VN - Others - Completed - Yumina the Ethereal [Eternal]

-It's basically a Hybrid of Visual Novel + Japanese dungeon crawler, combined with 2d'ish turn based combat.
-There's tons of skills in the combat for each character, and some UI and game mechanics may be a bit frightening for those unexperienced with these kind of games.
-Its very slice-of-life'ish comedy Visual Novel, with 3 routes for the 3 main girls (as far as I'm aware), and much more girls to lewd beside them if you so *choose*.
-The game may get a bit grindy in the dungeon crawler part of the game, but if you ignore it and push through, it's a pretty fun experience.
-The art is fantastic, and even though I only got very late game lewds for the Yumina route I did, it did *not* disappoint (for me).

I give it a 5, but if I didn't enjoy some complexity and grind, I would give a 4.

I can only use one word to describe this game .... boring.

I played just over 10 hours and got up to chapter 3 in the most mind numbingly boring grind i've pushed myself through in over 30 years of gaming.

I've played a lot of grindy games over the years from Korean MMO grinders to clickers to cheap flash games but some of those had some appeal.

The combat here is dull and slow. The story up until chapter 3 is shit. I don't know if it gets better but I couldn't face any more to find out.

The characters. I've had issues with MC's in some Japanese games being whiny annoying shits but this one is bearable. He doesn't whine but he is a dull character. The constant arguing between him and Yumina gets tiresome after the first 10 minutes but it's a constant thing ... constant, no break from it at all. There isn't 1 actual conversation between the pair yet she's a potential love interest .... I don't see it. Kirara and Ai are the only 2 worth paying any attention to. One is sarcastic as all hell and makes me chuckle and the other spouts random nonsense that amused me.

The worst part is when the game tells you to train to level up in order to win these battles in school yet you find out you missed a shit load of events and skills because things have to be done at set times on set days to get what you need. Personally I hate shit like that.

So, the 7 hours I spent in chapter 2 grinding levels means absolutely nothing because i'd missed events to get the full chapter complete meaning i'd got no chance of ever getting the true end without redoing the entire chapter. 7 hours fucking wasted. Not just wasted grinding but I mean literally wasted because I would have to start all over again due to missed events.

You can only use skills a set number of times during dungeon runs which means you either have to completely leave that dungeon or pray you find a full heal/reset node during your run. I got from floor 1 to 5 in one of the quest dungeons and not only did 29 slooow fights barely net me half a level but I didn't see a single reset/heal node so had to leave the dungeon.

In order to get the true ending you need to complete the game 3 times on all difficulties choosing a different girl to get close to each time. You also need to do every single event and get every chapters last CG which means you need to follow a set choice of things to do.

If you have to play this, use a walkthrough or you'll miss too much and never be able to get the true ending.

There are far better RPG's out there with far better gameplay and plot.