Re: Witch Girl (from maker of Shinobi Girl)
For some reason, using the w,a,s,d keys and hittin ctrl crashed the game for me, I was using the arrow keys at first. I was on the boss level and there doesn't appear to be a stage select. Anyways, that sucks.
Well short review:
A lot better than their old games in animation/gameplay which was nice. Choosing to fight enemies or dodge them is somewhat balanced, I did feel like the enemies took too many fireballs to die though, it's much easier to just dodge past most enemies. The ability for some enemies to block attacks makes the gameplay more interesting, some even charge you and many have multiple attacks. The boss fight was actually kind of fun/interesting. The normal gameplay was pretty short though at only 5 levels and Hellmode seems a little over the top, not sure it really adds any replayability to the game.
There are tons and tons of animations, it's almost like an animation viewer. At least there is actually SOME gameplay this time around (a problem I had with previous games like this is that they usually just feel completely like animation viewers because the gameplay is so bad). I completed it in like 20 minutes, not counting the time I had to replay it up to the boss because it crashed on me, and really have no desire to replay it. Overall it's pretty good, I don't think the price tag is great, but I'm more in it for gameplay than just for a bunch of animations. I guess it's up to you if you think all the animations are worth it, since that's mostly what you're paying for anyways. It's doubtful you'll ever see a quarter of the total animations in the game just trying to play through it completely, which means most the game is the gallery mode.
I still feel like if they spent all that time on animations and actually put it in a good/more creative type of game, it'd be extraordinary, but they really seem to like these jungle girl clones so it's just kind of above average in my opinion. Maybe people who haven't already played a dozen games exactly like this don't mind it. Still it is a step up from their previous work, so any progress is good. I'd still rather an rpg or a game I can at least play for a couple hours for that price tag.