|
By Manuel  Players: 1 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC Konosuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes of Desire! (From here on simply referred to as "Konosuba" or "Clothes of Desire") is a visual novel with some light dating sim elements. It originally released in Japan way back in 2020, and it's finally getting an official English-language release courtesy of PQube. As you probably already know, it's based on the isekai anime of the same name, though I am going to be jumping into it with only the barest of knowledge of the franchise itself. While games like this most often attract existing fans of the property they're based on, I think it'll be interesting to see how it appeals to someone who is totally new to everything it has to offer. Anyway, with all that out of the way, let's jump into the world of Konosuba, and see exactly how clothes of all things tie into it!
Kazuma and his companions, the goddess Aqua, the magician Megumin, and the crusader Darkness, are out adventuring one day when they discover a mysterious black slab and an equally mysterious gem. After messing around with both a bit they activate the slab by using the gem on it, and learn that it can be used to create clothes. The next day they are accused of theft, as a local noble has reported the black slab and gem as being his possessions. Seeing as they have now lost one of the stolen items (the gem) they are facing exile and/or death for something they didn't actually do. Thankfully the aforementioned noble is willing to let the whole matter go if our heroes are able to craft him a set of clothes that matches his specifications. Since this rather odd request is pretty much the only way our quartet's lives will return to normal, they are forced to accept. The next day recipes for the needed clothes are dropped off at the local shopped by a masked man, and they set off to work. Unfortunately they soon realize that the black slab is also cursing each of them in turn. The curse comes in the form of making them realize their truest desires, and this means a whole new layer of hijinks that they don't really have the time for. Naturally this means that they have to craft yet more clothes to fix the ever-compounding issues, but they're more than up to the task. That quirky little intro is how Clothes of Desire opens, and it's what will drive this time management visual novel forward. The game is divided into chapters, and while each has their own goals to complete and outfits to make, the story never really progress too far outside of that original premise. Things do shift a bit towards the end of the game, but I'll refrain from spoilers here. The lack of story complexity doesn't really matter though, does it? We're all here for the characters right? I know I am at least. Anyhow, let's talk gameplay.
In short, Clothes of Desire is your standard visual novel affair. This means that gameplay will largely center on you conversing with characters and occasionally making choices that affect how the story progresses. I mentioned the dating sim elements earlier on, and that comes into play with the affection meters that each of the game's romanceable characters have. Romanceable may be too strong of a word for what eventually happens when you fill said meter, but I think you get the point. Unlike in a normal visual novel, where the choices pretty much only alter a dialogue tree or two, your choices here will often raise or lower affection with the character you're speaking with. Some of these choices can be obvious, such as insulting a character or agreeing to help them, but there are times when you may think you're picking the right choice, only to have their affection meter plummet instead. The only way to raise it is to make more of these choices, so you're going to have to keep an eye on any optional event scenes that may pop up in the course of the game if you want to keep them up. You usually have the opportunity to interact with at least one character during each of the chapter's weeks, so you'll want to keep an eye out for them if your affection meter isn't where you want it. You also get a boost when you have a certain character try on a completed outfit, but that doesn't happen all too often for obvious reasons. By the very nature of the game, it's far easier to raise and lower affection for Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness, so you'll have to take special measures if you want to get more scenes that involve the supporting cast of Wiz, Yunyun, Chris, and Sena. It all makes sense after a while though, and as long as you practice good old save scumming, you'll see your affection soaring in no time at all.
Affection meters or not, Clothes of Desire is a visual novel at its heart. While it can be argued that your biggest goal is to get high affection with one or more of the girls, that's not all there is when it comes to gameplay. When I said that your group is tasked with making clothes for the wronged noble, I really meant that you actually have to make them. At the start of each chapter you're given two recipes, one to make an outfit that will end the curse for whichever character currently has it, and one to create the outfit you need to deliver to the noble. Each of them requires you to collect several items needed to craft them, and the noble-specific one will require you to purchase an item from the shop that only becomes available once you remove the curse from the currently cursed character. This shop, run by Wiz by the way, also sells the crafting materials to make all the outfits, but you'll need to acquire gold to purchase them. You get gold and crafting items by completing jobs, taking on bounties, or foraging for supplies. These all pretty much have the same outcomes, but the latter two have better results if you work at them the entire week, and they also require the entire party to participate. I say "week", but you only work three out of every five day cycle. The last two days are split between a rest day, where you can see a random scene, and a crafting day, which you can skip if you don't want to create any clothes that week. The jobs you take on can be assigned to any character for any amount of days, but some characters prefer certain ones over others. At just about any point (as far as I can tell at least) you can see a random scene involving a job, bounty, or foraging mission, and these are pretty much just funny asides. Whatever you end up doing for the first three days, you'll get items and gold, with the former related to the job you completed. You can't sell any of the crafting items you get, so it's best to plan your week so you're not wasting time gathering items you don't need. The current chapter ends once you make craft the noble-specific outfit, but it's very important to un-curse the cursed character early on, since you need to do so before the last week is up in order to buy the item you'll need for the noble's outfit. If you take too long to complete the required quests, it's game over.
Each chapter except for the first also has optional outfits you can make for various people of the city. These outfits are usually meant for only one character to try on, so it's essentially the only way to raise affection for the non-main girls. Fans of Chris, Wiz, Yunyun, or Sena are going to want to complete these quests for sure, but they're a neat little addition to an already fun gameplay loop. Also, the notes attached to these jobs are wild and usually have the weirdest of backstories. These side quests of sorts are also how you unlock other jobs, bounties, and foraging missions. I'm not sure if it's possible to complete the game without doing them at all, but you can see which of them you have to fulfill to unlock whatever weekly task you may want to do. Besides raising affection for the girls, you also get to see special scenes of them trying on the outfits. These come in two versions, depending on if you purchase and include a special item to the garment's creation. These special items are pretty expensive, and you'll more than likely have to farm gold to be able to afford them. If you do get the item you get a huge bonus of affection as well as the new scene, though you may wish to see what the scene looks like if you just made the basic version. These optional outfits are what really drives the game forward in my opinion as it would be a rather boring game if you only had to complete a couple of outfits to clear each chapter. The optional outfits add in so much content that I don't think I'd care for the game as much as I do if they weren't included. Besides, how else would you be able to get that Yunyun ending without them?
While the gameplay might not be the most complex thing ever, Clothes of Desire really shines when it comes to its story and characters. Admittedly the story isn't the strongest aspect of the game, as each chapter basically acts as a standalone series of events that exist to give a reason s to why the game's core mechanics are being repeated. There is a flow to it though that I think really works. You get to know the characters over time, and you'll quickly find a favorite or two if you don't already have one. Also, just about every action you take in game is rewarded, even if it's "wrong". There are special scenes you can unlock by assigning characters to jobs that they dislike, so don't be afraid to mix things up when you're playing. You can even ignore most of the game if you only want to experience the main story. That's not all either. You can be purposely mean in your interactions, you can even skip all optional scenes, and you can do all sorts of things with your work schedule. There's nothing keeping you in each of the chapters either, you can bring them all to an early end by finishing the required garments. This flexibility means that the game can be tailored to just about every play style, or it means you can fast forward to the funny scenes where the main cast puts on their silly outfits. The world is truly your oyster here. I didn't go for this route, as I found myself really liking the entire cast, but I can imagine those more familiar with Konosuba in general wanting to mess around a bit. That said, all the characters have their own quirks, and there really is that "someone for everyone" thing going on for those who may only care for a particular character type. The cast is rather small, but that size means that you get far more time with each of them. Adding in the fact that the game doesn't really have a "villain" so to speak, there's basically nothing stopping you from playing the game and simply enjoying yourself. Clothes of Desire is basically that summer break filler episode every anime has, but it's executed so perfectly that I can't any fault with the way it chooses to tell its story. I mentioned my lack of Konosuba knowledge a few times now, and I want to talk about how that went for me over the course of the game. I will admit that it was a little jarring being dropped into the middle of the action at first. I didn't even realize that the main character, Kazuma, was actually isekai'd and reincarnated into the world until it was randomly referenced towards the end of the first chapter. Similarly I didn't realize Wiz was a lich, or that Darkness wasn't her real name. There's other examples like that, but basically the game does assume that players will have some base knowledge of the series before jumping into it. All these small bits aside though, it does ease you into things in other ways. The first chapter almost exclusively centers on the main cast, and you don't start to meet the side characters until later on. This helped me get to know each one slowly over time, even though their introductions were usually variations of "Oh look, it's our friend Yunyun!" and I'd have to focus on context clues to get to know what was up. Also, and this is probably most important, is the fact that as far as I can tell this game's story is not particularly canon to series itself. It obviously borrows from it heavily, and I'm sure there's a seasonal placement if I look hard enough for it, but it tells its own self-contained story that doesn't tie in too much with the greater series beyond characters and setting. It's not the best way to jump into Konosuba I'm sure, but it worked well enough for me.
What you see is what you get as far as visuals go, as nothing in Clothes of Desire is really going to surprise you. You've pretty much seen exactly what you're getting into if you've seen screens or trailers for this game. It is a visual novel after all, so it's going to focus more on the art and illustrations over jaw-dropping graphics. Basically don't expect a whole lot of movement or animation and you'll be fine. The illustrations you do get are all on point, and you can see all your favorites in some very specific, cosplay-esque, scenarios. These CG images are all unique to the game, and you're most likely going to go out of your way to fill up the CG gallery with them. There is a slight catch when it comes to these special CGs though. First of all, the game does have a slight bit of animation in the form of mouth flaps for dialogue. Character's mouths sync to what they're saying, and they'll even emote and change facial expressions as the scene dictates. What's odd though is that whenever there is a special event CG on screen, you'll only hear voices over a still image. There is practically no animation, and while the scene may alter slightly, or pan and zoom over the image, it'll pretty much remain completely still. Admittedly this is sort of a visual novel thing, but it does lead to long stretches of the game where nothing is really happening on screen, leading to moments where the dialogue is far more action packed than the image accompanying it. Other visual novels get around this by having multiple CGs for each scene, but perhaps due to the sheer amount of optional events here, each one pretty much only gets one illustration. I don't want to act like this brings down the game to any great degree, but it's worth pointing out nonetheless. To close this little section on a lighter note, I'll point out that the little animations you get for each job are quite cute, and I would totally buy stickers or pins of each of them if they were available. Seriously I love them.
It probably goes without saying that sound in Konosuba totally rocks. Well, I guess it goes without saying if you're a fan of Konosuba already, but then again I'm not and I'm still saying it. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Clothes of Desire has some of the best sound design in a game of this type, and everything about it is pleasing to the ears. You have the complete voice cast from the series reprising their roles, and a soundtrack that features the same names that worked on the music from the anime. Admittedly the music has that "visual novel" feel to it, meaning that it more exists to support a scene rather than stand out, but it's of a very high quality nonetheless. The opening theme, "It's so fine!", and the ending theme, "Amayadori", both stand out as anisong tracks that are so awesome that I've literally already added to my playlists. The rest of the music fares just as well, even if it's not something I'd regularly listen to outside of playing the game. Everything is lively and upbeat, and there wasn't a single track I didn't enjoy to some degree. I guess the only real issue I can see with the game is that it does not have an English dub. This isn't really an issue for me, since I tend to play video games in their original language if available, but I can see how some fans of the anime dub may have wished for it to be included. I'm sure there were some sort of budgetary issues that kept that from happening, but I will lament the fact that I wasn't able to hear friend of A-to-J, Kayli Mills, reprise Yunyun here. That said, the cast all pull of their parts well, and I'm sure fans will enjoy the wacky scenarios that they find themselves in through the course of the game. This isn't really a sub/dub/voice acting issue, but I wasn't sure where else to talk about this. I casually tossed aside the issue of there being no dub track, but there is something rather more noticeable that I want to talk about when it comes to actual negative points with Clothes of Desire. I'm not one to really nitpick a game for the occasional typo or grammatical error here or there, but at the time of this writing this game is littered with them. I noticed the first one within an hour of playing, and I gave up trying to document them by the time the first chapter was over. I even took a few funny screenshots to include in this review, only to notice later that I had accidentally captured yet more grammatical errors that I hadn't even notice while playing. I guess I just fixed the grammar issues in my head, but now I wonder how many other errors like that flew under my radar. Once again, this isn't something I normally harp on, but it took me out of the game more than once and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I think every single scene in the game has at least one or two. I'm hoping that most (all?) of these are fixed with a future update, but I can't be sure of that at this moment. Maybe I'll update this review with a note if that ever comes to pass, but if it does, I hope that it gets released as close to launch as possible.
Konosuba: Clothes of Desire currently has a fairly premium price of $49.99, but I do feel that the price is justified by the sheer quality of content you receive. Not just quality either, as the game has an extensive amount of content not often seen within a visual novel. The core game is very long, and the different routes, extra scenes, unlockable CGs, RNG resource gathering, etc., make it so that you can play it several times over and get a unique experience each time. I barely finished my first run and I'm already wondering what I can differently in my second. Now that I have a better grasp of the resource gathering mechanics I can probably even play in a more efficient way. It's worth mentioning that each of the chapter-specific outfits can be given to each of the three main girls, so that alone warrants at least three playthroughs. Like a lot of higher quality visual novels, how much you play after you complete it is really a matter of personal preference, but I'm sure fans of the series will see it through for the last point alone. Also, seeing as it'll take you quite a while to finish the game's main chapters, you're going to get your money's worth with that alone.
If you're a fan of the Konosuba anime, then you're probably already playing this game as we speak. If you're not, well, what are you doing reading this review? Go get it! More importantly though, I think that this is a great visual novel/dating sim (ish) in general too, and fans of the genre can pick it up even if they're not familiar with the anime. I knew nothing about the franchise before picking this game up, and I've fallen so in love with the characters that I've begun to watch the anime. I guess I picked up the anime just in time too as the third season is about to debut. It may not be the perfect entry point if you're trying to dip your toes into Konosuba, but it really isn't a bad place to start either. Honestly, get the game on whatever platform you can, and thank me later. I'm going to wrap up this review and finish up the anime before that debut, maybe we can have a watch party! For More Information on Konosuba: God's Blessing On This Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes of Desire!: https://pqube.co.uk/games/konosuba/ Story: A+ Gameplay: A+ Graphics: A Music/Sound: A+ Value: A Overall: A+ Pros: + A visual novel that keeps things lively by adding in simulation and crafting gameplay elements. + The story moves along at a great pace, and is very enjoyable even to those new to the series. + The art and CGs are all well done, and there's a lot of optional content to explore and collect. + Voice acting and music are perfectly on point. + Different endings, scenes, and more make this highly replayable. +/- While I enjoyed the game knowing nothing about Konosuba, it might be best experienced by those who are already fans. Cons: - Even though the clothes crafting mechanic is central to gameplay, this is still a visual novel at heart. - Static CG scenes having no animation or mouth flaps can be a bit jarring at times. - The game's script has quite a few typos and grammatical errors in it at the time of writing. - While some might not mind its exclusion, there is no English dub option for the dialogue. A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.  I definitely need a drink after this one! #KonosubaLoveForTheseClothesOfDesire
|
Search
Contributors◆ Angie
◆ Emily ◆ J.D. ◆ Janette ◆ JT ◆ Manuel ◆ Nestor ◆ Rose ◆ Sylvia ◆ Teepu ◆ Tiffany ◆ Winfield 
Archives
October 2024
|
RSS Feed
© 2014-2024 A-to-J Connections. All Rights Reserved.