Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return Reviews

I left this game in my backlog bin for a long time and finally decide to play. Oh boy I like the game much better than the predecessor. Better wifu pict, better game play, better engine, also I enjoy writing the most.

Sunrider is an enjoyable manga-style series that, unlike most manga games (which are usually just glorified visual novels), features excellent turn-based combat. Sunrider 4 is still an enjoyable manga game with excellent turn-based combat, but it changes a lot of the game from the earlier entries. This isn't a bad or good thing per se, but it is not at all the same experience. Mechanically, the combat is no longer hex-based, but instead an open grid with momentum-based movement. It is a lot more challenging, especially early on when you're not used to it, and requires a lot more mathematical precision to get right. A single misclick can be disastrous. It's rewarding when you do it right, but it's a very different experience. Sunrider 4 also adds some adventure-style puzzles and point-and-click sections. Bluntly, I think these were very ill-advised. The point-and-click sections are mercifully brief and have some pay-off later in the game, but the adventure puzzles are tedious and pedantic. Thankfully, they are restricted to the middle of the game. Narratively, Sunrider 4 is interesting and engaging, but again completely different. Whereas the earlier games had a light-hearted tone and lots of fun little lewd fan service scenes, Sunrider 4 is dark and serious, featuring frequent elements of psychological horror, and the very limited adult scenes are extremely tame (bewbs only) and restricted to the psychological horror sections, so not lewd in tone. Again, this wouldn't be a bad thing per se if this were an original game, but it is tonally jarring in the fifth entry in a series (including Sunrider Academy). Despite this sharp tonal shift, though, nonetheless you must have played the earlier games for the plot to make any sense or have any emotional resonance. Sunrider 4 is a good game, and I recommend it. But you must have played the original trilogy to understand it, yet paradoxically you shouldn't go into it expecting it to be very much like those earlier games. If it were an original game none of this would have been a problem, but for a sequel the gap between expectation and reality was disconcerting.