Description
"Revive of the Moon" (stylized as "revive of the moon") is a weird little action-horror game about Princess Kaguya and her demonic forces aiming to take revenge against humanity for their misdeeds in life, reclaim a sacred necklace and return to the moon. It is loosely based on the folktale, "Taketori Monogatari" (aka "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter") but distorted into a post-apocalyptic setting with nary a sign of romance in sight.. and feels like a weird amalgamation of "Dragon Head", "Disaster Report" and "DEAD OR SCHOOL" with TM overtones but not as good. Released in 2024 by YMCAT/Regista for PC and Nintendo Switch, the game is described as a "3D TPS (Third Person Shooter) Action Game", but shooting is almost never used unless you're going out of your way to use it or for one or two situational segments. The game is notable for having beautiful illustrations from 石商 (Ishisyou) and the popular Japanese comedian, Eiko Kano, acting as supervisor for the project in affiliation with the Maseki Geinosha talent agency. Considering I haven't heard any widespread backlash from this decision, I can only assume he did a good job, even if the finished product is questionable.
Mitsuki Isogami, a seemingly normal but quiet high school girl, is riding a subway train with her younger brother one day when all hell breaks loose from a large local earthquake... but this wasn't just any quake; with it came a torrent of evil that mutated the local denizens of Tokyo into zombie-like beings (Immortal Red-Eyed Evils). Due to a mysterious necklace passed down to her from her mother that grants her power and details of her background that she is not yet privy to, she has some immunity against the hordes and can fight them with with the abilities she's developed from her kendo training. She meets Ryuto Mifune (classmate and admirer) and Tsubame Koyasu (onee-chan / teacher) along the way and ultimately must journey all the way to the summit of Mt. Fuji over 15 "Nights" or stages. There's a smidge of twists throughout the plot, but nothing too crazy worth going into detail over, although I will say the Engrish is occasionally hard to follow and the weird idea to change some of the historical figures into women-ish... men? I'm still not entirely sure on a couple characters after finishing this game, but the game is a little longer than I would've initially thought at about 4-5 hours and can be cleared in an afternoon.
Truth be told, games like this are titles I run through while I work on bigger projects to keep a semi-decent flow of videos coming in, but they're not always random and still based on various passing interests. The game looked interesting at a glance and while initially kind of pricey at $20, I grabbed it on sale for 75% off as I want to see more Regista games in English. There's a reasonable balance of gameplay and actual story where the player gets to explore, maybe 60/40 or 55/45 split. The player runs around hacking and slashing enemies, grabbing souls to eventually level up, and finding restorative / growth items or the periodic key item as you make your way through hordes. Ability points can be assigned to attack, durability or agility and can be reassigned at any time interestingly enough. In the beginning, I put most of my stats towards agility for the notable speed boost until enemies start getting spongy around level 4 or 5, and then gradually start putting points towards attack... I never needed to bump up my defense. While there are three characters you can eventually use, Ryuto only assists with the random button-mashing events (as he's not a fighter and is the "brains" of the group) and Tsubame can shoot but the aiming is wonky and ammo is limited. Needless to say, I only used her when a situation basically necessitated it and the game is very easy for the most part as yo can stockpile healing items which automatically get used as you take damage.
The only time the game poses any challenge is when it inexplicably shifts to some type of stealth event or has specific, atypical requirements (like locking zombies in a cage)... if the regular gameplay alone didn't shine a light on how unpolished it is with weird hit detection, spotty controls and unnecessary mechanics, these situations are awful and only serve to throw a curve-ball at you with less-than-clear instructions or little margin for error and feel out of place. Dying or loading removes all your stocked up healing items, so this was probably implemented just to prevent the game from being a total cakewalk. The game looks and sounds okay on PC with a low-level film grain over the graphics and chibi models, but the game does not run well on the original Nintendo Switch... which is not that surprising. It's an okay way to kill a few hours on sale.
This is a video of the game in action. You can get it at:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3125530/revive_of_the_moon/
Enjoy.
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