Among a looooong list of Negima!? games, ネギま!? 超 麻帆良大戦 かっとイ~ン☆契約執行でちゃいますぅ I believe is the first of the two Negima!? games on the Nintendo DS and based on the reviews, I probably should have skipped this one and gone straight to ネギま!?超麻帆良大戦チュウ チェックイ~ン 全員集合!やっぱり温泉来ちゃいましたぁ. Don't worry, I won't look at you with Jhipster disdain for not remembering the exact difference between the two titles.
Oh I'm sorry, were you expecting Romaji with that?
But yeah, this game doesn't exactly exude quality as it opens with the shittiest looking title screen and a heavily compressed reading of the title a la "kattoi~~~~n!!". Ugh. Now, I'm obviously not one of those IGN "pro" contract reviewers who are randomly assigned shit and paid some sum to pump out a review of something they have absolutely no clue about as quickly as possible. So yes, I watched the anime adaptation (all 26 episodes) and read some of the manga. I even tried to watch the remake though I stopped because well, it's the same shit mostly. And yes, for the record, Yue is my fav girl followed closely by Nodoka cause you know, those shy types are the most wild in the bedroom. The main heroine is the most boring and stereotypical archetype evar so fuck that girl, whatever her name was.
My future waifu. Unfortunately, this is NOT from the game.
So yeah, even though this game is a mess, combining an ADV part, Negima trivial questions err... I mean trivia, and a shitty SRPG, I probably would have finished it nevertheless. I didn't even mind resetting constantly to find out which girls would give you new costumes in the ADV part nor the quizzes with random difficulty ranging from the easiest, "which girl is [name]" to some super niche Negima trivia. BUT what I couldn't stand are SRPGs that only reward exp to the character that defeats an enemy AND no practice stage to grind. There's no way in HELL I would diligently plan for which characters to level up by saving kills for a game of this caliber.
Not to mention, the difficulty is way too high for a game of such shitty quality. If you lose a battle, there's no way to keep your experience. Basically, a big fuck you and back you go to the shitty "kattoi~~~~n!!" title screen. Oh, we took away all the characters that you leveled up from previous fights? Ha, why don't you start over, you sorry fuck?!
No, fuck you game. You're going straight into dumpster. There goes 8 hours of my life, down the tubes. Also, my copy of the game was super shitty so who knows if the Gamestop dumpster divers would even bother with your ass.
Score: orz I just needed a kiss from Yue to keep going but alas it was not to be out of 5
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
JESUS was on my list of games to check out as a GOTY contender for 1987. Like probably countless other suckers back in the day, I was much impressed by the amazing PC88 (MSX2, etc.) art. I bet in my fantasy life growing up as a Japanese gamer, I would have picked this up in a flash just based on the back cover art alone. You see, back in the old days, the cover was all we had to go on to decide what to buy (or in my case rent). Thank goodness we have the likes of Shitaku and IGN today to save us from such folly. (Must... contain... the laughter...!!)
SOLD!
While the kids were busy playing DQII (barf) on the kiddie FC from Enix, the adults were probably plunking down wads of cash to buy their other lineup. And Enix quickly delivers within the first hour or so of gameplay with some nice fan service that of course makes up the bulk of Google image search for this game today. While I didn't play the later FC port, I have to wonder if it has the same content.
There, happy? Now, this is just like every other blog post on this game...
However, this is not your typical PC88 hentai game. It's Enix after all and that's about the only real fan service you'll see for the rest of the game. Oh well, at least I was soon impressed by a very familiar type of puzzle to those who have played 999 or some other similar game. So far, this game was looking to be a very strong contender for GOTY.
I'm not a PC88 expert (yet) but this is the first puzzle I've seen so far on it
Unfortunately, this just sets some inflated hype as if you might be playing some super early predecessor to a ADV/Puzzle hybrid game like 999. Alas, this is the first and only puzzle (detecting a pattern here...) and the rest of the game is a very standard affair for ADV PC88 games of this era. Yes, I'm talking about randomly trying out menu option after menu option. On top of that, to make it extra annoying, you have to walk around the halls, which while cool looking, just makes things more cumbersome.
Walk? Do I look like some hipster health nut?
Fortunately, it's not a command line interface, so no painful kana typing and you can control everything conveniently from the numeric keypad. So it's a fairly easy game to play but I wouldn't go as far as to say it was fun.
Given that the gameplay is nothing special, you would hope the plot would make up for it. But no, to sum up the story, it's like an anime version of Alien but WAY more boring. If anything, this game highlights how amazing the movie was all the way back in 1979.
It's 2018, you don't actually have to play yourself!
Score: 2 hallelujahs out of 5
JESUS is a good looking game, there's no doubt about that. And unlike the first Wingman, it even has some real nice music including some DQ jam. But behind the pretty facade, there is almost nothing interesting about this game and so it barely qualifies as a 2 just on its nice visuals. Hopefully, the sequel or some of Enix's later titles fare better. I'm particularly looking forward to ANGELUS cause that bath scene. I'm still a sucker, after all.
Some extra screen shots for the devout Christians?
I'm sure the title would have gone over well here.
Shameless product placement? More likely blatant trademark abuse
This is the other art. Now you don't need to play the game. You're welcome.
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
