It’s one of the weirdest genre crossovers I’ve ever played, even if some of it is eerily familiar.
Yurukill: It would be permissible not to know the meaning of the subtitles of The Calumniation Games completely. Merriam Webster defines the verb calumniate as “maliciously making false statements, accusations, or attributions.” Calumniation Games makes sense after learning that half of the characters in the game have been imprisoned for a crime claiming to be innocent. Still, having to go to the dictionary before playing a video game is certainly not the most typical beginning, but Yurukill is partly a visual novel, partly an adventure game, and partly a vertical shoot. It should be praised for incorporating an interesting story. Up. Is that unique DNA worth the vocabulary lessons you need?
After a brief tutorial stage that shows how the shooting game works, you’ll see an image of a large cruise ship heading to a dark amusement park. In the next scene, the main character, Sengoku, wakes up behind the bar and tries to escape, but to no avail. Immediately, you will be introduced to Binko, the organizer of the Yurkil game, which hosts the participants of the five groups arriving at the park. It turns out that the premise of the tournament is to give an amnesty to one of the prisoners if the prisoner wins. However, each is paired with an executioner, who can kill the executioner at the push of a button. If the executioners win, they can choose to fulfill any single wish they desire. After all, pairs are not random, and each executioner is usually a direct victim or severely affected by a crime in which a prisoner was convicted.
Other than the first tutorial, much of the first few hours of the game are full of long dialogue-based cutscenes. There are some puzzles that pop up in each of the seven or so chapters, but some of them offer many challenges. Those that cannot be resolved immediately tend to be mysterious, as opposed to brain exercises. In the general layout of each chapter, a pair of characters is stuck in another section of the park, modeled on the crimes committed by prisoners. Along the way, you’ll learn the inside story of both prisoners and executioners and how the two are connected. After completing the area puzzle and passing through the attractions, this chapter ends with a multi-step vertical shooter section where two individuals fight each other in a kind of arcade simulation.
The overall plot and individual characters are interesting enough, but much of the dialogue is repetitive and overwritten. It’s not a handful of typos that ruin the story, but a huge amount of typos that are executed at one time. Yurukill: The pace of Calumniation Games is the biggest weakness, and it’s often dragged longer than necessary, even if individual parts of the game are having fun with small bursts. The shooter section is full of dialogue breaks and Q & A mini-games, and after the midpoint of the game, some of the boss battles will be over 10 phases. Little is allowed to breathe about the game, instead players are constantly shattered with trivial details overhead and crazy traffic between characters.
However, the cumulative experience remains fascinating for some reason. There was a mystery at the heart of the story, and I really wanted to know how the Yurkir game ended and who would win. Binko, who plays the role of Danganronpa’s Monokuma, has the charm of “Yurukiru!” Greetings, and even if it doesn’t make sense, insist on changing some of the words to “bins”. The shooting section provided a tense barrage moment, undoubtedly exaggerating their welcome. Especially if you ruin one of the mini-game questions that are part of every boss battle, your pool of life can easily go to zero. Also, when the ship’s supermeter is full, when the 20% threshold is reached, the meter can be used as an automatic defense system, not only preventing damage from the first shot, but also consuming any amount of accumulated meters. can.
From an aesthetic and performance standpoint, the switch can keep it together for the most part. Some shoot-up stages go through some neat transformations, but the enemies haven’t changed much. The different ships on the pilot are also quite similar to each other. Most interior scenes aren’t very detailed, but the text is easy to read and the point-and-click controls work well for each chapter’s research sequence. During the transitions of the scene, there was an obvious problem, especially during the shooter sequence, and one of the final stages of the shooter experienced one complete crash in a fair way. Voice acting is all in Japanese, but it was very effective in setting the mood and was a sure complement to all the sentences in the game.
Yurukill: Calumniation Games is certainly weird, but it’s not without its appeal. It definitely shares some features with the Zero Escape and Danganronpa games, even if it doesn’t reach exactly the same highs. The shoot-up section is fun, but like the other aspects of the game as a whole, it’s a bit too long. Spending a little more time in the editorial room would be a worthwhile imprisonment for Binko and the rest of the cast. There aren’t many ways to unlock content, but you can play the shooting stages you’ve cleared in the story to gain a position on the online leaderboard. Undoubtedly, Yurukill: The Calumniation Games is a much bolder and more ambitious title than IzanagiGames’ World’s End Club, and we look forward to the dark story they weave next.
