Thank you Clear River Games for sending us this game to review!

WiZmans World Re;Try is a classic-style JRPG with nice visuals and very well-designed pixel art. Originally released as WiZmans World only in Japan on the Nintendo DS, this remake is the game's first official global release.

The story is relatively basic. The city of Wizarest has been cut off from the outside world for over 100 years. Everyone in the city suffers from collective amnesia, unsure why they alone exist inside the barriers created by dungeons full of monsters that prevent their escape. The only thing the citizens remember is how to use magic, and they proceed to spend all of their time looking for a way to escape from their city prison by finding an exit through one of the surrounding dungeons.

The player plays as Claus, a child found in the dungeons by Giselle, who herself is one of the most accomplished mages in the city. She raises the boy as her own, trains him in magic, and promptly disappears mere days before Claus is old enough to begin going into the dungeons himself. On his first trip into the dungeon, Claus meets three fairy-like creatures named Aen, Doe, and Toori who claim to be homunculi created by Giselle. Since Giselle is missing, Claus is their new master, and together they set off into the dungeons in search for their missing mentor.

Several very strange things stuck out to me right from the get-go. First is the ever-present modern problem of the introduction taking hours before I could finally play the game proper. More glaring, the three homunculi are constantly referred to as fairies and dressed very similarly to Tinker Bell. One of them is red, one is blue, and one is green; one of them is smart, one grumpy, and one bubbly. And they were created in a lab by a wise old mentor character, a "professor", if you will. Then these three fairies (whose names read very close to "un, deux, trois") fly up to your actual player character out of nowhere and start calling him master? Nobody can convince me that this game started as anything other than someone's Powerpuff Girls fan fiction.

Moving on, WiZmans World Re;Try (why is there a semicolon in the title?) has most of the gameplay staples you come to expect of the JRPG genre, from magic to monsters, to level-ups, to dungeons. All of the monsters in the game are aligned with one of the four natural elements (earth, wind, water, or fire). There is a sort of rock-paper-scissors system in play here, where each element does double damage to one other element and takes half damage from its own: Earth beats water, water beats fire, fire beats wind, and wind beats earth.

As you traverse the dungeons, enemies are visible and will often chase you. They are characterized using one of four basic sprites to let you know which element at least one of the in-battle monsters aligns with. Touching the sprite will send players into the battle screen.

Battles consist of your four characters standing opposite to the monsters, with the turn order displayed at the top of the screen. Chaining multiple attacks in a row will build up boosts to damage, speed, SP recovery, and drop rates, depending on the types of attacks chained. Each character has normal physical attacks at their disposal as well as magic. All characters' health (HP) and Claus' Mana Points (MP) are restored at the end of combat, but the homunculi's Skill Points (SP) are only restored after a level up or when resting back in town. This presents an interesting dynamic where players are encouraged to use Claus' magic at every opportunity but save the homunculi's skills for emergencies or to chain together attacks that will allow them to recover their SP. Further, there are no items at all which can restore MP or SP.

At the end of each battle, players are rewarded with experience, money in the form of "mana stones", catalysts, and, occasionally, the souls of the defeated enemies. This leads into the major gameplay gimmick of WiZmans World: Anima Fusion. The three homunculi can absorb the souls of defeated enemies, gaining new skills and taking on new forms in combat. This is all done back at Claus' home, where players can carefully choose what new souls to graft onto their homunculi to best increase their stats and give them useful skills. When absorbing a new soul, each homunculi can retain up to 2 skills from their previous form. Further, that homunculi becomes aligned with whatever element the original monster did. Basic attacks done by the homunculi during combat do damage according to their alignment, and they receive the same damage modifiers that being of that alignment entails.

While all of this customizability is very welcome, combat itself isn't exactly complex...or at least, it didn't feel that way for the vast majority of the time I played. The types of attacks needed to create the different stat boosts during chains weren't immediately obvious, and it isn't until the very late game (over 30 hours in) that the maximum SPs of the three homunculi are large enough to make experimenting with and spamming abilities feel viable. Abilities which modify the player characters' stats only last for a couple of each characters' actions, meaning you'll be spamming those abilities very frequently to keep the boosts active. Then there are some spells which modify enemy behavior or push them back in the turn order, but these tend to fall into one of two categories: Not useful during dungeon crawling, and not useful during boss battles. Getting a status-modifying move to actually land on a boss is nearly impossible, and status-modifying moves against the dungeon rank-and-file is usually just not as effective as just attacking normally. In fact, the game itself is aware of this, and there is an "Auto" button the player can select during combat that just tells each character to use normal attacks or on random enemies or repeat the last action they did without further player intervention. This got used a LOT during my playthrough.

I spend all of this time emphasizing the combat because it is what players will spend the vast majority of their time doing in game. Despite the fact that monsters are visible and can be avoided somewhat, WiZmans World really expects you to fight as often as possible. Bosses are difficult, and late-game resources are extremely costly. Further, the enemies chase the player around the map, meaning there's going to be a lot of combat even if the player is doing their best to avoid it. And getting caught by an enemy when there are others very nearby on the map puts the player into a continuous battle scenario where they have to battle each group of monsters one after the other without a break in between. There is a piece of equipment that the player can buy mid-game that prevents enemies from chasing you, but this only works in dungeons where the boss has been defeated already. In other words, it limits the annoyance only in the very few situations where a player might have reason to go back to a dungeon later.

Graphics-wise, WiZmans World is actually fairly nice. The overworld and maps have a more painted style, while the characters and enemies are all pixel graphics. This was a bit jarring at first, but you get used to it pretty quickly. The enemy and homunculi transformation designs are all very detailed, showing a lot of effort went into making them feel unique and engaging. On the other hand, the animations for many of the skills and spells used by both the player and the monsters reuse a lot of assets, and so they can feel pretty samey even when they are supposed to be very different.

As far as music, there isn't much that I felt stood out during my own playtime. There was some variety within the dungeons; as they "collapse" and degrade, the background track changes to match. However, because of how frequently you get sent into battle, you rarely have an opportunity to appreciate the background music in the dungeons. The music in town is relatively quiet, and there is one primary track during battle that plays throughout the entire game, which can get pretty repetitive. Sound effects, too, get reused pretty often, and are actually on the underwhelming side. Massive late-game spells only Claus has access to have animations that are meant to convey a feeling of incredible power, but they have sound effects that don't nearly match in intensity.

In terms of stability, there weren't any game-breaking bugs, but there were a couple minor ones. When performing Anima Fusions on Doe, Aen's name and portrait appear before the fusion; the correct name and portrait appear after. Also, sometimes when selecting an enemy to attack in battle, the cursor pointing to the enemy would disappear, as would their health bar, so I couldn't be sure which one I was selecting if there were multiple of the same kind. Moving to a different enemy or backing to the previous menu and trying again always fixed it.

Morally, there are a few things worth noting. On the minor side, there is a tavern which features one drunk old man and a forlorn woman as permanent patrons; the player cannot partake in any alcoholic drinks themselves. There are a few magic attacks like "Blood Curse" which give the player negative status ailments. No blood is ever shown during attacks or when enemies are defeated; enemies simply disappear when defeated, the homunculi turn back to their fairy-like forms when they hit 0 HP, and Claus kneels in a tired posture when he hits 0 HP. Reading the ESRB summary, it claims that one character portrait showed blood when injured and that the word "d**n" is in the dialog. However, I never came across either of these, and I went well out of my way to get all of the dialog and to record almost all of it in screenshots to keep track of the story.

The potentially more serious moral considerations are the use of magic and occult imagery and the visual representation of the homunculi. While magic in RPGs is nothing new, there are curses, blood magic, and even the symbol for magic worn by the town elder appears to be a pentagram. Numerous enemies are demonic in appearance or name, such as those that appear to be little more than skulls with twisted horns, or ones with names like "Samael" and "Astrademon". Some of these leave behind items like the "Demon's Gemstone" or the "Demonic Beast Horn". There is even a weapon for Claus that claims to be part of a weapon that "was once used to slay a god."

As for sexuality, the three fairy-like homunculi in their base forms and as they appear in their character portraits are dressed very much like Tinker Bell, with dresses that are just long enough to cover their lower bits; one of them has visible cleavage. Despite their in battle forms being pixelated, many of their transformations are sexualized, appearing to be nude or nearly nude. Many of their forms have apparently bare-chests, a few have their legs positioned such that their lack of lower coverings is somewhat covered, and the animations of a handful show bare buttocks. Some of the monsters, too, show bare chests. In all of these cases, the homunculi are hybrids between monsters and humans, and so there is some potential wiggle room in terms of how inappropriate some may see this. In all cases where there are no chest coverings, no nipples are visible in the details, for what that may be worth. Since I don't see many instances online where these are visible for a potentially-concerned parent to make an informed decision, I will go ahead and throw some examples here and here.

WiZmans World Re;Try has some really interesting things going for it, and some cool mechanics and visuals that few other JRPGs do. It is clear some real care and effort went into this game. However, between the sheer amount of inevitable, unavoidable grinding; the lack of depth to most of the combat; the just-okay music and sound effects; and the moral issues that really make me question how this game got away with an E10+ rating, it's difficult for me to recommend. This is definitely a "play with a podcast or Netflix binge-session on in the background" type of game, even if you are in love with the things that make this one stand out. If that's your cup of tea, then WiZman's World Re;Try will provide 35+ hours of it for a relatively reasonable cost.

-maestro_dana