Now for something completely different, let’s talk about 99 Spirits.
I’ve had this one in my backlog for a long time, probably since around the time of my yokai craze, and I decided the emphasis on spirits and demons made it a good choice to finally play this October.
And what an unusual experience it was.
99 Spirits is part JRPG, part… vocabulary game?
You play a young woman who wields a sacred sword in order to defeat Tsukumogami, inanimate objects that have become yokai or spirits. It has a simple presentation, with a grid-like screen used to explore the hub city and dungeons. Markers on the green indicate shops, conversations, items to pick up, etc., and enemies are marked as well. When you come into contact with an enemy, a battle begins.
Combat controls are fairly simple. On your turn, you choose whether to attack or defend. However, when the enemy attacks, you have a brief window in which you can press the defend button to shield yourself and counterattack. The result is a system that feels a step more active than turn-based combat.
But Tsukumogami can’t be defeated unless you know their true forms, and that’s where the twist to combat comes in. As you attack, you build a gauge that lets you use a special skill to gain clues about the spirit’s identity. Defending, meanwhile, builds a gauge that lets you call out its name – by typing the name of the object it used to be.
For example, you might give you the clues “OO” and “eating.” Using the gauge again might get you “S” and “food.” Then you use the other skill, type in “spoon,” and the spirit takes on its spoon form and can be fought normally.
It’s such a strange combination of ideas… and I love it.
Throughout the game, you can buy or find spirit indexes, which give you a list of Tsukumogami. That simplifies things, since instead of wracking your brain to figure out what word fits the description, there’s a chance you have it on the list. (The spirit index also lets you click the name instead of typing it every time.)
As you progress, you’ll unlock new skills for your sword. Did I mention this game is also partly a monster collecting RPG?
Once you unlock the third skill, you can capture Tsukumogami while fighting them in order to use special skills. These are both field skills, such as using a weapon-type Tsukumogami to cut down a tree blocking you from a bonus area, and combat skills that serve as special abilities in battle.
I would not say the story is especially in-depth, but it’s a fine story about fighting yokai with some cute/funny character interactions alongside more serious moments. It’s not especially spooky despite its subject matter, so we’ll mark this down as one of the more lighthearted games for this year’s celebration.
Overall, it’s a unique blend of ideas that ends up being a lot of fun. My only real criticism is that it’s buggy – the game crashed enough times that I started saving after every few battles, just in case.
There are some secrets I didn’t get on my playthrough, including an alternate ending, but I don’t think I’ll go back through it to try to get everything. I probably won’t get the DLC, either. Nevertheless, I’m happy I finally got around to playing 99 Spirits.
(On a side note, email subscriptions have halted again, so here’s hoping I find a lasting solution.)
A vocabulary game RPG, huh. Closest thing I can think of is Scribblenauts, but that was about summoning the characters more than identifying a selected list of them. The monster collecting to unlock skills part does sound particularly cool!
Yeah, I’ve never played anything quite like it before, so it was very interesting!
“(On a side note, email subscriptions have halted again, so here’s hoping I find a lasting solution.)”
I knew there was a reason I nearly forgot about this year’s contest! I wasn’t getting the email notifications! D:
Being a vocabulary game makes me feel like it should be way more educational than just figuring out the word “spoon,” lol.
Yeah, the old service I was using for subscriptions was shut down, and then I switched to one that looked great until I learned you have to pay a monthly fee to send out automatic feed notifications.
Hah, well I just used “spoon” as an easy example. I certainly had to think a little more when the answer was “sutra,” for example.
Eventually Samantha Lienhard will be so famous that we won’t even need email notifications to know about her contests, soon to be a national event.
A grand competition on the road to forcing her to play whichever game our heart tells us to make her play!
Oh hey this sounds really interesting. I love timing based mechanics during combat akin to Mario & Luigi. But guessing a name of an object to finish and fight normally sounds very unique. Kudos to these guys making something that sounds truly different from the rest!
It’s definitely unique. I can’t think of anything quite like it.