Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc (PC) Review

Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc tries to take the two genres tower defence and JRPG and entwine them into a wonderful mix. This should be relatively painless as the genres share a lot of similarities in their gameplay styles. However, as shown here, they also share quite a few contradictions that sometimes create dissonance in the design, the most obvious of which is in how they are meant to be played. Tower defence games are in their very nature meant to be enjoyed in short and fast-paced sessions while JRPGs are sway more towards longer sittings. The latter element creates stages that can take 40 minutes to finish, and with Tower Defence gameplay together, it makes for painfully long stretches of repetitive action.

The reason why levels take such a long time to complete is not because they are particularly long, rather than they rely on the Strategy Pause function, which allows the player to stop the game to place towers. It may sound like a useful addition, but in reality gamers will need to become quite dependent on it to proceed, which leads to overly-prolonged sittings. Stages that normally would take around seven to eight minutes to complete turn into painfully long experiences of 30+ minutes as towers are to be placed. Sadly, this feature is almost required unless players resort to severe grinding, which in itself also takes a long, long time.

Another major issue that contributes to this feeling of boredom and repetitive gameplay is the fact that the story proceeds forcibly slowly. The story mode could more often than not have been reduced by between 50%-75% by making some dialogue proceed more naturally and it is sometimes extremely painfully obvious that the developer dragged it out unnecessarily. The most memorable example is when all that needs to be done is survive 12 fights, almost an entire chapter, which takes around four-to-six hours. It is cheap and transparent.

It is important to mention that underneath the forcibly drawn out story mode and gameplay there is a great core that could have shined. There are several positives to Mindy's Arc, with the tower defence aspect being creative, with towers disappearing after a while, preventing that concerning situation of just sitting and waiting for everything to end, and with several abilities to use, there is strategic depth thanks to being about to develop personalised strategies while working through the content. There are also colourful characters that bring a humorous mood to proceedings, sometimes even managing to raise a smile. It is hard to not laugh when Seven, the protagonist's side-kick, gets hit by a fireball for the third time after saying that he could easily dodge them on reflex.

The JRPG aspects of the gameplay mix very well with the tower defence ones, but the pacing should definitively have been set to the faster speed of the latter genre, rather than the other way around. As it is, Winged Sakura: Mindy's Arc will be too tough and laborious for most to endure, with only diehard supporters of both genres likely able to stomach the action. There is a good foundation for future releases, but the pacing issues really need to be fixed.