Heiwaboke Crisis

Preamble
Heiwaboke Crisis is papasan06's first game and a darn good one at that.
It plays as a free-roaming RPG chock full of minigames and puzzles, set against the backdrop of a modern Japanese city and overflowing with otaku tropes. The scenario is fresh, and the game itself a lot of fun.

Visual: 3.5 /5
Despite the sparsity of relevant resources and tilesets available, the present-day city serving as Heiwaboke Crisis' sandbox is thoughtfully constructed and easy to explore. It spans from the forest outskirts of town into the city center, including all the sites and locales we gaijins have come to expect. There are some mapping oddities like there being no street curbs, and quite a few passability and overlay issues, but nothing to noticeably detract from the experience.
Also, the CG artwork portraying the cast is pleasant to look at. Especially if you're a guy o.o;




Audio: 4 /5
Instead of relying on background music, the game uses scene-setting sound effects for atmosphere. Bustling crowds and cars honking at each other fill the inner city, while cicada songs inhabit the countryside. Some music does play, particularly in the places you'd normally expect it to such as the karaoke bar and disco(?!). Considering the amount of jaunting around the player does, it may have been the better choice as opposed to static BGMs.
The downside to this approach is that quiet areas are just that : Quiet. You don't spend much time in them at once, but they do feel like dry spells.

Story/Character: 3.5 /5
The core storyline is a tongue-in-cheek "ancient evil revived" scenario.
Some nameless NPC accidentally unsealed the ancient evil in question, then hobbled his injured self back into town before dying, only to warn a single person : Whichever girl the player chose. Now it's up to her to defeat 47 evil spirits and then take out their boss.
Each of the four heroines contribute their own flavor via personalities and skill sets. There's the scholarly and ever considerate Botan, the juvenile delinquent Ayame who holds violence as a sooner-than-last resort, the foppish Tsubaki who's too busy using her high limit credit card as a deadly weapon to let the player buy things with it, and Asagao from the maid cafe, perhaps a bit too polite for her own good. They also come with unique voice clips played whenever they speak. It's not full-on voice acting, but is a nice touch.
My only wish was to see their personalities cross over into their problem solving methods. Like if Botan outsmarted an annoying person while Ayame beats him up.

Gameplay: 3.5 /5
The 47 spirits requiring your attention are preceded by a mission of some form. This is where the open world concept comes into play, as you mosey about, dealing with them all one-by-one in no preset order.
The glaring flaw needs to be addressed first : The battle system. It's simple, and could have worked, but enemy difficulty levels are wildly unpredictable and there's no way to know if you can complete missions without experiencing a myriad of Game Overs. The result is the player positioning themselves one-step away from completing a task, and then earmarking it for the future when they've hopefully gained enough levels, skills, and equipment from weaker spirits to finish it. Unacceptable for this type of game.
However, this issue is largely mitigated by the handy Mysterious Orb. It's an item which, when used in battle, deals 10,000 damage, killing almost anything you meet including the final boss. It's a crude quick-fix and hardly a substitute for proper balancing, but will suffice for now.
Thanks to this, players can turn to appreciating the qualities that distinguish the game : A huge variety of tasks that range from simple arrow-pushing minigames to problem solving requiring a little outside-the-box thought. Dilemmas confronted are drawn straight out of anime culture like a panty thief, DDR contest, regent-sporting delinquents, and even a horny school nurse.
Ye old train groper was missed though.
And tentacles.

Overall: 3.5 /5
Once I got past the awful battle implementation, I had a heck of a lot more fun than I thought I would. It reminds me of the Frank's Adventure series, except without the H-content.
Or is it without.....?