Recent reviews by Kaihua_Mimi

When I first started playing I couldn't understand why I would get constant game overs even while doing everything this girl was asking for, but once I understood the stressful mechanics this game is built around, the game became slightly more enjoyable, at least for what concerns achievements grinding.

Since the main character is pretty obnoxious, I was unable to pay much attention to the story. However, even with that, I still want to say that I did not appreciate a few of the references to real life streamers who unfortunately ended up badly. I found them to be in bad taste.

The pixel art and the overall aesthetic, instead, was prime. Overall I'm giving it a 7/10.

Admittedly, at first I was not feeling particularly attracted to this game, it was just a gut feeling, since I'm usually not the type who enjoys visual novels-like gameplay, but VA-11 Hall-A positively surprised me. The story flows well, the gameplay is enjoyable and achievement grinding is quite satisfying, not to mention, the characters are quite unique and memorable. Highly recommended.

I think the latest few adjustments added to this remake help making the story more enjoyable. Although still overshadowed by its sibling 'Mad Father' by far, among the horror RPG games, Misao still deserves some spotlight. I liked the improved sprites, but enjoyed the characters' artworks much less compared to their original versions.

I feel like there's been a worsened feature for each improvement there. I would've personally enjoyed the story more if the writing itself was also adjusted (everything feels quite rushed, doesn't give you the time to sympathise with the characters). I find myself hoping for a further remake or adjustment to bring the sprite work up to parity with the latest Mad Father remake though, as I think this game would benefit greatly from such an upgrade.

Even though I suppose these elements were kept different on purpose to distinguish one game from the other more, I still think they'd have made a nice touch especially considering that, in game, many Mad Father references were added, to clearly state the two worlds are connected. Speaking of, those few easter eggs made the story MUCH more enjoyable.

Overall, I think this is a game that should be played. Cheers!

Mad Father used to be among the best horror RPG games at its early days already, and the latest remake and adjustments made the game experience prime. Highly recommended both to those who already love the genre and also to all the new players.

Overall the game is pretty enjoyable, the spritework is prime, the ambience is very nice and detailed, giving the game quite a realistic experience. It would certainly deserve more recognition among the genre. However, there's some issues that could've been fixed, I'm marking them as spoiler below.

- Felice can enter every room in any difficulty, and I mean EVERY room, save room included, which makes the game realistic, so I guess it was intentional, but it also stresses the player a lot to a point where it stops being scary, because unless you're playing on Easy Mode, you're 100% going to be stuck in a room with no way out for an indefinite amount of time at some point, as she's wandering around with you stuck in it. I would have personally made the save room and puzzle rooms inaccessible to her for while the player is actively solving a puzzle, or reading a journal

- The storytelling is simple, but a few more details on Felice's past, and a couple more hints about the fact your friends are trapped within the area but under a curse that turns them into objects would have been nice and make the lore flow better.

- The puzzles themselves aren't awful by any measure, but the game lacks any real direction for them. Finding the puzzle in the first place is somewhat annoying, but then some puzzles themselves also lack direction of where to go, resulting in you just exploring aimlessly a lot - which is probably intentional, but I believe detracts from the games atmosphere since when you do eventually find a puzzle you usually have to do a dance to get Felice out of the room first (If you're unlucky). Some puzzles are decent, but most of them are obtuse. The game could benefit from a map of some sort so you don't have to resort to memorising the layout of the buildings by heart.