Senpai and the Mysterious Dungeon is a roguelike RPG that feels as low-effort as it looks.
It already is hampered by being made in RPG Maker, and it feels like a lot of the default assets were used to make the game. This isn’t uncommon for RPG Maker games, unfortunately, and it should set off warning bells to anyone when they look at this one. Every bit of the game feels like the developer started to work on it, and then shrugged halfway through and said “Ehhh..good enough,” before moving onto the next aspect they were going to abandon. But the thing is, none of it’s good enough, and it’s a coin flip on if it works as intended.
The dialogue is translated well enough, but it’s just not good. I understood what they were saying, and there weren’t more than a couple typos, but I just couldn’t care. The characters themselves are boring and poorly written. The game has controller support, but puzzlingly, there’s some buttons you’re not allowed to remap, or functions that are locked specifically to one button. You have an option to set your hair color via RGB sliders, but that doesn’t work at all.
When you find loot, the text that alerts you is incredibly small when the game is windowed (its default state). The floors have invisible traps, but hilariously, they don’t work. Twice I triggered one that informed me all of my gear had been removed. It hadn’t. Twice I was told that I WOULD have lost gear, but didn’t have any equipped. (I did.) Enemies don’t have attack animations, because the developer couldn’t be bothered to work on them. Enemies know where you are at all times. The moment you can see them on the map, they beeline for you. Worse yet, your character controls terribly with a thumbstick, as the dev only programmed the four cardinal directions (up, down, left, right) for input, meaning that at times it won’t register you trying to turn a corner because you pushed a little too diagonally on the stick.
While I didn’t expect my gear to be reflected on my character sprite, there isn’t even a basic drawing of it in the inventory screen. Hilariously enough, I was able to infinitely heal myself because the dev couldn’t figure out how to reduce MP when you use a skill. I suppose I should be grateful, because when you literally can’t see your enemy attacking you, there’s no way to avoid their attacks, so I constantly took damage. Every single aspect of this game feels like an alpha build, or a dev’s first game attempt. If it had been released for free, I wouldn’t be harsh. But they want $15 for this, which is beyond ludicrous. It’s not worth a dollar. To put it mildly, this game is TERRIBLE in every conceivable way.
“I GOTCHU FAM.”
I’ve played other games published by Otaku Plan, and I’m honestly puzzled; they’re not known for releasing such crap onto the market. Normally, their games are at least solid, but this one is one of the worst I’ve played this year.
You’ll notice that I haven’t mentioned the adult scenes, and there’s a reason for that. This game is so awful, I couldn’t even be bothered to make the effort. The quality of the game tells me everything I need to know about the quality of any reward.
Do not buy it; this game is a rip off. It’s functionally broken on multiple levels. Any possibility of enjoyment is ripped away by awful design and programming. The dev that created it should be ashamed for releasing this piece of junk onto the market.
CLICK HERE TO BUY IT ON STEAM AGAINST EVERY BIT OF ADVICE YOU HAVE JUST READ.
