Littlewitch Romanesque: The Kotaku Review

This is where Littlewitch Romanesque differs from similar games. To gain the various types of experience points, Aria and Kaya must attend lessons. What XP they gain is based on a series of dice rolls. Each side of the die has a symbol corresponding to one of the five XP types—and a special extra symbol that grants XP for all types at once. On each of the six days of study, the girls roll three dice each—one corresponding to the individual girl, one to the corresponding classroom, and a final one for the corresponding teacher.

The dice representing each girl, teacher, and classroom have different sides. For example, the die for the chapel has three sides of spiritual XP but no treasure XP, while the study room has at least one side for each XP type. And while you can’t change a girl’s dice, you are able to tweak the odds of getting the type of XP you need to learn the spell you want by swapping out different teachers and classrooms.

However, there is far more to the system than simply rolling the dice. Each dice combination will activate one of Aria’s and Kaya’s spells—assuming you have already learned it. These spells affect the roll in some way—doing everything from summoning an extra die or making each side grant additional XP to creating obstacles that give additional XP when hit by a die or summoning a meteor that slams into the dice granting tons of extra XP.

But it’s not all up to luck. By sacrificing all the points you have gained in your rolls so far, you are able to choose what spell will be cast in any given roll. Thus the beginning strategy becomes one of spending your first few rolls making extra die and powering them up before letting the dice fly on their own for the final rolls—netting you a few dozen of each XP type. Of course, as the game goes on, you get new spells and can develop rolling combinations. By the end of the game, I could consistently get a good 3000 XP per type each week through creative spell usage. Discovering these new strategies and the intricacies of how the dice system works is half the fun of the game.

Though the primary goal of
Littlewitch Romanesque is raising two girls to become wizards, master and students are far from the only characters in the story. After Domino, Aria, and Kaya arrive at the Dark Tower, they encounter a large number of reoccurring characters including a ghostly knight who guards the tower, an angel found in the tower’s dungeon, two wizards sent to check up on Aria and Kaya’s studies, two different traveling salesmen, a holy knight, Aria’s overprotective brother, and even the literal Queen of the Fairies.

And while each of those characters has a part to play in the storyline, most of the non-Aria/Kaya scenes are spent fleshing out the numerous perspective love interests for Domino who move into the tower. There is an avant-garde architect who wants to study the tower; a princess (with a cat girl maid) who wants to use art and the exploration of ruins to promote peace and understanding; a beatified saint with the power to heal who secretly wishes to be a normal person; a gladiator turned bounty hunter with a mysterious past; and an immortal elf who was one of Domino’s party members during his adventuring days.

Many of Aria’s and Kaya’s quests will positively impact one woman or another’s relationship with Domino. If enough of these quests are completed, you are given a mission for a special romance ending to the game (often ignoring Aria and Kaya’s fate as the game thus ends prematurely). These endings are the real payoff to the game, however. All of them are grand in drama, scale, and romance with some even being truly epic in scope.

Of course, like most PC visual novels,
Littlewitch Romanesque has several hardcore sex scenes. However they are largely contained to the respective romance endings. In fact, the only ones outside of those endings happen whenever you build a new study room for the tower (which flips the architect’s switch, so to speak) and a random event where the cat girl maid goes into heat. These scenes are bit of a mixed bag. In some endings, they feel needed—a natural evolution of the relationship. In others, they simply feel obligatory and derail the story rather than add to it.

And now we get to the game’s biggest sticking point: the fact that Aria and Kaya are both possible romance options—complete with corresponding sex scenes. While their ages are never explicitly mentioned, they are children—and while they could conceivably be adults in the legal sense by the end of the third year, they look as young as the day the game began. Domino, in contrast, is likely in his late twenties at the very youngest. Beyond the sex scenes, there are also a few random scenes where Domino walks in on the pair changing, bathing, or something similar with a corresponding picture of them scantily clad or topless.

And honestly, because of these scenes, I hesitate recommending this game to others despite how enjoyable I found the rest of it to be. As it stands, I think only those deep into anime or visual novel culture will be able to overlook the game’s questionable elements (as things of this nature are somewhat common in anime and visual novels)—especially as there is currently no way to outright skip these scenes and/or censor the young girl nudity.

However, JAST USA, the Western publisher of the game, has announced that an all-ages version of the game will be coming to Steam sometime in “early 2015.” Thus, it is with that information that I give
Littlewitch Romanesque a stamp of:

All in all, I had more than a little fun with
Girlish Grimoire: Littlewitch Romanesque. It was a real joy to, through Domino, take these two girls from novices to master wizards—watching each small adventure they had along the way. Bolstered by great art and voice acting, it was never boring even as I spent hours with all the tower’s inhabitants, slowly but surely deciphering their back stories.

Outside of the story and characters, the game is chock full of choices and requires large amounts of both strategy and planning to get the best spells and endings. Simply put, if it weren’t for the inability to turn off the sex scenes and objectionable content I described above, I’d gladly recommend this one. But as it stands now, I’m inclined to wait for the all-ages version and see how that holds up.