AMEDAMA Reviews

This is the sort of game where I wish you could write neutral reviews; it's OK, I guess, but really nothing special. In Amedama, you do not play as the titular queen from the bad Star Wars prequels, but some samurai guy named Yushin, who is tasked with rescuing your sister who really isn't your sister (the game tells you this almost right away), and in order to find this possible love interest you have to body switch and repeat the same "week" over and over again. The story outside of this is very basic and mostly old hat; you will probably guess the majority of the plot "twists" if you've ever watched an anime or played a video game before. I really like the body switching mechanic in games like Ghost Trick or Tsugunai, so I thought it would be fun in a samurai action game, but in Amedama it is almost entirely meaningless. Most of the time you are treated the same regardless of who you play as, and if you die you can just go back and collect the same body as many times as you want. There is really no consequences for anything in this game. The amount of hand-holding in this game is such that there is always an arrow on-screen telling you exactly where to go. Amadaba-doo supposedly takes place over the course of a week, but time seems to just pass arbitrarily, and the mechanic seems to just be window dressing for the story (which, as I mentioned, is not very compelling). Some people compare this game to Way of the Samurai (which I like), but the swordplay in Amedama is super simplistic, and usually just involves spamming an easily-abusable counter attack and then spamming attack when the opponent is down. You have a light attack, a heavy attack, and a jump attack but that's really it. Combos are never safe when an enemy is standing because they can just hit you out of it whenever they want, but for the player character hitstun is absurd and will usually result in being spammed to death. Then you have bosses who can spam unblockable attacks with hitboxes that extend behind them, and despite the supposed open-ended nature of the game these fights are mandatory once you are on a set "path." I think you are supposed to comb the map to find the one character that will be effective against the boss, but I really don't care enough to try. You can level up in a way that transfers between characters, but it doesn't seem to matter most of the time, because normal enemies are completely worthless and you can just be a ghost and skip them, and bosses are cheap and annoying. There are also bugs, and it is possible to sequence-break the game quite by accident. Amedama is not a terrible game, and has a nice aesthetic and art style, but is pretty mediocre in most aspects. If you end up liking the game, it seems to at least have a fair bit of replay value, but nothing compared to something like Way of the Samurai. Not really worth it, in my opinion.

You're dead and you're stuck in a time loop. Luckily, you are a kick-ass samurai-trained umbrella merchant who can now possess people you've defeated in past battles and you're going to use this ability to save your foster-sister. It's a wacky premise but the game makes it work in a very intuitive way. Graphically, this beautifully animated 2D version of a Japanese town is a lovely place to visit and you'll be running through these areas over and over through each loop so it's a good thing it's easy on the eyes. Each character you meet (and possess) has their own motivations and reasons for being. You can even posses dogs and frogs! The combat is pretty basic and you have a very easy-to-use parry ability that chews through health bars without much trouble and this is a good thing as the combat is a really just a means to an end. It gets you into the bodies of key characters that let you find out more about why you were murdered and why your sister, Yui, was taken. There are many moving parts to the story and it all comes together in the end in a satisfying way. I was intrigued by this ever since I played the demo and I'm glad to say that the full game really comes through with the goods. Going through each loop and finding a new wrinkle in time is extremely satisfying and the game's length is pretty damn perfect. There is more you can do after you've watched the credits roll as the game lets you continue your loops to uncover things you might have missed and it also offers another game mode to play, defeating endless waves of enemies.