Mary Skelter Nightmares (Nathan Green)

2017 has been an interesting year for video games. We’ve had a number of excellent new releases this year, the PS4 and Xbox One have been churning on with another successful year and Nintendo rolled out the Switch, a console that many people are gushing over but I’m still 50/50 on.

Among all of this however the humble PlayStation Vita, now over 5 years old is still very much alive and kicking with new games still coming out for it.

While 2017 hasn’t been anywhere near as active in terms of vita games as 2016 had been we have still seen some very solid releases this year. Out of the 2017 line up however there has been one game that I have had my eye on since the announcement trailer. That game is Mary Skelter, a DRPG developed by Compile Heart and published by Idea Factory.

The first thing that caught my eye about the game was how much of a drastic departure it was from what Compile Heart usually does. The company is more known for it’s Neptunia series so when I saw that Mary Skelter was going to be a game with a much darker theme to it with a much heavier focus on plot I was rather surprised. Granted at the time I never thought it would actually get localized so imagine my surprise when an official localization was announced by Idea Factory.

I’ve been looking forward to playing and reviewing this game for quite a while so without any further fanfare lets begin exploring the jail.

Story:

Right off the bat Mary Skelter provides a very interesting setting and premise. The opening details that the world of Mary Skelter takes place in a sort of post apocalyptic unamed city in Japan that many years ago was taken over by a race known as Marchins while the land around them transformed in a living, breathing jail.

Our two main characters, Jack and Alice, are one of many people trapped in this living jail, forced to live their days undergoing various types of torture in order to appease the living jail they are trapped inside. Things change for the pair one day though when they are suddenly broken out of their cell by a girl who calls herself Red Riding Hood (yes, really).

They escape and join a group known as DAWN whose main goal is to escape this living jail that they’re inside. Naturally this involves Alice and Jack working with the other members of the DAWN to fight their way through various dungeons with a hope of escaping.

In terms of actual story, while not groundbreaking or anything Mary Skelter does manage to provide an interesting and rather unique premise with a decent amount of mystery and character interactions.

Overall while Mary Skelter doesn’t exactly sport a groundbreaking story what it has is certainly enjoyable and unique. It does feel like Compile Heart put a lot more effort into the premise, character interactions and the overall plot than they have in other titles which is really nice to see. It’s not going to win any awards any time soon but it’s certainly above average.

Gameplay:

Mary Skelter, as I mentioned earlier is a Dungeon Crawler RPG. DRPG’s have always been a bit of a mixed bag with me. Some of them I enjoy but some of them I just... don’t.

It doesn’t help that the last dungeon crawler title I actually reviewed was MeiQ Labyrinth of Death, a relatively mediocre DRPG also by Compile Heart. With that in mind the gameplay would really be what would make or break Mary Skelter and in this case I think Compile Heart hit the ball out of the park.

Mary Skelter plays like your traditional DRPG. Walk around dungeons in a first person perspective going between floors, solving the odd puzzle here and there and fighting enemies in turn based random encounter battles. The base DRPG formula remains relatively unchanged however that isn’t to say that Mary Skelter is just another bare bones DRPG, in fact it’s quite the opposite.

Where the gameplay in Mary Skelter starts to shine is in the smaller things that they have added or tweaked. The game adds a surprising number of unique mechanics which I haven’t seen before in other DRPG’s and they really work in the games favour.

The first and most often utilized of these mechanics is the Blood system. Alice and the various other characters you’ll run into throughout the game are known as Blood Maidens. Blood Maidens have the special power to wield what are called Blood Weapons as well as the ability to actually effectively fight the Marchins. Marchin blood also helps extend the powers of a Blood Maiden in battle allowing for higher damage output and other such goodies.

This is where the blood mechanic comes in. How this works is that each Blood Maiden has what is called a “Blood Splat Meter”. There are a few ways to fill up this meter. The first way is by exploiting enemy weak spots by using the correct elemental weakness. The second way is by performing what is called an Overkill which is usually triggered when a character deals a blow to an enemy that is more than enough to kill them (for example if I dealt 100 damage to an enemy with only 10 HP left).

Performing either of these actions fills the Blood Splat Meter which the player can then use to perform a few actions. Firstly if the meter fills up to the top then on their next turn the Blood Maiden will enter massacre mode which significantly boosts damage output as well as applying a minor HP and SP regen effect.

There is a downside though. As Blood Maidens are dealt more and more damage or get K.O’d the colour of the blood in the splat meter will start to grow darker. The darker the colour the higher the chance a Blood Maiden has of entering Blood Skelter mode.

Blood Skelter mode is something you REALLY want to avoid. Upon activation a maiden receives the buffs of massacre mode but will attack both enemies and party members without any rhyme or reason. It’s something you need to be constantly aware of while playing since if you end up overlooking it then it can come back to bite you fast.

Now there is a way to prevent and counteract blood skelter but I’ll touch on that later.

The second use of blood in the Splat Meter is through the act of Licking. Yes, you read that right, Licking.

The Lick option in the command menu lets you Lick the splattered blood off of a party member. Outside of being a bit weird this does actually have a use to it since the act of licking blood off a maiden actually applies a buff or boost to either one member or the whole party. This could be an HP regen effect, SP regen effect, stat boost etc.

The act of licking also empties the Blood Splat Meter so it can be a good way of buying yourself time if you have a maiden on the verge of entering blood skelter since it resets the meter.

Jack is also a member in the party but he plays a bit differently to the rest of the members. For starters he can’t attack, instead he has the ability to use items, guard a blood maiden to block them from damage and most importantly use his special weapon called a Mary Gun.

I say weapon but you use it more like a supporting item. The Mary Gun is the main way you prevent blood maidens from entering Blood Skelter.

In a nutshell, Jacks blood has the unique trait of being able to purge corruption from a blood maiden as well as completely reverse the effects of blood skelter. This does come at a cost though since you are literally using Jacks blood as ammunition. This means you can’t just go around spamming the thing willy nilly since you have to keep a close eye on your own blood supply.

The less blood you have remaining, the higher your chances of getting stunned and being unable to move after performing an action with the Mary Gun. You do have an option to generate blood when Jacks turn rolls around and most of the time if you play your cards right Jack’s blood supply will rarely drop below halfway (this is where strategic use of licking comes into play since it can buy you time to generate more blood to purge the corruption).

It’s a very well implemented system which adds a new layer of strategy to the gameplay while not coming off as a half assed addition they threw in at the last minute.

I’d like to also commend the games pacing in terms of how it introduces new gameplay elements. The Mary gun and the whole corruption gameplay element doesn’t even come into play until the second dungeon giving the player time to learn the ins and outs of licking and massacre mode.

It’s one of the few DRPG games I know of where gameplay mechanics are sensibly introduced at a good pace so they don’t overwhelm the player with a bunch of stuff they need to get their head around right from the first dungeon.

Outside of the battle system there are a few unique gameplay elements as well, the first of these being blood abilities.

Blood abilities basically function as ways that you can interact with the dungeon in various ways to open up new paths and solve puzzles. Each maiden has their own unique ability and they all get used pretty equally. It’s a simple system but it works.

By far the most useful ability though is Alice’s rabbit hole ability. This essentially lets you create a save point anywhere you want in a dungeon as well as being able to use this point to escape from the dungeon back to the town if you need to. You have no idea how much of a godsend this has been at times. It essentially lets you save anywhere and provides a convenient way to warp back to town in an emergency if you need to.

Another element is the jail bonus system. This is basically made up of three meters consisting of Hunger, Libido and Sleep.

Filling any of these meters up starts a roulette which will grant a bonus to the party. I found that hunger was usually the easiest one to fill up with the next being libido and finally sleep. Really outside of a bonus here and there it doesn’t do much else and it’s really the only system I consider to be half baked in terms of execution.

Finally we have Murder Hunts. This is basically a chase mechanic. How this works is that each dungeon has their own boss enemy called a Nightmare. During your exploring at random intervals the dungeon may begin to grow dark. This is the sign of a nightmare being nearby. If it stays dark long enough then the dungeons Nightmare will appear and trigger a Murder Hunt. 

When a Murder Hunt is triggered the minimap will disappear and some text will pop up showing how close/far you are from the nightmare. In order to complete the sequence you have to escape from said nightmare which is easier said than done especially when you’ve lost your minimap.

If you happen to run into a random encounter during a Murder Hunt then you’ll trigger a Booked Battle. This is the same as a normal battle except the Nightmare will continue attempting to find you and if he does will start attacking you as well. Basically you want to get out of a booked battle as soon as possible. Winning a booked battle does have an advantage though as the resulting blood splatter on the walls of the dungeon will actually light up the surrounding area.

Now you might be thinking, “why can’t I just fight the nightmare?”. Simple answer. For the vast majority of the dungeon the nightmare is invincible. There is nothing you can do but run from him. 

This whole Murder Hunt system is pretty well implimented and actually adds a pretty effective element of horror to the game since these murder hunts happen at complete random so as you explore the dungeon you’re constantly aware that you could run into a Nightmare at any moment.

The darkening of the environment and complete removal of your minimap during a murder hunt only extenuates this fear since now you have no way of actually planning where you’re going to go, how you’re going to get there etc. You have to go off what you know about the dungeon layout and just leg it and it’s incredibly effective.

My only gripe is I can’t really find a pattern in what the game actually counts as “escaping” the nightmare. I assumed it would just be distance but no patterns were popping up there. Then again you could argue that this works in the games favour since it means you don’t actually know how far you’ll have to run or for how long until you actually escape the nightmare so your mileage may vary.

What is interesting is that Murder Hunts and nightmare appearances in general only start to happen from the second floor of a dungeon onwards which is a design choice I can totally get behind since it helps compensate for the lack of a mini map in the Murder Hunts by giving the player a decent amount of time to get to grips with the overall structure of the dungeon they are in so they can do a bit of planning ahead when escaping the nightmare since they know a bit about the types of designs seen in this particular dungeon. It’s a small thing but it works incredibly well.

Speaking of Dungeons...

Graphics and Sound:

The dungeons in Mary Skelter are very well designed and this statement extends to the rest of the presentation in general. Each dungeon has a surprising amount of graphical detail put into it with its presentation. The first dungeon has a very obvious Alice in Wonderland motif going on with spinning clocks and playing cards and framed pictures on the wall shaking about on their own.

In stark contrast the second dungeon, a graveyard, has a lot of coffin looking objects which have their lids fall off when you walk past (something which actually caught me off guard the first few times) along with garden gnome looking things sitting in the background which every now and then shake and pulsate as if they were still just a little bit alive.

Every now and then though the game likes to go a bit uncanny valley with its visuals by mixing in something like an eyeball inside a wall or a red intestine like thing which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the area but really pushes home the fact that this place you’re exploring is indeed alive.

It’s this kind of attention to detail which I really like and Mary Skelter is full of stuff like this. It’s clear a lot of work and effort went into the presentation and graphic design and that has really paid off. Mary Skelter is an incredibly unique looking game which sticks out in amongst the growing pool of Vita DRPG’s. It gives the game a lot of personality and charm which makes the world of the game memorable.

Character art is very nicely drawn and each character has their own unique look. Since the majority of the characters in the game are based off characters from fairy tales a lot of the respective fairy tales are reflected in the designs of the character.

Cutscenes also use that trademark sort of pseudo 3D type look that Compile Heart games commonly have in their cutscenes and like always it looks really nice.

Sound wise it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The game has a superb opening theme and some other tracks that really stick out but some of the tracks do sound a little generic at times. On the bright side I haven’t really had any music tracks which have got on my nerves so that’s a plus.

The game has dual voice track support. The English dub is a pretty standard Idea Factory affair, not bad but not outstanding either. The Japanese dub is pretty well done though.

Sound design in dungeons is also relatively standard although there are some sound cues and use of spacial sound and stuff like that here and there so there is that.

Overall sound wise the game is fine but not groundbreaking. The visuals on the other hand are very well designed and have a lot of detail put into them and they truly help make the game stand out.

Verdict:

After MeiQ Labyrinth Of Death last year I will admit I was worried that this was going to be more of the same. Thankfully I was very wrong. Mary Skelter provides the player with an interesting and unique DRPG with well fleshed out mechanics, an interesting story and some utterly gorgeous presentation.

Mary Skelter is also commendable in that it provides a game that is accessible to players new to the DRPG genre while having more than enough in it to keep genre veterans happy. If you’ve never played a DRPG before and are looking for a good place to start then I highly recommend picking up Mary Skelter.

If you’ve played a load of DRPG’s before then I’d still recommend Mary Skelter to you. There’s a lot of unique stuff here which mixes up the DRPG formula which alone I feel makes it a worthwhile title to play.

Mary Skelter Nightmares gets a Highly Recommended

I know I haven’t been very active this year in terms of reviews. The vita might be starting to slow down release wise but there still are quality titles coming out for it and I’ll be sure to keep covering them. Until my next review this is BDVR Author Nathan Green signing off.

Mary Skelter Nightmares will be releasing September 19^th in North America and September 22^nd in Europe and Australia for PlayStation Vita.

Review Code Provided by Idea Factory International.

PEGI: 16

ESRB: M

CERO: D

OFLC: Er... Let’s just get onto that.

While Mary Skelter Nightmare will be seeing a release in Australia with an R-18 rating (mostly due to how the game has been released unmodified from its Japanese counterpart so it retains all the... awkward screen rubbing mini games which can thankfully be skipped after you’ve played them once) the game will NOT be getting a release in New Zealand due to the game not being submit to the NZ OFLC for classification.

It’s a pain in the rear end but I can’t do much about that so if you’re a kiwi like myself you’ll either need to make an overseas PSN account or import it.

If you want to support the site, check out our Patreon, or just check out our Amazon affiliate link.

Stranger of Sword City

I like to consider myself a jack of all trades as a gamer. I will willingly give all game genres a shot and usually enjoy them (with a few exceptions such as sports games and RTS games).

Despite this there are still a few genres that I haven't even dabbled in at all for one reason for another and the DRPG genre was one of these. I'd heard of it but had never really touched a game in the genre before, until now that is.

Going into Stranger of Sword City (which I will abbreviate as SoSC from now on) I really had no idea what to expect having not played a DRPG before. Non the less I took the plunge and I am certainly glad that I did. So without further ado here is my review of Stranger of Sword City for the Playstation Vita.

Now before I get into the nitty gritty review stuff I just wanted to bring attention to this games… interesting release history.

SoSC was originally released in Japan on the Xbox 360 in 2014. Yes, a Japanese exclusive 360 game. Originally it was released exclusively on the 360 but then got a PC port later on which was again only released in Japan.

Why is this relevant? Well, the 360 was never a top performing console when it came to sales in Japan so having a Japanese only game released on the 360 exclusively is quite unusual.

Now around a year later the game got rereleased on the PlayStation Vita in Japan and then another year after that this version of the game got ported as a digital download title to the Xbox One of all systems.

This means that SoSC has come out on the interesting platform combo of 360, One and Playstation Vita, which for a Japanese game is quite odd.

The version that I will be looking at for this review is the Playstation Vita version which was published by NISA. The Xbox One version of the game is largely identical from what I've heard, although it was self pubished by Experience Inc. I was going to take a quick look at the Xbox One version of the game for the purposes of a comparison but that isn't quite out in New Zealand yet so I'll update this review with a comparison when it has come out.

Anyway with that out of the way lets move onto the story.

Story:

You play as a self insert silent protagonest who is the only survivor of a plane crash. When you wake up you find yourself in the fantasy land of Escaro. From there you learn that in Escaro you are considered a stranger, and as a stranger it is your job to hunt down special monsters known as Liniage types and collect their blood crystal (which is a sort of life source) to keep the peace in Escaro.

The plot is…. Well I'll admit it doesn't seem to be the games' strongest point.

While the game spends around an hour at the start fleshing out the characters a bit, the plot quickly takes a back seat from there in favour of the gameplay. While that isn't technically a bad thing it does mean that the plot does progress at a rather slow pace for reasons I will get into later.

SoSC isn't really a game you play for the plot anyway, it is there and the concept is certainly interesting, so I'll give it that. It's just paced really slowly.

Gameplay:

Oh boy this section is going to be LONG.

Before I dive into the games' mechanics, let's just clear up what a DRPG game actually is for those not in the know.

DRPG's stand for Dungeon Crawler RPG. Most of the time the games are played from a first person perspective and involve… well crawling through dungeons, fighting monsters, character building, sometimes permadeath and insane amounts of grinding.

With that out of the way, SoSC is not for the faint of heart especially if you have trouble with games with loads of systems and mechanics.

SoSC does not hold your hand, it basically shoves you right off the deep end and won't force tutorials upon you unless it absolutely has to. However, at the same time the game does provide info for newer players in the form of a guide that can be accessed at any time by pushing the Select Button.

I like this feature a lot. As a person who has never played a DRPG before, this guide certainly made learning the many mechanics and systems in the game far FAR easier.

Speaking of the mechanics and systems, there are a lot of them. Like… tons of them.

You've got skill trees, weaknesses and strengths, weapon balance, permadeath, alignment, positioning, the list goes on. There is a lot to learn in SoSC, which I could see putting off players new to the genre, something which I completely understand myself.

However, the reward for learning these mechanics is you get an incredibly engaging game with a lot of strategy, planning and thought involved in everything from battles to character creation. SoSC is one of those games which will have you spending quite a while in the character creator but unlike other games it isn't because you are spending hours making your character look just right, it's instead spent weighing out what class to go with, how to allocate your points, what age to make your character and lots of rerolling of the RNG die to get the highest number of bonus points possible. Yes, even age plays a part in how your character performs out in the field.

This is why I find SoSC so rewarding. Learning these mechanics is a long process but the payoff leaves you feeling very satisfied and pleased with yourself. I like that.

The other layer of the gameplay is the actual dungeon crawling bit. This is a pretty standard affair and should be familiar to most who have played a DRPG before. You control your character from a first person perspective and use the dpad to move him or her around. Unlike a lot of DRPG's though, most enemies appear on the overworld instead of the encounters being random (although random encounters are still present they are nowhere near as common of an occurrence as in other DRPG's).

One unique feature is the ability to hide in certain places on the map and ambush enemies. These enemies will usually be carrying treasure chests which contain weapons, armor or other items. To make sure you receive these items you have to succeed in killing the leader of the pack of enemies you ambushed. Sometimes after getting a chest you'll have to disarm a trap as well, usually the game will give you good hints as to what the trap will probably be but there are some cases where you just have to guess and hope for the best. Again, this mechanic of hiding is something I quite enjoy although it does result in a lot of back and forward.

Battles also take place from a first person view. Depending on your character and their position, you will be given a variety of options which can be performed. Once you've selected all the options you want, the battle plays out all at once.

One main gameplay concept is rows. Often when you run into a pack of enemies they will be arranged in rows with a max of three per row. Depending on what type of attacks you're using (magic or physical), the characters possition (I.E front or back row) and the type of weapon you are using you will be able to hit enemies in specific rows.

Most of the time front row people will only be able to attack the first row of enemies unless they have a long or ranged weapon. Back row people won't be able to use physical attacks at all unless they have a long or ranged weapon. On the flipside however, magic attacks can hit any enemy in any row regardless of where the user is placed in the party, which means it is usually a good idea to place magic users in the back row and the physical tanks in the front.

Back row people also get attacked less so it's usually a good idea to place all the physical tanks in the front row and the support and offensive magic users in the back row.

The battle system is surprisingly strategic in this way, because it makes you think about the pros and cons of where you place party members, what weapons you give what member and which characters you create. SoSC is one of the only RPG's I've played where I've thought to myself “Y know, maybe giving everyone super powerful weapons isn't the best idea”.

Different weapons also have the ability to hit a different number of times, with a max damage cap for each hit so sometimes it may be better off equiping a weapon that does 20 damage per hit but hits twice rather than a weapon that does 45 damage but only hits once.

SoSC is a game that makes the player really plan and think about their loadout and the pros and cons of different equips. For example, all characters have the ability to equip a second weapon in their non dominant hand, but this weapon usually will have lower accuracy and can also leave a penalty of lowered damage to the weapon in the dominant hand as well. On the flip side it's a chance to deal more hits and sometimes more damage. It's little things like this which really made me think and plan my party in SoSC and I found it very enjoyable.

Like other RPG's, when you finish battles you gain experience points. Unlike other RPGs, however when you gain enough experience points to level up you don't level up automatically. You have to manually go into the character menu and select level up. It took me a little while to get the hang of this mechanic, but once I did I didn't find it too annoying.

What is important though is to always make sure you check your fighters who are NOT in your party when you exit a dungeon as surprisingly they also gain experience even though they are not in your party. However like your party members they manually level up so you need to remember to check and make sure all of them have been leveled up if possible otherwise they won't gain any extra experience while you are out and about.

On the subject of characters lets have a quick look at the permadeath system.

All characters in SoSC have a certain number of LP, or life points. These life points show how many times your party member can die before they are gone forever. A characters age actually determines how many life points the character will have with older characters having less LP and younger characters having more.

When a character falls they have to recover back at the base. This takes time though, despite revival actually being free. So while your character is recovering you go out and continue your questing to make time pass. When a character is revived you can put them right back into your party, but they will have still lost LP. If you don't want to lose the character for good then you can again rest them to recover LP. This takes… quite a lot of in game time to be honest, but it's worth the wait if your character is one who you really don't want to lose.

You can buy revival items for use in the field but they are rather expensive and like all items in the game are in limited supply so use them wisely.

Finally, we have the Divinity system. Think of it like a special form of magic that only the main character can use. As you proceed through the in game skill tree you will earn divinities which allow you to do such things as escape all battles (except things like boss fights), heal the whole party, perform attacks which deal large amounts of damage and other stuff.

Divinity moves use up divinity points which are gained by fighting in battles and proceeding through the dungeon. Personally I really like the divinity system as it provides some useful little moves which can really help out in a pinch.

Phew that was a long section. Like I said, SoSC is a very meaty game with a lot to get your head around which is why this section was so long. Still with me? Good. Let's move onto the presentation then.

Presentation:

SoSC is in a word, pretty. The art is stunning and incredibly detailed and character and enemy designs are very well done (although I have heard that some of the enemies have been recycled from Dungeon Travelers 2).

One thing that is interesting is the game has two different art styles that you can pick from, the second art style being more light and fluffy while the first one is a little more dark and gritty. Given the setting of the game I used the first art style as I felt it fit with the setting way better than the second art style, which felt a little out of place in my opinion.

Graphically the game, while certainly not pushing the Vita to its limits, looks really nice. Environments are nicely designed and quite a few of them really pop and make for quite a pretty looking game which looks excellent on the Playstation Vita's OLED screen (For the record I'm using a Playstation Vita 1000). To top it off the game also runs at a silky smooth 60FPS the entire time and it makes everything that little bit better.

Musically the game sports an excellent soundtrack with some lovely orcestral pieces which really fit the mood and setting. You have some more mellow tracks, some more upbeat tracks for boss fights and enemy encounters and some eerie tracks for some dungeons.

The vocals sound really nice too, although you are given the option to turn them off if you don't like them which I think is a nice touch.

Now, I don't normally do this but I'd like to touch on the sound design for a second because I feel this is an area that SoSC really excells in.

The sound design in SoSC really blew me away, especially in the dungeons. When all you can hear is the background ambiance you can really appreciate how good it is. The calling of distant birds, the bustling of a village, the chirping of crickets, it's all there and it blends together incredibly well in SoSC and really makes the dungeons that little bit better. I really like games that do a lot of work with the sound design so SoSC really impressed me with it.

Voice acting is also really good too. Most of the game is voice acted, and while I can't understand Japanese the voices do sound pretty darn good.

Conclusion:

Before I get onto my conclusion I just have a few minor nitpicks I wanted to point out. Firstly, this game is very, VERY grindy. It took me around six hours to unlock the first set of dungeons grindy. Now I know this is a trait of DRPGs but that doesn't make it any less of a chore to continuely go back and forward hunting out battles just so you can beat the next boss. I only make this a minor nitpick though as the games battle system is enjoyable enough that it makes me forget about the constant grinding for the most part.

The bar for entry is also quite high. Like I said before this game will not hold your hand and I wouldn't really recommend it to people who are brand new to DRPG's. The game is still excellent and I would highly recommend it to people who have had experience with DRPG's before but it isn't the best DRPG game for people completely new to the genre.

The difficulty might turn some off as well, as this game is quite tough even on easy mode. In fact, easy mode has points where you can be massively outleveled by certain enemies due to a lower encounter rate and enemies on the field so I would highly recommend you play on normal anyway.

Despite those complaints I still thoroughly enjoyed my time with SoSC. It's a game with a lot of polish and thought in the mechanics and is a great game for those who love games which are real timesinks. The game also has multiple endings which adds replay value to an already jam packed game.

So would I recommend Stranger of Sword City?

Heck yes. Like I said above I wouldn't recommend it to newbies of the genre but I totally recommend this game to people who have played DRPG's before and are looking for another excellent timesink.

Stranger of Sword City gets a highly recommended.

This is probably one of the longest reviews I have ever written so if you are still here after all of that then give yourself a pat on the back. Either way I hope you enjoyed the review as much as I enjoyed playing the game.

BDVR Guest Author Nathan Green signing off

PEGI: 16

ESRB: T

CERO: C

OFLC: M (Unrestricted)

Stranger of Sword City game provided for review by NIS America. Screenshots provided by NIS America. Cover from nisamerica.com