Author Topic: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style  (Read 7431 times)

Offline PriomBlazer

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My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« on: July 05, 2017, 08:31:27 PM »
So, Jonezy here's my review. For the sake of sounding like a proper review I'll be referring to you in the third person and hopefully it won't sound super weird. With that being said, here's the review:

Starting Thought:
How do you even start these?

Waifu Fight Dango Style ( I would have gone with a more subtle name myself, but to each their own I suppose) is an ecchi puzzle game that mixes the mechanics of Pong and Breakout with the ecchi weirdness of Huniepop. It's made by a group of 3 people who collectively go by the name of Enso Entertainment and it's curently in it's alpha stages. I'll be writing the review in 3 categories "music and sound", "graphics and aesthetics", "gameplay and gamefeel" and "bugs and glitches" for the sake of simplicity.

Music and Sound:
As my great-great-great grandpapy used to say, "Always have the right music to go with your cartoon girls

So the reason, I decided to talk about the Music and Sound Design first is because it's the subject I have the least amount of things to talk about.

The music in this game is good. It fits the game very well and every stage has it's own theme. I was actually worried that the game might only have one theme for all stages, that would have been a nightmare. So I'm thankful that the good people of Enso Entertainment didn't do that. Although, it shouldn't come as a surprise I suppose. But on the other hand, none of the music in the game really stand out as being greater than all the others. All of them are good, none of them are exceptionally great.

Sound Effects are another beast though and I feel like I need to talk about it extensively on the "gameplay and gamefeel" segment. Thus the reason I didn't have much to talk about in this category. But in short, the sound effects are a part of the game that needs more work.

Graphics and Aesthetics:
Hey! This is the part I'm good at !

And now we come to the category that Jonezy thought I'd be best at. Because clearly according to jonezy, I am some sort of genius when it comes to ecchi or somewhat perverted drawings and have no other interests or critical skills in particular. BUT, I digress and I kid : P . Thankfully the fine folks at Enso Entertainment also excel in this category. Being a game made by three people I obviously didn't and shouldn't expect the art-style to be in the quality of games made by big Japanese development companies who all have more man power and budget. But for the most part, the game's art is actually really really good. The game's mascot slime creatures who are called "Dango" in the game are really cute and all of the members of our all female roster are really cute and attractive too.




These two characters are definitely the most well drawn. Especially Midori. Midori is objectively best girl and I'm glad Gilbert, One of the developers behind the game shares my opinion. The developers of the game compared their game to Huniepop but I think I like Enso entertainment's art better just because of these two characters alone and because to my surprise, all of the characters are animated and their animated rather fluidly too. I absolutely love it. And also love how each characters backgrounds have hints towards each of the characters' personality.

But the two problems with the art is that. Firstly, the game's ui is unnaturally big


As you can see in this image, the scrollbar is blurry probably due to a forced extension and some fonts have borders while others don't It makes the game feel a bit unprofessional (Much like my review). Although I'm assuming it looks better on mobile platforms. And secondly, although the character art is generally good they're inconsistent. Midori and Jessica look great. All of the playable characters look good too, although they don't exactly reach the quality of the first two. But then there's the two non-playable characters:



These two characters look bad and way too different than the playable characters.

Gameplay and Gamefeel:
"Puns all around!

Before I start this part, I just wanted to mention. Jonezy asked me to help with he's review on this game the day before I started writing this review. It was late at night and I only got a slight glimpse of the game before I went to sleep. And before I downloaded and played the game I was wandering what type of game it was since Jonezy only asked me to review the game only because of the aesthetic side of things. At first I thought it was a fighting game. But I remembered it being described being a puzzle game. So using my deductive reasoning I came to the conclusion that it was a Pong/Breakout hybrid and felt generally good about myself only to find out the gamejolt description of the game says the exact same thing.

Ok, so I keep mentioning that this game mixes Pong and Breakout. But how does it work exactly ? Well this is how:

Both you and your opponent has two layers of shield dangoes. Regular, Gray and Bomb dangoes spawn at the center of the screen. You have use your paddle (the sushi with eyes and the sandcastle with eyes) to hit the dangoes to the enemies side. The shield dangoes have 3 health. When they run out of health they disappear. When a row of shield dangoes disappear, it creates and opening if you shoot the dangoes that spawn at the center into the opening the opponent's life bar depletes (represented by a pocky stick at the top of the screen). When your enemies life bar completely depletes you win. You can also buy potions from the shop and use potions by clicking the bag icon at the bottom of the screen to heal yourself. The bomb dangoes do area of effect damage to shield dangoes after sometime and the gray dangoes give you rack up combo points by hitting your enemies shield dangoes or the by hitting the character on the center's rack(pun intended).

The reason I explain all this is because although they have an interesting game mechanic the tutorial is pretty bare-bones. It doesn't explain how to do damage to your opponent and it says you can't use items in the current version of the game, when actually you can.

But the main thing that makes it's pong inspired gameplay unique is the incorporation of rpg elements. The 

isn't a good way to pause. I was playing most of the game assuming there was no pause button. All of our well-endowed femme-fatales have a special attack that they can use after they get enough combo points (represented by a percentage and gray chibi drawing at the bottom that gradually fill up). When the percentage reaches 100% a comic book like pop-up appears which you click with the mouse to use your special attack. Each characters' special attack is unique. The game also has stat upgrades like you'd see in rpgs:

You can choose one out of 4 stat buffs after you win a match. These two mechanics combined add an extra layer of strategy to the game which makes it stand out from just being an anime-fied pong game. For example, I like Midori not just because she's cute (although she definitely is) but because mixing her special attack with the +1 attack buff makes for a really interesting offensive playstyle.

But with the gameplay out of the way. I have to talk about my main problem with the game, which is sadly, gamefeel. I'm going to list my problems in order to avoid creating a wordy mess:

->Problem 1: The UI

If you look at the image here you can see that the bundles option is colored green because the mouse is hovering over it. This isn't the case with the back, exit, left and right buttons like the ones at the center of the picture, which only turn a slighter gray when hovered by the mouse. But even these aren't as bad as the homescreen. Speaking of which

->Problem 2: The Homescreen

What ? You don't see the problem with it ? Let me explain. There are 3 things you can click on the homescreen the slimes to the left, the laptop on the table and the poster above the TV. The problem is that there's no indication that they're clickable or what happens when you click them. I'm not even sure if they're the only clickable ones. A simple glow and title when hovered by the mouse would do wonders for this screen

->Problem 3: Sound This is a relatively simpler and easily fixable problem. Add more sounds. Some options have sound when clicked on some don't. There's no sound when the dangoes hit the paddles or the shield dangoes. Just add more sounds to fix this problem.

Problem 4: General lack of output and satisfaction When it comes to the main gameplay a bit more output would be nice. When either the player or opponent takes damage the health bar should glow or the screen should shake a bit, when the special attack fills up a ring should form around the chibi avatar and gradually get smaller. These small things do wonders for fast paced games like these. I'd suggest the developers to look up PACAPONG to get an idea on how the game should feel like.

Other than these problems, the two nitpicks I have are firstly, there's a mini game you can access by clicking the slimes on the homescreen

I don't understand how it works. You seem to get points overtime. Do you get more points for hitting midori's chest ? An explanation as to how it works in-game would be nice.
And secondly, You only start with Iromi on the game and all the other characters cost 3000 thousand in-game currency. I think that's a bit much? Although I could be wrong since I managed to get 340 coins from 2-3 hours of playing, if I played off and on on a mobile device I can see myself getting the necessary amount of points easily. I actaully like having unlockables like these in games and it seems like the developers intend to make this a free-to-play game with purchasable bundles which require real money. In which case the price is understandable I supppose.

Some other things I'd like to mention is that, I like how the characters that appear at the center aren't just pretty distractions but actually a part of the gameplay as the character blocks your shots and helps you to rack up points.(I should stop making that pun).

There are 3 game modes currently available, The Challenge mode, Which is more like a standard arcade mode. The Golden bunny bar brawl which has small dangoes that last 5 seconds and central dangoes that block your path and the arcade mode which is more like a hard mode where you can choose which opponent you'll be up against.

The story mode, arena mode and online pvp aren't available yet. I'm actually excited for the story mode, since I'm curious as to how it'd be like.

There's also offline pvp, which requires two gamepads. Luckily I do have two gamepads. So I did the only logical thing and played with myself.(And that pun wasn't intentional)

Bugs and Glitches:
We all have our problems.
I'm just going to list some of the major bugs and issues I found while playing the game.

-> The quit button for the challenge mode doesn't work.
-> Player 1 can use items in PVP by clicking the bag. Player 2 can't.
-> The character section of the shop doesn't appear unless you double click it. This doesn't happen for the other categories.
-> In stage selection for pvp the first two maps are darkened sometimes for some reason.
-> Please consider adding enter or esc and start on the joystick as a pause button. Just having the mouse being pressed on the center
-> There's only partial gamepad support despite requiring two gamepads to play multiplayer.
-> Selecting random on character selection always results with selecting midori. Not that I have an issue with this one.

Finishing Thoughts:
Is it finally over?

I know I probably sound a bit nit-picky about the game, but that's because the game's only in alpha and if the good folks at Enso Entertainment decide to fix the issues I've mentioned this could definitely be a fun game to play. A lot of the issues like the lack of output
and sound can be easily fixed and I feel like the homescreen needs to be fixed ASAP. Although I guess expecting a redraw of the two characters I mentioned would be too much to ask.
In any case, this seems like a game I see myself playing especially if it's on a mobile platform since I can play it during my leisure. And I think it'd be fun to play on the PC too when story mode is added. It'd be nice if the devs considered porting it to windows phone, just saying *wink*wink*.

And with that I end this review.
« Last Edit: July 05, 2017, 10:07:52 PM by PriomBlazer » »

Offline Kiss x Miz

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #1 on: July 06, 2017, 05:34:06 PM »
10/10 reduced birth rates

Offline NekoJonez

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #2 on: July 11, 2017, 04:13:38 PM »

Offline PriomBlazer

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #3 on: July 11, 2017, 07:29:56 PM »

Offline Swagmaster

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2017, 12:23:29 AM »
This was a solid review. Good job. Too bad i'm not into these types of games otherwise i woulda totally gave it a shot if they fixed the things you talked about

Offline NekoJonez

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2017, 08:43:47 AM »
Well, the developer said that we wrote two great articles. He was pleased.

Offline PriomBlazer

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2017, 09:03:11 AM »
Well, the developer said that we wrote two great articles. He was pleased.
yay!

Offline NekoJonez

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Re: My well-endowed review of Waifu Fight Dango Style
« Reply #7 on: July 14, 2017, 09:50:58 AM »
v2.19 already patched some bugs we said in our review. And the dev told me there might be somethings implemented we suggested.

 

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