Witchspring R is, apparently, a remake of the first in a series of mobile RPGs that I’ve never heard of. You’d be forgiven for not realizing that it was originally a phone game either, both because the Steam page makes no mention of that whatsoever and because your typical phone-first RPG is lucky to manage about 1% of the content and quality on offer here. It does ask for $35 against $5 for the original phone version and I don’t know exactly what has been changed beyond the graphics, but I’d also never question this being worth $35 or even more if it had only released on Steam.
First, what it isn’t. I’ve seen a few other reviews here saying that the game is exceptionally dark or that it’s a less fan service-y Atelier game. The first of these is closer to being accurate – the story is about resisting a genocidal religious cult that turns on its own soldiers for the slightest disobedience, after all. There’s no denying that it’s very dark if you stop to think about it and that the outline of the story could have been the plot of a very serious game, but Witchspring is ultimately a game about a girl named “Pieberry” and her smartass pet bird, and it never lets anything serious simmer for too long before going back to lighthearted comic relief. Similarly, while it is a (Korean-made) JRPG with a female lead and crafting system, it doesn’t have much else of its gameplay in common with Atelier, but the writing style does feel very similar to recent games like Ryza. If you loved the in depth crafting of Atelier and just wished it was less slice-of-life, well, this is the opposite of that.
So if it’s not very dark and it’s not for people who wish Koei Tecmo would get serious, what is it? I’d say the three core systems are pet collecting, crafting, and stat raising, although none of these are very deep on their own. Pet collecting just means using a mind control spell on specific enemies when they’re at low health to gain a permanent summon option, crafting is barebones turn six sticks and three leaves into a leafstick stuff, and stat raising is playing some simple minigames to earn bonuses to, well, your stats. None of these are anywhere near enough to be a game on their own, and the straightforward combat isn’t much deeper, but since you never spend all that long on any one of them before it’s time to focus on another, it works. Witchspring does not have the complex pet training systems of Pokemon or the very creative crafting of Atelier, but it’s exceptionally good at giving you interesting short term goals that keep its basic systems interesting.
As for the plot, although it certainly doesn’t punch as hard as it could, it’s still well done. These ligthearted anime-style games often have a problem with their characters all being one note and not developing at all, but Witchspring does a good job of giving everyone their own motivations and complexities. Most of the humor lands and while not all of the plot twists are particularly surprising, they do at least feel earned. I was especially impressed by how it gave real arcs to a couple of joke characters who would have been throwaway NPCs in a lot of RPGs.
Witchspring‘s other major strong point is its secrets and optional content. The game is absolutely packed with side areas, bosses, and short quests that you don’t ever need to see, but which reward you with new items, crafting components, or pets for your trouble. You can easily increase the length of the game by 50-100% by exploring all of this side content, and nearly all of it feels worthwhile.
For all that, Witchspring does still have a few notable flaws. The biggest is that it really needed more work on balancing. A few of the pets are so obviously better than the others that most of them will never be used at all, and the weapons and training minigames have the same problem. Combat is so easy that you’re only ever really in danger if you take on an enemy that can kill you in on hit, so while the bosses are cool looking and fun, they’re rarely actually dangerous. The game also suffers from a bad case of walkthrough syndrome. Many of the cool secrets I mentioned before require you to do very specific things that the game either barely hints at or never mentions at all, and you’re likely to miss a lot of content if you play through it fully unassisted. This would have been at least a little excusable if the secret interactions were interesting puzzles or something, but they’re usually just simple things that needed better explanations. It seems like they changed a few of these interactions from the mobile version without making them any more clear, so on top of all that there are a few secrets where the advice on the internet is no longer correct. That just creates even more frustration when the game doesn’t tell you why what you’re doing doesn’t work.
Overall, Witchspring is a great RPG that, likely because of its origin as a phone game, is unusually easy to pick up and play in short bursts. As long as you don’t mind the low level of difficulty and the fact you’ll probably need a guide to find everything, there’s a lot to enjoy here. Mobile ports usually suffer from some combination of free to play nonsense, poor controls, or just being all around too basic, but Witchspring could easily pass as having been made for traditional systems. It’s a great deal even at full price. Rating: 85% MSRP: $35 Time to beat: About 30 hours to do nearly everything.
For more reviews, see my Steam curator page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/43219041