Anime tie-in games rarely manage to achieve a level of greatness. Blame it on the tricky nature of adapting an entire season or two of content into an RPG format, or simply the games industry equivalent of saying the phrase ‘Macbeth’, but sometimes all players can hope for is simply ‘okay.’ The hybrid town-building/action-fighting game, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI CHRONICLES, manages to land on the better side of average, but finds itself held back by a frustrating lack of depth.
Join us today on Anime Corner as we review That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI CHRONICLES, available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC via Steam.
Dragon Quest Called, They Want Their Slimes Back
Adapting the first season and a half of content (or roughly five light novels) from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, (often referred to by its Japanese shorthand ‘TenSura’), ISEKAI CHRONICLES faithfully retells the adventures of Rimuru Tempest. Once a Japanese salaryman who met with an unfortunate end, he’s reincarnated as—you guessed it—a slime, with great magical potential and the power to learn new skills by eating other creatures.
Although TenSura has an element of power fantasy about it, the series leans more into the political and slice-of-life genres, as Rimuru grows his alliance from a small village in a forest, to his very own nation with a fully-functioning government. As this nascent country rises through the ranks, Rimuru and friends encounter all sorts of magical beasts, egotistical kings, and godlike beings—many of whom become stalwart allies after getting knocked senseless by Rimuru and co.
ISEKAI CHRONICLES also features two brand-new stories penned by the series’ author, Fuse, and full Japanese voice acting throughout. If nothing else, the attention-to-detail for the whimsical characters and national politics of the original story is on full display, and the game feels like it was developed with some real love and appreciation for the source material.
Slime Choice Awards
Gameplay in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI CHRONICLES is split equally between visual novel-style storytelling, and 2.5D combat in a side-scrolling environment. In between missions, you can expand your base with new buildings that will grant your team stat bonuses when they fight, and in turn, you’ll get materials from fighting to construct more buildings.
The gameplay loop makes sense on paper, borrowing heavily from the craft-fight-craft school of the Monster Hunter or Atelier franchises. Unfortunately, the building management aspect of the game is mostly hands-off, and although you can replace older buildings with newer ones to maximize your bonuses, the combat is so easy, it makes that aspect almost irrelevant.
Still, the combat is the highlight of the game, with fun combos and splashy effects all over the screen. You can deploy three characters to actively switch between on-screen, with two more support characters available to pull out special attacks. Individual encounters are tracked with a scoring system similar to Devil May Cry, rewarding players for juggling enemies to increase a hit counter, and dealing out large amounts of damage. With an elemental type wheel bolted on top, you’ve got yourself a very serviceable framework for an action game. Unfortunately, just like with the base building, that’s where it stops—at being a decent starting point.
After your first few hours with the game, you’ve seen everything it has to offer. The skill trees for your characters are mindless checklists with no decision making involved; and the combat quickly devolves into a repetitive grind, with reskinned enemies scattered across the dozen-or-so stages. ISEKAI CHRONICLES adopts a Metroidvania-inspired minimap for the combat sections, but each dungeon always has the same layout, making repeated trips to locations incredible irritating. A roguelite randomization system like Little Noah: Scion of Paradise would have done wonders to make exploration refreshing; or perhaps some more active combat and platforming sections like those from Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin.
Visually, ISEKAI CHRONICLES manages to step things up over most other anime tie-ins. On our PS5 copy of the game, the performance was fantastic, with nary a slowdown or glitch in sight. The voice acting is perfectly on-point, the script is largely error free, and the character designs nicely pop in a cel-shaded style. If nothing else, ISEKAI CHRONICLES serves as favorable introduction to the world of TenSura, with a large cast of playable characters, a lighthearted tone, and (surprisingly, for the isekai genre), very little overt fan-service.
Summary
Ultimately, your mileage will vary for That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI CHRONICLES.
Despite some great ideas and excellent presentation, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI CHRONICLES stumbles at providing any real depth for its base-building or combat mechanics, and can’t offer much for gamers who aren’t interested in a retelling of Rimuru Tempest’s story. The combat mechanics are fun but repetitive, and the base-building is sadly just another checklist between story beats. If you’re itching for more TenSura, then you might enjoy what That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI CHRONICLES has to offer; otherwise, there’s always the anime and light novels.
Anime Corner received a review copy of the game.
© Taiki Kawakami, Fuse, KODANSHA/”Ten-Sura” Project
© Shiba, Fuse, KODANSHA/”Ten-Sura Diary” Project
©Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.
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