop her. You do this not just to help, but because doing so gathers stickers, and when you get enough your Poisonette can go to heaven and grant a wish. Also, there are other Poisonettes, but not a lot (for reasons that are explained later in the plot). The plot is certainly a bit odd, and there are very few characters, but it does the job somewhat. Don’t expect too much depth.

I will talk about performance since I played the Switch version… and it wasn’t ideal. It is 30fps, but it’s not consistent at all. It feels fine generally, but there are some moments where it drops down well below 20fps. Some levels specifically have some rain and snow effects, those levels run below 15 for sure. The last few levels have enemies that spawn other enemies. When one of those spawns happens, the game literally freezes for a couple of seconds. I had one time where I had to wait over 10 seconds for the game to come back. The final boss (and the super boss) also spawn a bunch of enemies, it gets pretty ridiculous against them. Another weird thing is that there’s a constant transparent white fog over the screen. You hardly notice it because it’s all over the screen and doesn’t move, but sometimes, randomly, it turns off. No idea why but the colors look so much better, for a second, before the fog comes back. And finally, the last issue I got is that sometimes everything disappears. It tends to happen when you’re using really weird camera angles for whatever reason, but it’s quite annoying. Also, the draw distance is… Not good. Sometimes you see things from far away, but generally, you don’t, and it changes dynamically. Say you see a block far-ish away, but then an enemy spawns in front of you… goodbye block. I am going into this assuming the PS4 version runs better. It should be on PC though.

And now on to gameplay! There’s not actually THAT much to talk about, but it’s pretty interesting. This is a third-person shooter with RPG elements, and gameplay elements reminiscent of Qix. You and your Poisonette have a pretty simple moveset: walk and dodge roll. You have a button to switch weapons as well. Your job is to shoot at Klesha and purge poison mires. So you have 2 buttons that change your mode, those being Purge Mode and Shoot Mode. Each level has you going around shooting enemies, purging poison, talking to spirits or memories, until you do the final thing it is you need. Some of the levels have the goal of killing a certain number of certain specific enemies, some of purging enough poison, some of just finding a thing. These may sound different, but they’re not. You always just get to the end of the level. The closest to an exception is the one where you destroy cedar trees to stop someone’s allergies.

Shoot mode puts you in an over-the-shoulder view and has you aiming like you would in a third-person shooter. There are multiple types of weapons, from “normal” to spread to lasers to bombs. Each weapon has its own clip size. There are also different categories of weapons, that being toxicants and deliriants. Toxicants are equipped before a level and remain your weapons the whole mission (up to 3 slots for these), while the one deliriant slot can occasionally change as you pick up certain items during a mission. Toxicants recover ammo over time after you empty your clip, while deliriants only recover when you find ammo during levels. I do have complaints about the shooting though. It’s generally fine, but if you’re even a bit close to a target, that crosshair is not accurate at all, even if you’re pointing it directly at an enemy. Bullets tend to go a bit to the right, or a bit to the left, of where you’re aiming. Not always great. Most guns are pretty useable, but I found some that are just straight-up better than others (the shotgun that shoots stars for example), or at least less awkward (as some guns have pretty weird usability).

Purge mode is fairly simple. Poisonette goes in full-body mode, leaving you as an unmoving skeleton. You make her walk around, leaving a path behind her. If she goes on or close to poison, it basically marks that poison (using a green color) for deletion. Once you let go of the purge button, Poisonette merges back with you, and any marked poison is deleted. If you bring Poisonette back to your skeleton before ending her path, you end up purging not only the poison you walked over but everything in that circle you just made. You do have a fairly short time limit in purge mode, so you need to plan out your path if you want to clear those large circles. If an enemy is standing poison that is being purged, damage is dealt to that enemy. Poison also hurts you if you go on it in normal or shooting mode. There’s normal poison, red poison (which hurts more), and purple poison (which comes back after a few seconds). It’s not a very deep mechanic, but it’s kinda fun.

All that’s left to talk about is powering up, which there’s a few ways you do this. The main one is leveling up, which you do by getting EXP. You get EXP from purging poison mires, killing enemies and talking to spirits/thoughtforms. Each level has 3 pickups to find that, if you do, give you access to a poison. Could be a toxicant, an antidote, or a catalyst. Antidotes and catalysts are stat boosters.  You get 2-3 slots for toxicants, and one slot each for antidotes and catalysts. And finally, there’s your relationship with Poisonette. Sometimes during levels, you’ll talk to her and respond to something she said. You always get 3 choices, and each choice will power up one attribute. Synergy, Empathy, Insight, Toxicity and Trust. Those attributes can get levels. When an attribute gets a level, it powers something up. I legitimately don’t know which attribute increases what, because the game doesn’t tell you. Also when those attributes reach a certain level, you’ll earn a skill. The “next skills” thing above the list of attributes tells you what you can aim for next. Just like the attributes, some of these skills don’t tell you what they do. Trust increases your bond with Poisonette. No idea what that does. Getting Trust to level 3 earns you the skill “Poisonette’s Trust”. No idea what that does. Most of the skills are straightforward, things like “Resist Phys.” or “Clip size up”. But what’s “Poisonette’s Trust”? There isn’t even a list of skills you currently have unlocked in the game.

So there’s a big gameplay design problem here. How do you actually decide which attribute you want to raise? You can’t actually grind these, as re-doing a mission and doing the dialogue choice a second time doesn’t give you more attribute points. So there’s a limited amount of these points and the game does not tell you what they do until you level them up. And I still don’t know what “Poisonette’s Trust” is. There’s no instruction manual (just a very small mini artbook), and the official website, which acts as a manual, doesn’t say anything either. How does this happen? What the fuck does “Poisonette’s Trust” do?

Oh and there’s a shop. It sells only ONE item that costs 100000. Get it ASAP if you want the good ending (you need it before some of the later levels). Not sure why there’s a shop.

Overall

This game is very okay.

The story is kinda lacking if you care about that, the gameplay is a bit rough with inaccurate shooting, the Switch version has a lot of performance issues, a lot of the gameplay isn’t properly explained (which means you can’t make good decisions)… But in the end, I had a good time with it, it’s a unique idea and some of it works fine. It’s just not super noteworthy overall. It gives me the feel of a game that’s not finished development, they have all the core stuff there, the story’s there, but it feels like there should be more to it. More levels, more gameplay mechanics, more things in the shop, some post-game content maybe? I dunno, it feels incomplete, but it’s not.

I’d recommend it if you’re pretty bored and have nothing else to play, and find it at a discount.