The first-rate adventurer Yamato is matched only in strength by his comrade Masashi. The two decide to settle once and for all who between them is worthy of the title of true man. With only five weeks to train for their showdown, Yamato decides to conquer the local dōjō to usurp their ultimate secret technique: Heavenfall Dance, unaware of the fates of those who tried and failed before him…
WE NEED MORE GAMES LIKE THIS!!!
I really like this game. This is what I really like about these "anime" themed TF stories. It's not just what's done but the way it's done that's important. Love the invol transformation. If you're someone who enjoys roleplaying as a "resisting" PC this is exactly how it's done. Love how they differentiate the mentality and psychology when the player changes genders and how the treatment of others affect the player's own perspective. Also love how the sexual orientation is explored in this game. It feels like the player is transformed from a heterosexual male to a heterosexual woman. It's rather rare at least nowadays where we see this happening.
On top of that, the length of the game is also perfect. It's not too long to finish in one night and not too short to leave you unsatisfied. The pacing of the story is great. There's almost nothing to complain about except maybe if we had tad bit more epilogue.
overall, I loved this game!! It's a 10/10 from me.
Great game. Not too long, and the bad ends return you to a checkpoint rather than kicking you back to the title screen, which means you won't need to replay the entire game because you forgot to save constantly (every once in a while is still necessary, though). The translation seems solid as far as I could tell, and the creative liberties seem pretty well justified. There's just enough combat to keep you engaged without it feeling like a hassle.
The most important part, though, is how it handles the transformations (we are on TF Games Site, after all). This game takes the route of "new bodies come with impulses that will rewrite the mind over time," which is a great way to go about it since you get a lot of scenes where a character will do something instinctually, only to realize afterwards how embarrassing such behavior is. Plus it has the constant threat of completely giving in to the impulses and losing your old identity forever.
10/10. After you finish the game you will be satisfied but still wishing there was more. I will dfinitely be looking into the other games kmalloc has translated from this author!
Don't expect any similarity to MGC and the like. There isn't even a trace amount of it anywhere here.
What to expect then?
My overall impression is 10/10.
This is how games like this should be made.
Seriously it's so good it doubles as a lesson on quality. Except for a couple of relatively minor bugs it doesn't miss a single detail anywhere.
Solid translation by Kmalloc as usual.
The game is semi-linear, where you have 5 weeks (split into weekdays and weekends) to do different tasks. There are multiple bad endings which is dependent on the choice you take to get "stronger". Overall, game playtime 1~2 hours (if you aim to get all endings) or ~20min for a single playthrough. The author does take a few shortcuts in the game (copy pasting maps mostly), but overall the game is polished with no bugs other than some visual ones.
One thing that might help is the ability to skip text (which can be installed as a plugin for MV), but the game itself is fairly short and just a minor QoL feature.
and why would i want to defeat the 4 masters ;) lol