Developer: ZOC Co., Ltd., MONKEYCRAFT Co. Ltd.
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Platform: Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Tested on: Switch
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles – Review
While Bandai Namco is best known for being behind popular game franchises like Pac-Man and Tekken, in recent years the famed publisher’s catalog has increasingly focused on licensed games based on popular anime and manga series. Joining the ranks of Dragon Ball and Jujutsu Kaisen is That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles, hereafter simply referred to as Isekai Chronicles. We’re not familiar with the source material ourselves, but that does make us qualified to answer the question of whether this is a game that is worth playing on its own merit, or if it’s something that’s just for the fans. Or maybe it’s neither? Let’s take a look.
Story
With multiple seasons of the Slime anime behind us, there is a lot of narrative ground to cover to bring players up to speed. Unlike sister Bandai Namco title SPY X ANYA, which didn’t give any backstory whatsoever, an attempt was made to condense the events from the anime into an opening cutscene. While this undoubtedly serves as a good refresher for anyone who has actually seen the series, it comes across as a shallow exposition dump for those of us who are completely new to this universe. Events that seem like major story points are glossed over, making it difficult to really care about the myriad of characters that make up the cast.
That’s not to say that Isekai Chronicles is light on story -far from it, in fact. As the title explains, the premise involves Rimuru, a Japanese salaryman meeting his untimely demise and then reincarnating as a slime. Rimuru is able to learn new skills by eating other creatures, and becomes particularly powerful after eating a dragon. The game supposedly follows a significant chunk of the anime’s first five story arcs before leading into two entirely new stories written by the manga’s original author. We found it difficult to get into the story: There were many references to events we didn’t see play out, in-world terminology was thrown at us without explanation, and character development was non-existent.
Graphics
We’d describe Isekai Chronicles’ graphics as “cobbled together”, for lack of a better term. The game makes use of a mix of pre-existing anime footage and screenshots, alongside original visuals. The result comes across as inconsistent. We wouldn’t say that things look outright bad, but that’s because there is a wealth of material to draw from. Isekai Chronicles nails its character designs and art direction, but there are areas where it feels like the art team ran out of budget to animate everything. Our experience with the game’s frame rate was also a negative one, including during cutscenes. That may simply be because our trusty Switch couldn’t always handle the on-screen action, so this may not be so much of an issue on other platforms.
Sound
Things fare a lot better when it comes to the game’s audio. Nearly everything is voiced, assumedly by the established cast from the anime. We’re also going to presume that the game’s music was also lifted directly from the source material, and it sounds great, as do the sound effects.
Gameplay
Get rid of all the bells and whistles, and there isn’t a whole lot left here. In terms of gameplay, Isekai Chronicles is a disappointment. What you’re getting here is a 2D side-scrolling ARPG, with some city-building mechanics thrown in for good measure. The main focus of the gameplay is on real-time combat, and for what it’s worth, the combat mechanics are decent enough. That’s mostly because although the game is built around building up combos and setups, getting into the combat mechanics still feels very accessible. Combat is on the basic side, sure, but it’s still somewhat enjoyable in a vacuum. Where Isekai Chronicles drops the ball is with everything surrounding combat: the pacing of the side-scrolling stages feels off, in-game objectives boil down to basic fetch quests, and the game simply lacks any kind of challenge. It just feels like repetitive busywork to mask the game’s lack of worthwhile content.
The core gameplay loop sees you assemble a party consisting of a player character and up to four AI allies, then take on objective-based side-scrolling missions. The allies typically don’t really contribute all that much, but since Isekai Chronicles isn’t a very difficult game in the first place, that doesn’t matter. Enemy attacks are telegraphed well in advance, making them super easy to dodge, and you can breeze through most levels without getting hit once. In the unlikely case that Isekai Chronicles’ normal mode proves to be too difficult, you can play it in story mode instead, which gives you the exact same game except enemies get a 50% nerf to the damage they deal to you.
In between your combat missions, the story unfolds through visual novel segments, and you’re also able to expand and upgrade your hometown, which acts as the game’s hub area. The city-building mechanics are even more barebones than the side-scrolling missions: you simply construct new buildings at predetermined slots, upgrading and replacing them when you have acquired the necessary resources. These buildings provide all sorts of combat bonuses, but given Isekai Chronicles’ overall lack of challenge, we didn’t really see any point in grinding out levels over and over again. It’s not like the upgraded buildings would have given us a lot of necessary advantages anyway.
While completionists probably have their work cut out for them, this is mainly because of how much bloat there is here. Most players will have seen everything noteworthy Isekai Chronicles has to offer in a handful of hours. Sure, you can revisit missions over and over again, and some of the in-game objectives require you to do so with different characters, but do you really want to revisit the same stage over and over just to tick a box on a checklist? From what we gather, playing through the full game should take around 18 hours, but seeing another batch of sidequests light up after completing a story chapter made us shrug and turn our console off. The final nail in Isekai Chronicles’ coffin is the game’s €49.99 RRP, which is excessively high, even factoring in the ‘license tax’. At 50% off, we’d probably say that this one might be worth looking at if you’re a pre-existing fan of the series, if only for the new story. At full price, however, Isekai Chronicles can reincarnate itself off to another world.
Conclusion
We weren’t familiar with Slime before we gave Isekai Chronicles a shot, and the game couldn’t convince us to give the anime a try. The lack of character depth and convoluted exposition dumps made it difficult to get into the story, and the mediocre gameplay couldn’t hold our attention throughout either. Even the visual presentation was a mixed bag. As much as this is going to pain Slime fans, Isekai Chronicles is up there with many other cash grabs posing as licensed games. You deserve better than this.
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