Developed by Mr. Tired Media and published by Sekai Project, Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is a unique title that combines some of the best video game genres into a single title. Undead Darling is a visual novel that combines RPG mechanics with dungeon-crawling and looting. It was initially revealed back in 2015 on Kickstarter however the game failed to complete its funding but the developer kept working on the title and the final game was released last month on Nintendo Switch and PS4. This is our review of the Nintendo Switch version of Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ in which we lead a team of half-zombie girls through some dungeons.
In Undead Darlings, you play as a guy named Reggie who wakes up one day from a coma to find his neighbor Pearl turned into a half-zombie and the world around himself fighting a zombie apocalypse which turns out to be Reggie’s dad’s fault. Reggie sets out to investigate what really happened and along the path, makes some new friends including the hardcore zombie slayer Buck and other half-zombie girls who join Reggie as he explores different buildings and structures in the form of dungeon-crawling. The story does not come with direct pointers which encourages exploration and freedom to how you want to proceed with your story.
The story of Undead Darlings is told in the form of a visual novel. The art style of the game is brilliant and features soft and light colors. During these sequences, you will get to hear all of the dialogue between the different characters of the game, and with the help of some dialogue choices, you can also develop your relationship with other characters in the game. While there is Buck who is the only male NPC for you to interact in the game, apart from Pearl, you have five other girls with who you meet and form friendships. Each of these girls come with their own strengths and weaknesses.
The visual novel and narrative part of Undead Darlings is extremely strong, and the writing is great. Each of the girls and characters that you meet in the game brings substance to your party and the overall game experience. Every character has a back story and as you form your relationships with them, they will open to you more and share their backgrounds with you. This allows you to understand and form a deeper understanding with them and make you feel much more comfortable with them. Forming good relationships is not just good for the narrative but it also makes the girls more effective in different combat scenarios as they will fight more effectively for you if your bonding level is high.
Combat plays out in the form of turns and depending on whether you want to attack or use a skill, sometimes the positions of your girls will move. Similar to any other turn-based titles, you can attack, use items, or perform spells or skills during your move. You can choose what you want to do, assign a target, and then move to the next girl. Since you play as Reggie, Reggie does not fight himself rather the girls do the fighting for him. At one time, you can have three girls out of five girls at your party. Each girl comes with her own powers, skills, and abilities. Create some Macros and you can even combine the attacks of two girls into one powerful attack combining their affinities into a single attack.
It might seem that a game offering so much in terms of gameplay might lack when it comes to combat but this is not the case here. The game features an incredibly detailed combat system that has nearly all of the mechanics from any other decent turn-based RPG title. You can equip weapons that alter the stats of your characters or you can use items to temporarily buff or debuff certain stats of your party members. Affinities play a vital role as well because the combat is heavily dependent on exploiting the weakness of your enemies. Using the right attack and spell can cause devastating damage to your enemies if you exploit their weaknesses.
Each weapon also comes with a unique type of damage such as blunt, piercing or slashing and each enemy is weak against some of these damage types so you can switch between weapons for maximum damage-dealing as well. Combining compatible attacks allow you to land Combo attacks while some weapons come with special Linked attacks as well that you can land on your enemies with them equipped. Your characters come with three different meters during fighting that you have to keep an eye out on all of them during combat. These include Health Points (HP), Skill Points (SP), and DP (Weapon Durability Points).
Some of the skills require DP instead of SP so you have to ensure that you keep your weapons in top shape. While you are in safe zones, you can access Buck’s Truck for various inventory functions. These include inventory management, item sorting, repairing weapons, and changing the loadouts of the girls in your party. Here, you can repair your weapons which will give you DP for use in combat. You can also spend some Scrap and upgrade your gear making them more effective in combat. You collect Scrap from exploring the game and as loot from defeated enemies. You can also perform many other tasks in these safe zones such as interacting with your party and exploring the areas for additional dialogue.
Hostile areas in the game are treated as dungeons and this is where the dungeon-crawling comes into play. You can only move around in a grid formation which means that you can move forward, back, turn left and right and then move forward or backward once again. The hostile areas are full of loot and enemies. Picking up items will allow you to change equipment on your characters or use them during combat for various functions such as healing or regaining SP for skills. As you explore, you will also fight with different twisted creatures such as mutated mugs or powerful ashtrays. The enemy design of Undead Darlings is definitely unique. While most fights are simple ambushes, you can also fight some powerful enemies and bosses marked on the map clearly with their icons represented by cupcakes.
While I greatly enjoyed fighting enemies in the game and the dungeon-exploring is quite satisfying as well, one thing I did notice was that enemies sometimes perform extremely weird moves. For example, in one fight, one of the enemies kept healing itself and never attacked me. In some instances, the AI would simply waste its move by healing itself even when it is at full health. While I certainly used these opportunities in my advantage, it still looked weird seeing the AI making such silly mistakes during combat. Apart from this, the game ran perfectly for me and I do not recall even a single hiccup happening to me during my entire playthrough of the game.
Final Verdict:
Undead Darlings ~no cure for love~ is a combination of different genres and while many developers fail to deliver when the game combines many different genres into one, Sekai Games and Mr. Tired Media have managed to deliver a brilliant. Title. Undead Darlings is a visual novel that combines RPG mechanics with dungeon-crawling and turn-based combat all into a perfect little title that has memorable characters and a brilliant art design. The writing is amazing and keeps you glued to the screen as you get to know more about the in-game characters that you find on your journey. Since the game ticks all the right notes in all genres, you can easily pick it up and it will not disappoint you whether you prefer visual novels, RPGs, turn-based combat titles or dungeon-crawlers. It has a lot to offer to everyone.
Final Score: 8.8/10
