Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time Preview - Special attacks are excellent for the atmosphere and to dress up nicely

The lesser-known anime Little Witch Academia in the West has been given its own game under the title 'Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time'. This game is already out in Japan, but Bandai Namco also brings this title to the West as part of their offensive to make Japanese games more famous here. We could feel the game for a while and enthusiasts are waiting for a beautiful adventure.

At the witch school

The game revolves around the character Akko who is in a witch school, because she is the only one in her family who has witches' powers. At first she has some difficulty with her options, because she receives little advice and guidance. By going to the witch school she hopes to improve her skills and she also wants to go after her big idol, a very experienced witch who demonstrated her skills during a magic show. Everything goes smoothly until the summer break and she can not use her powers. A mysterious force under the title 'The Seven Wonders of Luna Nova' pops up in the school and the result is that Akko, together with her friends Sucy and Lotte, is investigating.

From one thing comes the other and soon the girls end up in an infinite timeloop where they have to escape and that yields traditional 2D gameplay. In the ordinary moments you walk around in the witch school, you talk to people and do all kinds of daily things, until you end up in another dimension - which happens more than once - where you have to use your magical skills to reduce the danger of your to turn off. So the game regularly changes between two worlds where one is soothing and normal and the other is full of dangers. In this dangerous surreal world you are assigned to your two friends to tackle the many magical monsters.

Classic gameplay

The entire game has a fairly static setup, in which you walk from space to space, without being very dynamic. It feels quite classic and although you can walk relatively freely around the school, the areas in the surreal world are even flatter. You can walk from left to right and from top to bottom in a 2D view. The folder at the top right shows all the spaces where you can go to tackle new enemies and that repeats itself every time. In the surrealistic world you will encounter various enemies that you have to take on in order to continue an area with a final boss.

You can do this together with your regular friends, but it will not stay there. Gradually you will meet more people who join you, so there will be a variation in the party that you can put together with which you will take on the next challenge. The gameplay is nevertheless very simple, because it is not much more than finishing one room after another with the various attacks that you have at your disposal. Every now and then you can use extra strong attacks with a special attack and that looks pretty spectacular, although not that at some point it can be annoying.

We were shown a relatively long animation each time a special attack was used. That is of course excellent for the atmosphere and to dress up nicely, but with a fifth time you have seen that and that is at the expense of the pace in the game. What also does not work very well is that although you enjoy a 2D view, you can move freely from the front to the back in the surrealistic world. When you are fighting hard, it is one big color slate of attack on the screen without you realizing that all your attacks are just passing by an enemy. You have to stand exactly in front of an enemy if your attacks actually arrive.

That is not very practical, especially because of the chaos that arises soon and because the characters are as flat as a dime like Paper Mario. Also, in many enemies it is sometimes so busy on the screen, that you only do something because you do not even realize that your character is blown away and half outside the screen. It is a colorful and fun whole, but it is too chaotic to be able to see what you are actually doing. Now the demo was in our opinion easy, so that is not a problem, but on a higher level of difficulty that can sometimes be a problem.

Really for the fans

This game is clearly made for fans of the anime and they will encounter many recognizable things in the adventure. That makes it very fun to play, of course, but if you are new, the whole game feels a bit like a step back. This is because the gameplay is just a bit old-fashioned. The gameplay is chaotic and quite repetitive and the animations are a bit outdated, but fortunately the colorful attacks can easily be masked. It is nice to know that the different areas you visit also have some form of platform elements, such as obstacles that you have to overcome during the fight.

It does not benefit the overview, but it does provide a nice variation in the levels you visit. The bosses are also of absurd proportions who pay out rather crazy loot. Think, for example, of a flying pig that can not resist leaving its huge derrière on top of your head. If you defeat this huge beast, you will receive a piece of cake as a reward. Indeed, a piece of cake. Incidentally, the humor is not lacking in the dialogues and that makes the story actually quite fun to follow, but you really have to love it.

Preliminary conclusion

Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is a game that is meant for fans only. They like it because of the style, the characters, the story and the associated gameplay. However, this gameplay is unclear due to a continuous chaos of attacks, enemies and special effects. We hope that this will be polished a bit, which will make things easier to understand, but to be honest, we doubt that. It is not a bad game, but it's all pretty old-fashioned and it looks very repetitive. As a newcomer this may not be the best game to step in, fans must put this title on their radar. Whether the overall quality ultimately suits us.

Thanks for reading.

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