Moe Waifu H Fantasy is the latest game by EastAsiaSoft in the Pretty Girls series and it is probably the worst. It will take less than an hour to unlock the Platinum but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
H Fantasy is a simple but oddly designed rhythm game. As a quick comparison, think of Theatherhythm but boring, tedious, and set to a wildly varied soundtrack that isn’t even synced to the beat. There are four lanes of notes, each questionably assigned to all four shoulder buttons, and there is only one difficulty setting. Unfortunately, the overall execution falls apart in every instance.
First, why are the shoulder buttons used and not the face buttons? Hitting the adaptive triggers takes more effort than the bumpers so it is easy to lose the rhythm when performing finger gymnastics. Second, the buttons are vertically aligned in such a way that it doesn’t make sense and never feels comfortable. Thing is, the icons that fly across the screen have the buttons listed on them but the R1, L1, L2, R2 indicators are absent from the trigger zones. This makes it unnecessarily more difficult than it needs to be to remember that the second lane is R1.
Speaking of unnecessary challenge, the game introduces a horribly annoying crystal ball visual effect at the halfway point. This means, the player needs to try and align these notes when they cannot be seen through this annoying lens flare, making this easily one of the worst artificial difficulties spikes I’ve ever seen. Instead making a genuine challenge, like adding more notes faster or incorporating two/three button combos, the game says “go ahead and hit these notes that you cannot see.” It makes no sense and is the equivalent of playing the game wearing a blind fold. This painstaking gameplay element is double downed because the tappable notes do not align with any song. In fact, there are notes still on the screen when each song ends. The lack of polish is laughable.
The cursive menu font is illegible. The three misses before game over is unfair because of the horrendous visual impediments. The one difficult setting, set to “cheap” is boring and unfair at best. The soundtrack isn’t good and most songs are way too long. Hitting notes is either all or nothing; there is no bonus/penalty for hitting a note exactly on the sweet spot or not. Score doesn’t mean anything since there are no leaderboards but yet there is an item that can temporarily increase score. And like all the other Pretty Girls titles, the girl theme doesn’t add or incorporate anything into the gameplay. In fact, if the PG anime babes were removed entirely, this game would be exactly the same. The Gallery option found on the main menu doesn’t even do anything. Almost everything here is a WTF moment.
There are so many poor design choices in this low-cost digital download that I have to question everything. Simple put, the devs either didn’t care, were on a tight budget or time crunch, or both. Suffering through the glass ball effect isn’t even worth griding the Platinum. Players are much better playing any other Pretty Girls title instead. Or, better yet, go take out that Guitar Hero guitar that has been sitting in the back of your closet since 2008.
SCORE: 3/10
Not As Good As: Guitar Hero 1
Play It Instead: Taiko Drum Master
Wait For It: a GotY Edition of Theatherhythm that includes all the DLC
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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