Amedama Switch Game Review

Last week, I came out with an editorial on how to spot scam games, There is also a flip side, how to spot winners. Its a little bit more complicated, and maybe I’ll come out with an editorial on it. Regardless, I spotted Amedama, and it seemed like a winner. Fortunately, it is! You play as Yushin, a humble umbrella merchant in late Edo period Japan. One day, men burst into the shop, kill you, and kidnap your mute sister Yui. You refuse to go into the beyond and becomes a soul without a body. You can inhabit anyone you have defeated in combat, also dogs and frogs. Your goal is to rescue your sister in seven days, otherwise, you’re forced to relive it. Fortunately, on the next go around, you can make different choices that affect the story line.

You can even inhabit frail old ladies, who are adept at combat!

Amedama’s Game Play

The game play loop in Amedama is you run from screen to screen following arrows to the next story beat, which usually involves a fight. Each story beat usually takes up either a day or night of one day. The trick is you have to inhabit a body which can beat the fight. A dog or a frog wont cut it, but a samurai can. Combat is pretty deep in this. You have light and heavy attacks, a special attack(character dependent), jump, guard and evade. If you guard correctly, a button prompt will pop up, Press and you’ll do a major attack. You also have focus, which decreases with attacks. If it empties, you are vulnerable until it refills. There are four difficulty levels. Even on normal, if you’re not adept, you’ll die, at which point you have to find another body to use.

At certain points in Amedama, you’ll get a choice, the yellow coded ones are direct lines to new story lines. Also. At the end of most lines, on night of day seven. you’ll get a boss battle with a major character, who you can then inhabit next go around for a change in story as well. In addition to the main story, there are side quests, and memory quests. Completing both of these will get you important items that effect how long you can stay in a body via the soul gauge (the upper right number on the screen). The more combat a body engages in, the lower the meter.The meter reaches zero and you need a new body. But each item decreases the amount it lowers per combat by 1%. Each body also has stats that can be modified by eating food at various establishments, with money gained by fighting, or gambling at the gambling house.

Conclusion

If Amedama seems complicated, it really is not. Everything in Amedama is presented slowly and eventually becomes second nature. The game isn’t that long but it is satisfying and well written. Outside of the opening crawl, there is no voice work, which is disappointing, but this is not exactly a high budget game, so I can deal. The music is good and fits the period. The graphics are low poly, but stylized. If there’s any major complaint about Amedama, it is that I have to play through each story line to get to major decisions, which can get annoying as you cannot teleport around the map, or the story line chart. However, you can skip scenes you have played before, which is nice. The other minor thing is that the dialog is structured so that you can be anyone, which leads to some absurd dialog at times.

The story lines and decisions are laid out in a handy chart.

Now the verdict for Amedama. I’ll give this a Must Play with a nine back-end score. It squeaks in, I was hesitant at first, but I don’t feel right just recommending this either. Amedama is an exquisite, well made game with good premise. Its flaws are really minor and there’s nothing really to discourage you from playing. Play it!

Overall: Amedama is a high concept game that delivers on its soul-shifting premise. While the game didn’t have the highest budget, it gets the job done.

Verdict: Must Play

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