Jewelry Knights Arcadia -The ends of the world- (ジュエリー・ナイツ・アルカディア -The ends of the world-) Review

Haven’t written a blog in a while, mostly because I had no motivation and writing felt like a pure waste of time. Also, once you get into that “not writing often” state, inertia kicks in—the less you write, the less you want to write, and you just keep being a lazy dog.

Just after finishing a commercial piece, I thought I’d start writing something again. While organizing screenshots, I realized I still had a Galgame I’d played but hadn’t written impressions for. Then something magical happened: I could barely remember playing this game at all. I couldn’t even recall what the story was about—just like the protagonist in that short time-travel piece from Purple Software last month, who completely forgets what happened in the past…

The game is Jewelry Knights Arcadia -The ends of the world-, the sequel to Jewelry Hearts Academia, which I thought was a pretty good big title…?

It was only thanks to chat logs with the editor I’d commissioned and various screenshots that I gradually recalled what this game was actually about. And once I remembered, I couldn’t help but cringe.

Remember the story of the original? After that final battle with all sorts of deus ex machina, that last boss who used earth magic and all kinds of heavenly phenomena, and the heroine possessed by an angel in a messy cheat-powered showdown—everything returned to peace. Logically, there shouldn’t be much room for a sequel. Apart from that suddenly appearing莫名其妙的 boss at the end, there weren’t really any loose ends. I was curious what story this game could tell as a sequel, but after playing through it in a daze, I still didn’t know what to say.

This game is about the protagonist and his friends going on a spring trip类似修学旅行, accidentally discovering a mine with special electrical energy, and starting to explore it. Through repeated expeditions, they find more and more ancient divine beasts and various ancient energy sources. The main crew is like TM playing a Warcraft dungeon… or more like Diablo, grinding endlessly. Every time they encounter an ancient beast or power, it triggers a long, tedious memory sequence that details the birth and past of that beast, piling on tons of lore to try to connect one of the protagonists to these settings, just to fulfill those tiny “foreshadowing” bits left from the previous game. I can even see the smug face of the scenario writer, looking like he’s sure to win, telling you this was all part of his plan…

But none of that matters. No matter how much you beautify the game’s detailed settings and memory sequences, you can’t hide the fact that the main plot is just a group of people endlessly going down into the mine, grinding the mine, until they finally defeat the final boss and the journey ends.

I find it hard to imagine a game that writes a Torchlight or Diablo-like flow in the form of a Galgame. I know you’ve run out of main plot content, but your perfunctory effort still made me laugh in anger. Even the villain’s… growth method is similar to Diablo’s, but even so, I don’t think it’s enough. Especially those two small-fry villains in the early game—in the previous game they’d be at most a management monster, but here they’re the big masterminds? Are you kidding me?

There are actually quite a few positive reviews for the game, mostly talking about the plot’s foreshadowing, the rigor of the setting, and so on. But I just want to say that seeing the same mine background and CG over and over makes me want to vomit, and the scenario writer keeps trying to pad the length with those ugly-as-hell battle scenes—it’s pure torture. Especially after playing Deepone, I feel the latter is a dimensional strike against the former.

Some people say this game is somewhat “paying homage” to “Made in Abyss.” I want to say, no matter who you’re paying homage to, at least add more presentation effects and CGs. If you really love mines, add a RPG Maker minigame—I’d enjoy that too. Please don’t write repetitive stories endlessly. The previous game got good reviews because of its “road movie”-like plot—you could trace a flow where the male protagonist infiltrates for the Philosopher’s Stone, gets involved in various events, gradually builds bonds with classmates and friends through those events, and the final boss emerges, leading to the final battle.

But what does this game have? Just memory sequences and going down the mine. There are no presentation effects—they scraped together two OPs that look exciting but are actually just PPT MADs, not even giving you a “second phase” feeling. It’s padding for the sake of padding. No matter how beautifully the game pretends to be packaged, it’s still going down the mine. And it’s nearly 20 hours of going down the mine. I don’t know if the budget was really too limited, with no other new scene CGs to pad with, so they could only write about the mine, or if the scenario writer’s goal was to create this “dungeon exploration” feel. But no matter what you say, the experience this game gave me wasn’t good, mainly for three reasons.

1. The endless monotonous mine scenes bored me to death.

2. If you’re really going to fight in the mine, at least make the battles more interesting.

3. If you absolutely must write these formulaic battles in the mine, please don’t use so many chuuni-as-hell made-up katakana words.

Yes, the third point is that… we often see in Japanese RPGs this kind of made-up setting and skill words mixing katakana and kanji. How should I put it—it looks cool in Chinese but sounds native in English pronunciation. Anyone who knows Japanese and plays JRPGs often will know what I mean. Without further ado, here’s an example to give you a feel…

So in my view, the game’s flow is just the group constantly going down the mine, discovering new secrets and memory sequences, accompanied by various abstract chuuni setting terms and those agonizingly long, tedious battles.

No wonder I have almost no memory of this game—its flow is too painful. Not to mention the scenario writer’s self-proclaimed “foreshadowing recovery,” which he thinks is so clever. Yes, even in such a boring, stupid story, he’s still trying to recover foreshadowing like laying landmines. I just want to say, stop with the fucking foreshadowing—your shitty plot has already made no one able to care about your foreshadowing.

Don’t tell me I wasn’t paying attention to the game. The main issue is that this game is just torture—completely impossible to watch seriously. Too many fights that aren’t cool, too many settings that are just pure chuuni indulgence, and a flow that’s extremely formulaic and repetitive. It’s the kind of game where you put it down halfway through, pick it up later, and forget where you were. And I’m not the only one who feels this way—Japanese players think so too:

So how do I rate this game? My feeling is you’d be better off playing Diablo 4. Although it’s the same template plot, at least the combat is fun. If you like Shirotama’s original art… I can also tell you that the CG quality in this game is worse than the previous one. Just grab a CG pack, look at it, and be done with it. Or maybe sticking a Desolator on the pink-haired heroine’s head would be more of a meme.

Oh, after writing this I realized there’s still another game I haven’t written about. At least I can remember the plot of that game just from the title, which also shows from the side that this game is just too fucking boring.