99 Spirits

"A JRPG, you say?" Well, yeah, sure, but not in the traditional sense of the term. This is a strange one indeed, but (mostly) in a good way. This game has a very strong japanese mythology theme. You play a swordswoman, whose main goal is to fight Tsukumogami, strange creatures which take shapes of common everyday items, such as a jacket, a broom and so on. When you get to fight a Tsukumogami, instead one of the traditional RPG battle systems, you need to zap the enemy with your special Gokon Sword in order to get clues about its identity and expose it. Once you exposed its identity (i.e. what item it really is), you need to hack it a few more times to finish it. The thing is all the clues are literal, in english and based on the japanese lore. For example, if you're fighting a broom Tsukumogami, the clues you get could be either letters from the item's name in uppercase (B or OO, for example), or details about the item itself, what it's being used for, what it's made of and so on ("wood", "cleaning" for example). Once you think you know the name, you "call it out" either by typing it on a virtual in-game keyboard, or by choosing it from a list you can get (and later upgrade for a price) as a part of the story. If you're wrong, the enemy gets a bonus attack and you lose HP. If you got it right, the shroud is lifted and you get to see the enemy for what it really is. A few more hacks and slashes, and it's usually gone. I've only been playing the game for 6-7 hours so far, so there might be more complicated stuff I haven't reached yet, but this is what it looks like, so far, and while it gets a little repetitive, it is fun.