Written on: 14/02/26

ラクガキショタイム

I saw a clip of this game on twitter a week ago and it looked cool so I downloaded it on my psvita and played it almost immediately after I saw it. Worth mentioning that I played this game in Japanese since I have a decent undertsanding but I don't know if any fan translations exist.
Anyway it's a pretty cool game, I won't have too much to say since there honestly isn't that much too it besides an arcade mode, versus and training, So I suppose this is just a documentation of my first impression of this game.

Regarding gameplay, it's fun and chaotic but simple in a good way. Primarily you toss the stage items or opponents with the throw buttons but you'll mostly be throwing around the items since some have special effects and stuff.
All characters have their own melee attacks/non-throwing moves which kinda vary in usefulness depending on the character. There are supers as well, used through the maxed out face ball, and different ones can be used depending on the direction of the dpad you press during the startup.

In addition each character has somewhat unique movement options (as far as I've seen) on top of the homing dash that's worked into stage where you can hop over different corners and sides of the stage by holding the jump button.
Almost forgot to mention the parry which is tied to the melee attack button when you aren't holding any direction. There's a held and perfect parry, the former stops whatever was thrown at you and the latter deflects it back. I really like this mechanic and perfect parrying is incredibly satisfying especially during the more chaotic stages, also regular parrying may not protect you from some items as I've been hit by bombs that detonate after their momentum is halted.
Since I have no one to play with I don't know how balanced the combination of all these things might be in multiplayer but, as it is in the single player arcade mode, it is indeed really fun, and chaotic but simple in a good way

All that stuff out of the way though, the thing that I like most about the game is it's presentation. As the title suggests almost everything in this game looks like it was sketched or sketched in a sketchbook, which is I suppose can be interpreted literally since there is a hand that draws everything to life in the game.
I really dig this visual style a ton and I'm glad it was able made by enix and treasure at the time, because I kinda doubt a game like this would be released by anything other than an indie game dev nowadays. Not to throw shade at indie game devs but larger companies probably wouldn't try to make something like rakugaki showtime in this day and age.
Character designs are nice too, has the same appeal as the general presentation of the game. Favourite character out of the bunch is Potan cuz he's just a guy innit. I don't even know what he's meant to be but I can tell he's a paragon that we should look up to in our times of need. There's also those red bodysuit women that turn into bigger red bodysuit women and that kinda jumpscared me when I got to their stage. Also also the mischief makeer lady is in this game which was a pleasant surprise, she kinda fits in well too.

That's all I have to say on the game for now, I'll probably pick it up every now and then when I'm bored since I can only play single player but yeah, good game and it was totally worth checking out.