The Fate of the God-Murderer: Review of the Ikusa Megami Series

Foreword: When I first played the Memoria remake in 2014, I thought it was a very good game with amazing character design and a unique gameplay, and found it unfortunate that the story was not quite up to par. My review also revealed that I had only gone through what was the tip of the iceberg, with two prequels that I’ve completely neglected.

Ikusa Megami Zero

Ikusa Megami Verita

I’ve taken the time the past 2 weeks to actually go through every one of these games in its chronological order (with a maxed out savedata; grinding is so annoying), and found out that the story is indeed much better in the beginning games than the successive ones. In fact, I felt like a dumbass when I figured out that by playing the remake first, I’ve effectively spoiled the entire series for myself. Fuck you, me from 2014.

What I’d like to do to myself from 2014

This’ll be a fairly long review WITH SPOILERS discussing the main characters, story, and gameplay. I’ll try to go deep into what I found good about the series and what I didn’t. Now, please do keep in mind that I’ve only played the Ikusa Megami series from Zero -> Verita -> Memoria (remake). This may have biased my viewpoints onto Serika instead of Louie. In addition to this, I’ll be less descriptive about the Louie side of the story, because I have not yet played this “arc” of the series. One thing to note is that “Memoria” which is a remake, is pretty much the “Ikusa Megami 1” that was released waaaay back in 1999.

Also, you may notice that I use my own spelling instead of the Englishese that Eushully presents in the game. I personally think their “translations” are freaking retarded, so please forgive me in this aspect.

Please note that this game contains HEAVY spoilers! It contains a LOT of my personal analysis on the implications made within the game.

Title: 戦女神 (Ikusa Megami; Battle Goddess) Series.
Producers: Eushully
VNDB Link: Zero | Verita | Memoria (remake)
Game Type: Fantasy Novel with “Final Fantasy-Style” (SLG) Combat System

Summary: What do you do, when you lose your loved ones? How would you respond if the entire world hated you, and sought your death? What if your eternal, immortal life was filled with sleepless nights and silent anguish?

Don’t think society is the only thing that shuns your existence; gods will find your presence disgusting, monsters will haunt your back for as long as you breathe, and evil will always follow the path you walk.

At least for Serika, he didn’t know he would be walking this path as he returned from the Nohia Ruins after an expedition. As he is completely unaware of his eternal fate after returning to Markle, he meets a beautiful girl whose name was Satia.

Do you believe in Destiny? Serika replies with a strong “no”, but his own will drag him into the depths of Death and back.

Review of [100129]Seirei Tenshou

Foreword: Let’s go for review number 2! Finished rather quickly, this game is, right off the bat, a scrolling shooter game. So if you’re good at scrolling shooters, you will love this.

Basically another loli-themed game, this attracted me years back when it was released with its “Scrolling Shooter gameplay” advertisement and loli artwork. Despite this, I haven’t gotten to it until now.

If you readers remember “Eien no Aselia”, which is a game translated into English, note that this game is by the same company.

Title: 精霊天翔～壊れゆく世界の少女たち～ (Seirei Tenshou ~ Kowareyuku sekai no shoujo tachi) [Lit. Trans: Fairies of the Heavens ~ Girls of the World that is being Destroyed]
Producers: Xuse
Release Date: January 29, 2010
VNDB Link: http://vndb.org/v2353
Game Type: Shooting Scroller Game + Novel

Summary: Clifford (No, he’s not the big red dog) is a treasure hunter who recently found a map for a treasure called “Drop of Life” (Inochi no Shizuku) which supposedly grants eternal life. Curiosity gets the best of him as he prepares a trip into a different world with the help of his friend, Yuura. As soon as he arrives, he finds a village being assaulted by demons! He rushes into battle, but doesn’t realize that in a different world, his mana will not be compatible, and falls literally from the airship to the ground after slaying just a few demons. Despite this failure, the town welcomes him as a hero and begs for him to “sleep” with the “miko” in town so they can use his flight abilities to vanquish demons as well.

Wau, the orange haired girl, is voiced by Aoba Ringo, one of my favorite CVs :D

Story Length: Very Short (10 hours). Gameplay: Long (20 hours)
Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Considerably difficult
Comments: It was really annoying to clear this game, since the split for all heroines occur at the very beginning of the game, and you had to play on the highest difficulty to unlock everything, for each heroine. At some point, I just gave up farming Mana (which is needed for unit upgrades) and just went berserk with the story quests to get this thing over with.

A quick screenshot of the game, to show you that this is a side scroller. For the reference, it seems that the character’s hitbox starts around the neck and ends at the hips, so it’s a lot smaller than one would think.

Another screenshot

Character Design Rating: 7/10
Story Rating: 7/10
Game Quality: Moderate
Overall Rating: 7/10
Rating Comments: A surprisingly decent game, which was actually unexpected. At first, I thought this would be a simple side-scroller game with no real story, but boy was I wrong! Each miko, (despite being a loli, which subjects them under my favorable bias) has a problem within the story that they try to cope with, that the reader would probably not have expected. This unexpectability (?) is generally a favorable trait, as it adds spice to a story.

In order for the miko to fly, they would need to carry Clifford with them on a magic pendant.

Sexual Content: Moderately High

Comments: For some reason, I still see this game as a semi-nukige… >.>;

That aside, the gameplay is pretty nice. If you think your touhou skills would help here, think again. This game is considerably easier than Touhou (since you actually have a health-bar which can be refilled with items), but the difficulty stems mostly from the various “attacks” you can do and the variability in each miko’s combos. Simply avoiding bullets and shooting will not be sufficient. There are also passive skills unique to each miko, which can add to the confusion if you’re not familiar with Japanese.

Although one of the more predictable character is Leolina…

Affection for the Characters: Low

CG Quality: Moderate. There was several bloodchilling moments, of which the CG was used to emphasize, but many of them were HCGs, which was rather disappointing.
Music Quality: Very good. You wouldn’t believe me on this, but I found the BGM music to be very fitting for this kind of theme–of Armageddon, despair, and light of hope. Even some of the BGMs in the gameplay were very nicely done!

Addictiveness: Low

Conclusion: A fun side-scroller game that makes this game one of the best games if you like Xuse’s stories. Lolis add points to the game for maniacs like myself, and as for the fandisc… I guess I’ll take a look sometime >.>;