Mystic Messenger: an actual review!
Jul. 1st, 2019 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrSince I think I've played as much as I'm going to. In short: Mystic Messenger is a well made and enjoyable phone based dating sim with some aspects I found annoying.
The protagonist stumbles into the chatroom of a group of friends who run a charity, and ends up getting to know them and helping to organise a big party. The game involves joining group chats, answering emails, messages and phonecalls in real time (not real phonecalls etc, it's simulated within the game) as well as traditional Visual Novel scenes.
I wrote up my reactions to most of the routes and some of the DLC as I played.
Below, from left to right: Jumin, Yoosung, Jaehee, Seven, Zen.
The characters are very likeable and fleshed out, and the romances are a nice mix of angst and fluff. The complicated past histories and friendships add a nice sense of depth, and the chats feel like a real group of friends. It's quite funny in parts, too. The art is very pretty, the voice acting is good, the translation is smooth, and the music seemed fine until I got sick of it and turned it off haha
It's freemium, with an in game currency you earn by either grinding for points or just paying real money. The characters/DLCs etc vary from entirely free to quite expensive, but you can definitely have a satisfying game experience without paying any money. I ended up paying about $7 to get all the content I cared about.
The real time aspect is annoying as hell, remembering to check the game at the right times was annoying, and I'd much rather just play a game at my own pace. You can play each day all at once if you're willing to fork out about about $14 per route.
The love interests:
Free:
Yoosung: a sweet young guy who's fallen into depression and keeps playing video games instead of attending college. This was great.
Jaehee: A quietly snarky overworked personal assistant. A girl!! Her path is ambiguously romantic, which I found a bit frustrating, but the relationship is still pretty intense and I loved her arc of self discovery.
Zen: A flirtatious actor with a romantic streak still figuring out what he wants from life. The romance was cute but there was a false sexual harassment arc that I hated.
Effectively free (it's not hard to grind for enough points to unlock them):
Seven: A quirky hacker who covers his angst with weird jokes. This was pretty great.
Jumin: a cold, socially awkward businessman. I haven't finished this route, I like Jumin himself but some parts of the plot annoyed me. And also I'm just...sick of this game and it's timed chatrooms.
There's two more love interests, Ray and V, but they cost about $15 to unlock and looking up spoilers gave me the impression I would find the treatment of mental illness upsetting.
I bought two DLCs, Valentines and Christmas, purely for the Jaehee parts, and they were both cute.
There's a bunch of secrets/backstory in the later routes and some extra unlockable content, but the more I played them and looked up spoilers, the more annoying I found everything, so I don't feel like I missed much stopping where I did.
Most of the game is all about Normal Life, which was convincingly written but could sometimes be a bit dull for me as someone who prefers speculative fiction. There were some tropey/implausible elements, especially in later parts of the game, but they didn't mesh well for me, and I'd have preferred the game either be entirely realistic or Full Weird.
Some content notes: suicide, iffy portrayal of mental illness and alcoholism, implied eye injury, familial abuse, brainwashing and drugging, homophobia, racist stereotypes
But overall, despite my quibbles, it was a lot of fun.
The protagonist stumbles into the chatroom of a group of friends who run a charity, and ends up getting to know them and helping to organise a big party. The game involves joining group chats, answering emails, messages and phonecalls in real time (not real phonecalls etc, it's simulated within the game) as well as traditional Visual Novel scenes.
I wrote up my reactions to most of the routes and some of the DLC as I played.
Below, from left to right: Jumin, Yoosung, Jaehee, Seven, Zen.
The characters are very likeable and fleshed out, and the romances are a nice mix of angst and fluff. The complicated past histories and friendships add a nice sense of depth, and the chats feel like a real group of friends. It's quite funny in parts, too. The art is very pretty, the voice acting is good, the translation is smooth, and the music seemed fine until I got sick of it and turned it off haha
It's freemium, with an in game currency you earn by either grinding for points or just paying real money. The characters/DLCs etc vary from entirely free to quite expensive, but you can definitely have a satisfying game experience without paying any money. I ended up paying about $7 to get all the content I cared about.
The real time aspect is annoying as hell, remembering to check the game at the right times was annoying, and I'd much rather just play a game at my own pace. You can play each day all at once if you're willing to fork out about about $14 per route.
The love interests:
Free:
Yoosung: a sweet young guy who's fallen into depression and keeps playing video games instead of attending college. This was great.
Jaehee: A quietly snarky overworked personal assistant. A girl!! Her path is ambiguously romantic, which I found a bit frustrating, but the relationship is still pretty intense and I loved her arc of self discovery.
Zen: A flirtatious actor with a romantic streak still figuring out what he wants from life. The romance was cute but there was a false sexual harassment arc that I hated.
Effectively free (it's not hard to grind for enough points to unlock them):
Seven: A quirky hacker who covers his angst with weird jokes. This was pretty great.
Jumin: a cold, socially awkward businessman. I haven't finished this route, I like Jumin himself but some parts of the plot annoyed me. And also I'm just...sick of this game and it's timed chatrooms.
There's two more love interests, Ray and V, but they cost about $15 to unlock and looking up spoilers gave me the impression I would find the treatment of mental illness upsetting.
I bought two DLCs, Valentines and Christmas, purely for the Jaehee parts, and they were both cute.
There's a bunch of secrets/backstory in the later routes and some extra unlockable content, but the more I played them and looked up spoilers, the more annoying I found everything, so I don't feel like I missed much stopping where I did.
Most of the game is all about Normal Life, which was convincingly written but could sometimes be a bit dull for me as someone who prefers speculative fiction. There were some tropey/implausible elements, especially in later parts of the game, but they didn't mesh well for me, and I'd have preferred the game either be entirely realistic or Full Weird.
Some content notes: suicide, iffy portrayal of mental illness and alcoholism, implied eye injury, familial abuse, brainwashing and drugging, homophobia, racist stereotypes
But overall, despite my quibbles, it was a lot of fun.
