Description
"YT family, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." -- an exact quote from the 1939 classic film, The Wizard of Oz (Probably)
There are a lot of works that pay homage to Lyman Frank Baum's highly influential children's novel, "The Wonderful World of Oz", released in 1900 and, surprisingly, there's more than one video game based on the property from Japan. Affect's 2000 oddity, "Rung Rung: Oz no Mahou Tsukai - Another World", is a 3D Adventure game released just shy of 100 years after the Novel was penned, giving you an idea of just how timeless the story is. While essentially a Japan-only release, GungHo Online Entertainment released the game (untranslated) for U.S. gamers on PSN in 2013. Affect is... not well known or well-regarded; while they've been credited for quite a few games, most of them have reviewed pretty poorly and the few games they did that came to the West were dismissed or even joked (like "Phix: The Adventure").
While RR Oz has a solid foundation just by virtue of its source material, RR Oz does not do too much to buck their trend of overall middling offerings. If you're familiar with the novel or film(s) the game is based on, you have a general idea of the plot; RR Oz starts with a wicked wizard opening up a portal with profound magic that can pull whole areas from other realms to Oz, stripping them of life in the process. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong time to act when a tornado winds up in a desolate prairie in Kansas, spiriting away the young Dorothy Gale, her dog Toto, and the little farm house her aunt and uncle share. When Dorothy comes to and leaves the house, she's in a land far removed from the one she knows...
As it stands, the world is in a sorry state with lands stripped of color, villagers frozen in stone, and the great Emerald City is in a state of panic. Her house crushes the Wicked Witch of the East (to the joy of basically everyone, although Dorothy is initially mortified). Norte, the Witch of the North, explains that you're in the land of Oz (and she's portrayed as a kind, ditzy woman who likes to speak in song and has no idea what a Kansas is), that you may find help if you head to the Emerald City, and that Princess Ozma is there who may be able to help you return home. She also blesses you with a little magic for good luck (a magic kiss in the original) and advises you to follow the yellow brick road before leaving. Oh yeah, and she has an apprentice errand boy named Ururu. Dorothy is already wearing red slippers, The Lion, Tin Man and Scarecrow are here as well as the Munchkins, Gilkins, etc., but it takes many liberties to keep things interesting.
RR Oz has a simple gameplay loop exacerbated by curious design choices. The overwhelming bulk of the game involves item synthesis through a magic cauldron that belonged to the witch of the east named Gotcha. Every main area along the yellow brick road is lacking color and requires different colors of magic paint to remove prisms and restore the area, including NPCs turned to stone. These NPCs then have to be negotiated with and assisted to improve your trust with them, which opens up new interactions. There are four interactions needed to gain new information and recipes: Kindness, Show, Tell and Exchange. Everyone starts at the "Kindness" level, which requires you to do a series of fetch quests. Show / Tell opens next with "Show" granting you information about items you find and "Tell" giving you knowledge on recipes they know. "Exchange" is usually a max-trust extra which nets you rare items or frequently used items more easily.
You can't use items that you can't identify, so it's basically mandatory to do fetch quests, learn about the items in your arsenal, and gain recipes from every NPC. Searching for items can be done blindly or via a sonar that depletes HP... items in the area also get depleted, so when the area is empty, you have to go sleep till the next day to replenish them. Item space is very limited, areas are small and chock full of loading screens, and the constant repetition is made worse as some items and events are only available on certain days (time is infinite). There are obstacles and mini-games, but they're few and far between and the game is engineered for a younger demographic (limited violence, younger Dorothy, simpler dialogue). The production values are close to launch PS standards and half the areas don't have music (there are "items" to plant seeds of music in quiet areas). There aren't too many high-profile people involved with this game's development, but Hisanao Suzuki would go on to do a lot of work with Square Enix (Trials of Mana, FF: Brave Exvius, Harvestella, etc.) and the talented seiyu, Sakura Tange and Kikuko Inoue voice Dorothy and Norte respectively. The game is a decent length of about 15-20 hours to 100%.
In spite of its shortcomings, this IS one of Affect's better games with cute characters and silly dialogue. This is a video of the game in action. Enjoy.