Paranoize

I have been on the waiting list for this game because I love TokyoDebunker, their other game. Pros: the color is gorgeous. The storytelling is strong. Gameplay is appropriately difficult—not frustratingly hard. The “treasure caves” are fun and beautiful. (I love the rainbow ones.) Character design is high quality. With one major concern Cons: Put. Some clothes. On. Female. Characters. We live in a world that’s more dangerous for women than ever. Making women’s bodies commodities is feeding the “violence and consumption is acceptable,” mindset. Women in the real world get hurt because of “minor” things, like, “fan service…” that doesn’t serve US. (Cup size does not need to be “world cup” sized. There are ways to portray female characters as beautiful AND sexy… without that hyper-fixation & exaggeration.) Also, and here “con” seems to have a double meaning: Gems are given out in a roulette style system. You COULD get 1,000 gems for doing this task… but you got 10. Again. Advertised SSR Characters are also unusually hard to acquire. If I save up diamonds, get 2 low level characters and 8 “memory” cards, that feels random if it happens sometimes… it feels rigged when that happens MOST times. The roulette system hits players when it comes to “earning” diamonds… and again when it comes to drawing characters. It’s frustrating and disappointing. TYDB has a way to earn diamonds at regular intervals. It’s predictable. That system is much more fair. Also, the characters are dressed in ways that are interesting and creative, beautifully designed, but not exploitative. It’s worth noting that the TYDB characters are all boys. (Apart from MC who is plain to a fault. She seems deliberately ignored in the costume department.) If I could give half stars, I would. 3.5. I WANT to give this game a 4-5 star rating, but the cons are weighing down what would otherwise be a beautiful, jewel-toned, creative game… with the potential for master storytelling. Earn the .5 by presenting female characters as human beings with beauty and respect, and by un-rigging the diamond/card pulling process. I know the genre normalizes hyper-se*ualized female bodies, but that doesn’t make it right. Be better. As a story, everything else adds up.

You run out of stuff to do within 5 minutes. Takes forever to advance on the "game" portion unless you pay.