WitchSpring3 [Re:Fine] - The Story of Eirudy by developer Kiwiwalks and publisher ININ Games—Nintendo Switch review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Having originally released in October 2017 for mobile devices, WitchSpring3 [Re:Fine] - The Story of Eirudy is the localization of the Nintendo Switch version released late last year in December of 2020. Set in a fictional fantasy world of Deities and Dragons, this is the story of one such Deity as she meets and interacts with a human for the first time and begins to learn that friendships and betrayals are a part of life once you begin to leave your own secluded forest.
Before going any further, I want to take a moment to make an acknowledgement on a subject that could easily rub people the wrong way. I don't think this was intentional, and I think the localization team could have smoothed it over somewhat, but there are a few instances where some of the dialog could come across as a bit racially incentive even if we are exploring a fantasy world. Deities, currently known as Witches, are apparently darker to dark skinned making them stand out from everyone else who's basically white. Having other markings though, I think with the current Black Lives Matter and the atrocities of the Indigenous Peoples, skin tone and colour could have been adjusted to concentrate on the markings of the Deities instead. I hope that this is something that could be addressed in a later patch because otherwise there is an enjoyable RPG to be found here.
Starting off from the beginning though, WitchSpring3 is the story of a nameless Deity who lives alone in her forest with nothing more than her dolls for company. Trying to create a doll that can speak for better company than the silent ones that she currently has, one day our Deity journeys into the forest in order to collect some life energy for another test. Hunting a boar that wants nothing to do with her and her experiments, this hunt brings her to a man hiding in the bushes from that very boar so as to not to be skewered. Love at first sight for him, for our nameless Deity, at the time, he's nothing more than a human piquing her curiosity as she's been lonely and he doesn't yet know what she is.
From here on, our lover boy names our nameless Deity as Eirudy for her beautiful red eyes and from this point on, Eirudy runs with it having never actually had a name. It’s from these interactions that we find out that Deity’s are no longer being called as such due to a Pope declaring them as witches and that they should all be hunted down and executed as they are dangerous, which explains why Eirudy was staying away from the townspeople nearby. It easily helps set up the plot and explain why Eirudy has yet to meet any more of her people as they are all in hiding.
Moving into the gameplay as Eirudy starts to explore further and further, there’s a fairly easy going RPG with a few interesting mechanics that unlike the norm are not all about the experience points. Instead of leveling up in the traditional sense, Eirudy instead gets stronger by the use of items, by training, or by being a badass in battle which is a good portion of how I was doing it. If you defeat your enemies fast and strongly enough, you can keep gaining strength points, really making you a force to be reckoned with. Otherwise, items can be picked up in the field to be used as is, or in a simplified Atelier Series format, thrown into a cauldron to create something new and amplify the bonuses and effects of those items.
When it comes to training though, there are two bonuses to this style of raising stats. The first is that training is set up in five day blocks allowing Eirudy to train and to raise her stat points as well as research new sword techniques and magic circles to give her an even bigger edge to battle. Only able to swing once per turn in the beginning, eventually by using some of her hit points, Eirudy can start swinging four, five, six times and when you add in some magical elements to your sword, you can smack all of the enemies in front of you as well as the flyers. The other bonus to training is that at some points in the story you’re going to need to spend a few in game days waiting for something so instead of simply going to sleep, you can train to buff up or to learn new tools and magics to help better support the journey.
Where WitchSpring3 will differentiate from other RPGs is that short of a few pre-determined battles, Eirudy fights on her own. Able to summon up to three dolls in battle, what these dolls do will vary in the ways that they offer support. Some dolls such as your first one will heal Eirudy allowing her to not need to use items unless absolutely necessary. Other dolls will temporarily raise Eirudy’s stats while the final set will attack the enemies with attack power based off of Eirudy’s own stats. With up to three dolls that can be summoned at a time, there are solutions to a variety of battles ahead.
It’s a well designed but simple battle system that doesn’t get old as the adventure moves on. If I had maybe one issue with this style though it’s that once summoned into battle, there’s no way to unsummon a doll making it a fairly final decision once your choices are all out on the field. Thankfully most battles are rather short but there were some moments that I just wanted the battle to end in defeat so that I could try it again but with a different set of dolls.
In regards to the dolls, this fell into a system that was both super accessible from the beginning while also being a bit of a pain to get behind. The reason for this is that to bring a doll to life in order to use in combat, you’ll have to infuse it with lifeforce which is what started off this whole adventure in the first place. To actually get to infuse something with lifeforce, you have to go out and fight living beings for it. Only able to store so much at a time, you’ll have to increase your core crystal to house more as you can’t simply put a bit in at a time which makes bringing them to life and then leveling them up a bit complicated as by a certain point, you’ll only be able to do one or two dolls at a time even with the maximum crystal size.
Aside from training and doll summoning, there is also a magic system in place for those that don’t want to approach their battles at the tip of a sword. Like the physical training, increasing Eirudy’s magical prowess can be done in the same manner by spending a few days training but instead of boxing against a doll, running laps and doing push-ups, Eirudy will instead be reading books, channeling her magic and stirring things in her cauldron to see if anything new comes out. It was nice to have these styles of choices especially with the fact that Eirudy is a one-woman army and doesn’t have an actual party for support.
If there were some elements that didn’t quite line up it would be that you can see in several cases where this was a mobile game in the way that the maps were laid out and in how small the environments are. Sometimes this isn’t bad, but when you load up the mini map to check for the exits, there’s more space taken up by everywhere you can’t go than where you actually can. Following that, I wish you could have saved from more than just Eirudy’s home as sometimes the gameplay and the story take things far from home for a while and without a teleportation point, you either hope that nothing bad happens or take the LONG way back just to make sure that you have saved.
Summary
So overall, WitchSpring 3 [Re:Fine] - The Story of Eirudy is a shorter and often enjoyable RPG that shouldn't take too long to go through. With other entries into the series both before and upcoming, I'm curious to see if we'll see more of these or not down the line.
Score: 7.75 / 10
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