Towelket One More Time ~Fury~

Hello!
Do you know the Towelket series by Kanao (Kanashimi Hocchikisu)? NO?? Shame on you!
I reviewed them all (SO FAR!), so you can play them all, in any case, check below for the correct order in which they should be played (even if they are actually separated self-contained different adventures, but these parallel universes often have some connections or references with same-named characters and alien races).
Oh but first a last warning: this series is rather disturbing, dark and with violent and depressing moments, and Fury is especially notorious for graphical violence, gruesome scenes and disturbing events. You've been warned!

Towelket - One More Time 3
Towelket - One More Time 2
Towelket - One More Time
Towelket - One More Time 6 Devils&Devils&Nightmares&Devils
Towelket - One More Time 4 ~Ocean~


A marriage! IF you played the previous entries in the series you will surely recognize many of the characters here! And this map and that house too!

Ok, I know this is a strange order, anyway I'm pretty sure that you are going to ask me a thing: where is Towelket 5? This is a good question, because Towelket: One More Time 5 ~ Fury ~ was the original title of this game, unfortunately, as you may have read on the main page, it was released after a rushed development and it contained some bugs so it was retired (like Towelket: One More Time 5 ~ Classic ~ obverse, cancelled and not available ad least on public sites) and replaced by Towelket: One More Time 5 - Gaugau's Bride, released in 2010 (and recently made available on Rpgmaker.net too so expect a review sooner or later). In 2012 this Towelket: One More Time ~ Fury ~ was finally made available, and this is the game we have here, translated, as usual, by the great Patchy Illusion Team, like for the previous entries.

Now, the story: the game begins with two characters we already met in the previous games, or at least, with their alternate versions of this universe, where they're siblings: Paripariume and Pucchi, the first is a red haired girl that is nearly identical to the protagonist from Towelket 2 (in the very first Towelket 3 a same named character appears but she's not even human), present in the sequels except for eyes of two different colors, while Pucchi is the green haired girl that appeared in many Towelket games and she was an android/robot. Obviously not here!
So our two girls are in front of the grave of Paripariume's husband, with two twins, a girl and a boy. Pucchi leaves the older sister for a moment, but when she comes back she finda that a flock of birds has killed her sister Paripariume and kidnapped the girl. With her last breath Paripariume asks Pucchi to protect the boy...


Meet Nyanyamo, the bad guy... well, bad girl! She's introduced rather early, after a sort or prologue, but what will happen in the next chapters?

Years later we play as the protagonist, Kachil, that was raised by his aunt Pucchi like he was her son. Our hero/alter ego lives the life of a normal student (like most other Towelket protagonists, at least in the beginning o the story), together with two friends: Roppenchu and Ponpe, both new additions to the Towelket series, the first is a pink haired girl with a girl with a headstrong personality. the second a blonde girl that instead is more calm and quite shy. They both seems to like our hero, and I will just tell you that at a certain point Kachil can marry one of the two. Your choice, but right at the beginning of the game you will have to choose which girl will accompany you to visit the constellation day festival (happens every 15 years, and it's a period when a dead person may reappear under the lights of the starts... I'm sure you can understand what will happen next!), and that's unusual since most Towelket games were pretty much linear with no choices. But given that this is Towelket do not expect a peaceful life no matter what, fate is a cruel mistress. And her name is Nyanyamo, the cruel and sadistic white haired girl (in other games Nyanyamo is a redhead and has different roles) that seems bent on destroying humanity with the help of the Love-lips Aliens (already met in some of the previous episodes, even if they were unnamed, and if you remember, they are BAD GUYS!). Luckily there will be also various allies, like for example the scientist and genious Agochu.

Let's go back to Kachil, our protagonist that has the same name of the one we control in Towelket 3, and exactly as him he can equip a vast series of different items and weapons that may be collected just interacting around with people and items: chairs, chalk, dust, cabinets, televisions, pens, and so on. Many of these items can be equipped (Tvs and lockers will be the first weapons), unlike in most other Towelket games where the main boy hero (but that was Moochasu/Mocchi, even if the outlook appearance is almost identical to Kachil) wielded whips. You will have (and need) party members to equip from the very beginning, but a suggestion is also to look for shops for protections against the different kind of attacks (the Flame Bracelets found at the department store will be very useful), and some items will be extremely important, like the Sleepy knife (absolutely NO enemy has an immunity to sleep, while some will restist paralysis).


Combat against a boss! We'll ofter outnumber our opponents, but that's not a good reason to take it easy, of course!

Combat is, like all the other Towelket games, classic: we encounter enemies we can avoid (sometimes the game asks if you really want to fight, like against the black chihuahua, other times just touching the sprite will initiate combat) and bosses that are mandatory tougher battles, where the ghost cat "Abura-neko" will give you some tips, sometimes reveling the weaknesses of the opponent.
Levelling up means earning new skills and powers (even of all the playable characters only Kachiru, Roppenchu, Ponpe and Minpou learn any special attacks).

The graphics are in most case "borrowed" from the previous episodes, I mean, these are totally original of course, but for example the same protagonist charset was used in the second episode and sequels, most enemies are the same already fought in lots of previous adventures, like the cows, the aliens, the robots (that looks like grey cubes). Anyway there are also many new poses for the old characters, new variations of the old charsets, new enemies and new gruesome sprites. The game uses cute full-body figures instead of facesets, like in the last episodes of the series, but only for the main characters of course. Mapping is pretty much good, exactly like in the previous adventures (some maps are even copy-pasted, but the explanation may probably be the theory of different parallel universes), and the cute artstyle greatly clases with the dark mood and violence of the story. As usual.

Now the music: as always Towelket has a mix of songs that I did not recognize, and other very classic themes like for example "Air On The G String" by Johann Sebastian Bach, "Carmen Habanera" by Bizet. "Für Elise" by Beethoven, Vivaldi's "Spring" and "Funiculi Funicula".


This is Towelket, so it's supposed to be dark (and sooner or later things will inevitably go bad)! Anyway our hero is here, so he can still do great things. Well, maybe...

Final Verdict
Towelket One More Time ~Fury~ took me (exactly) three hours to complete, and I think it's an ok game, but like Towelket One More Time (the third episode) and Towelket One More Time 6 – Devils&Devils&Nightmares&Devils it's not only "more of the same", but also the more linear and simple episodes. Ok, it's still good, and had an ending that made me chuckle (yes, despite being a game with dark and gloomy moments, there IS some humor! And dirty jokes too!), but it lacks of the special novelties of the first two episodes (that also contained some custom menus and features) or the wild imaginative setting of the more fantastic and Peter-Pan inspired Towelket One More Time 4 ~Ocean~. In fact if you played Towelket 2, you will notice lots of parallels and similar situations (the evil alien race is the same and does the same bad things, our hero is the usual clueless guy loved by the female protagonist victim of the alien invasion, and so on). This is not a bad game at all, and I did not mind the disturbing parts or the violence since I am used to the series, even if this episode takes a them to the maximum (so far, anyway only pixelated horror, this is not Grimorum!), but the recycled enemies and the copy-pasted maps put me a bit off (Towelket One More Time 4 was in fact a breath of fresh air, and also offered a ton of playable characters).

In any case this is still a good entry in the series, but I guess it would not interest so much those who are not familiar to the disturbing adventures of girls, boys and merciless aliens. For them the first Towelket 3 is recommended, being the introduction to the series, but also the less violent and grim. First three and the 4 are for me the best ones and must play, this not so much, BUT if you are fan of the series, can you miss playing this one?
Of course not!