[GAME] Chantelise: A Tale of Two Sisters Review

Developer: EasyGameStation

Publisher: Carpe Fulgur LLC

Genre: Anime, Action, Adventure, RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Indie.

Release Date: 29 July, 2011

The Story of Chantelise is quite the sweet one.

It's a tale of Two sisters, Chante; Elder Sister & Elise; Younger Sister, who were called out under a red moon by a witch during the middle of the night.

After this event comes to a close, both sisters are transported back to the forest they started in in a state of confusion and bewilderment. Elise is more so surprised by the fact that Chante is now a small fairy with wings giving off a sparkling dust.

So in order to change Chante back into the human she once was, they set out on a journey to find the witch who did this to them and have her change Chante back!

Quite an easy story to follow, but it does change it's pace somewhat as you progress, though not enough for you to lose track of what's going on.

I really like the story in this game, but there isn't much I can say as to why I like it without ruining the plot so...

It's an Adventure, Hack & Slash with magic thrown into the mix. I find the way this games mechanics play out somewhat interesting.

Sword play is as basic as it comes, you can jump and swing or you can not jump and still swing and you have a set combo which can only be altered by having certain items equipped to your person.

Similarly, you don't level up either, you find and purchase equipment which is used to bolster your stats and after hitting certain milestones, the range of equipment as well as how much you can equip is expanded.

With health, You use something called ferromin. These are small bottles of something which have certain grades to them for boosting maximum health capacity.

Finally, the way you use magic is what interests me the most.

You can't just run into a field and blast something with fireball because you don't have any mana. NONE!

Instead, you will find small jewels scattered around after slaying monsters or breaking open certain objects. Chante then uses these jewels to cast certain spells at the enemies you target, and if none, then in the direction you're looking.

Spells can only be used in the order of jewels that you pick up and instead of being able to rearrange the gems to get a combination you want.

You have to burn old gems and hope to find new ones which match your current needs. (and pick them up in the needed order)

Individually, all of these sound pretty basic and boring, but when you put them all together, they seem to work quite well and make a fun and challenging experience.

The game can actually be quite hard sometimes.

Monsters are generally quite simple to kill, mow them down with your mighty sword thingy and magic the life out of them.

But when they group up and you're surrounded by both casters and melee you can get into quite the pickle.

Enemies can hit really hard if you don't have resistance against their attacks (Magic or physical respectively) and when there's a large group or a full room of them on your case, you can get KO'ed very quickly.

You also don't have a direct way to heal in the form of consumables, the majority of healing consists of picking up food items dropped by boxes or enemies and you aren't always guaranteed to even get to it sometimes.

The need for more health is also made very apparent as you travel through dungeons on your journey.

You head into a field and kill all off the enemies in the locations in order to open the door to the next area, and you continue doing this until you reach the final room.

Thankfully, once the door is open it will not close again even if you die and have to re-enter, which is good since if you want to move forward in the story you have to start each dungeon from area one in story mode and work your way back up to the last room and you could be doing this a lot.

You will get attacked on your way back up too, so rushing back to the last room isn't always a good idea if you're trying to save health and resources.

After a certain point in the game, you will unlock the ability to start fishing.

So if the stress of running back and forth and dying constantly gets a bit overwhelming for you, why not try your hand at a more relaxing sport.

All you have to do is equip your rod, stick that fairy on the end of the line and lob her into a body of water big enough to hold fish.

It might be worth noting that you should probably kill all of the enemies in the area first though as when you fish you can't see what's going on around you.

Fishing doesn't hold much in the way of progressing but if you can catch enough of certain types of fish, you can actually trade them up for some shiny things so it might be worth it if you're having trouble in your current dungeon.

The art style for the game resembles Recettear: An Item Shops Tale very closely, and so it should given it was developed by the same people.

The graphics are quite dated now but it's still very bright and cute and it's quite pleasing to the eye.

Of course this is very different inside dungeons and ruins where everything is grey and back lit by torches or lava, making it feel very dark and dungeon like, as it should.

The only vibrant things you'll find down there are items, gems and monsters.

Sprites are shown as 2D against a world created in 3D but they don't feel clunky or awkward to use. Each movement has it's own sprite and set of animations which make it feel quite fluid and enjoyable.

This is somewhat let down by the camera and how clunky it feels to move it around sometimes. I often found myself just memorizing routes and steps instead of using the camera to maneuver up where I needed to head back to.

It's only helped out a small amount by monsters in the area since locking onto them seems more or less instant, but even then. this can be annoying since you won't always lock onto the target you want to take down first.

You'll end up circling the enemies until you've finally snapped to the right one, firing off some magic and then repeating this until all of the awkward variables have been dispatched.

A lot of the monsters and bosses are basically the same as enemies you'll find in Recettear and also come in the same types of variations, both as colourful and even more dangerous than their previous variant.

The difference is that a lot of them, especially bosses, have different patterns and different ways to defeat them which adds a bit of a challenge especially if you've moved over from one game expecting it to be a similar fight.

Even with some of the gripes I have, the game is so much fun to play and the level of challenge helps fill out a lot of the story .

The art syle helps to make area's you have to traverse multiple times more appealing and it adds extra depth to the game overall.

The pacing is decent and the fishing also adds a reason to go back and revisit old areas to see what you can fish up. You might even find a treasure you may have missed or have been unable to collect previously.

All in all, I had a lot of fun playing this.

Bye!

Rhiyous