Jishogi Reviews

Immensely enjoyable despite it's faults. NO SPOILERS The bad: The art isn't very consistent, and there are a few odd decisions made in the design like unnecessary confirmation prompts, but they didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the game very much at all. EXCEPT for the movement speed. I was constantly wishing I could move faster, but even that only became annoying when I was repeating content for all the different endings. A lot of background info for the setting is placed in basically "lore books". These are completely optional, so if you don't want to spend around half an hour just reading them, you might miss some interesting info. Obviously it would be ideal if this information was naturally included in the game's narrative, but I understand why the dev made the decision to do it like this. I didn't mind at all, but this goes in the negatives section by default. The good: The puzzles are interesting and very unique. The concept is very original as far as I know, and they were enjoyable to solve (save for one or two that I got stuck on for a while). If you don't like the puzzles, or are just here for the story/characters, you can skip them by pressing backspace. Speaking of the story, it's very good! The writing is great and I would say it's the strongest point of the game. It starts a little slow in the first act, but never felt like a drag to get through. Total length is fairly short too, so nothing overstays its welcome. I enjoyed every minute of it, and went out of my way to test out different combinations of choices just to see the small changes in the dialogue and endings. As for the characters, the star of the show is the cute blonde girl. She's the best, I love her. She's sassy and annoying. She makes bad jokes and insults the protagonist. She can be incredibly rude and selfish too. So basically she's perfect... Jokes aside, she and the protagonist are very well written, and the look inside their heads that we get really makes them grow on you. Even the side characters were interesting and compelling additions to the story 10/10. (btw the dev says they weren't completely satisfied with Fifield's sprites, but I think the artist knocked it out of the park). Finally, the music. I'm not the type to actively focus very much on background music, but I can still say this: it's good. I genuinely did enjoy the OST and each piece fit the scene where it played very well and contributed to my enjoyment. Overall I'd highly recommend giving it a try, even if you're not into the puzzle aspect of the game (just skip them if you want). I wish the dev had more time to polish this up to it's maximum potential because it deserves it. As it stands, it's still great and most importantly, I wish I had more of it.

fun puzzle game with an endearing story. kinda awkward pacing, and the highest difficulty can be a bit grueling at times. but overall very good.