Romances Across Time
It’s a Small RomanTick World, the first adventure game developed by boutique Japanese Developer Mirai-Roman, offers players an otome game with a time-traveling hook. You meet a Pharaoh, a medieval knight, and a Korean astrologer. The storylines, however, feel like the romantic scribblings of a thirteen-year-old girl, complete with historical inaccuracies.
The story starts off with Miiro, the main character, five years after her parents’ disappearance. She discovers a time machine in her father’s study, and a floating doll hosting the soul of her dog (yes, really) explains that her parents had been dragged into a mysterious portal. Miiro sets out through time to find her family, and of course, finds the potential for love along the way.
Ahistorical Fiction
As with all otome games, the draw in It’s a Small RomanTick World is story and character development. As historical fiction, the game is woefully lacking. Miiro’s first foray into the past is in ancient Egypt, 3150 BC. I’m willing to accept the fact that the Pharaoh doesn’t act much like a Pharaoh, because that likely wouldn’t be romantic.
The issue I have is that Miiro is able to win the hearts and minds of the army of Upper Egypt by supplying them with sports drinks. They call it an energy drink, but I suspect that’s a localization issue. Miiro suggests that they add salt and honey to the soldiers’ water, and this magical formula prevents them from passing out during drills.
The idea of a bunch of Egyptian soldiers passed out in the desert on a campaign because they hadn’t figured out that they need to consume salt just struck me as hilarious; salt was the main trading commodity of the ancient world. It’s all presented with such incredible sincerity, too.
The sad thing is that there’s a lot of modern knowledge that the Egyptians would have benefitted from, like information about medicine or chemistry. But instead Miiro’s great contributions are sports drinks and better soap.
Lackluster Gameplay
The gameplay sections are pulled directly out of Pac-Man. Miiro is placed in a maze and must collect all the dots of a substance, uncreatively called Energy, to complete the level. Of course, while she’s doing this, dangerous entities called flamma are after her.
In the gameplay sections, It’s a Small RomanTick World’s low budget is glaring. The flamma move almost completely randomly, making it hard to anticipate what they’re going to do. Even worse, Miiro’s response to commands can be baffling. Miiro is guided through the maze by tapping where you want her to go. Best I can tell, she decides what route to take based on what’s shortest. That means that if she has to turn around and walk right through a flamma to get there, that’s what she’ll do.
I’d herd her by only going short distances, but that has its own issues. When she hits a wall, she’ll stop unless you give her further directions, even if a flamma is right behind her. But selecting a spot that’s farther away often resulted in her taking an illogical path that I didn’t plan on. The result was that I’d end up tapping repeatedly on my phone to try to get out of danger while saying: “Why did you go that way, you idiot?!”
A Not So Free-to-Play Game
The title bills itself as free-to-play, and it’s true that it’s free to download. But if you want to experience everything the game has to offer, you’d need saintly patience if you didn’t want to spend money.
In order to get the romantic ending with one of the love interests, you need to use items. It’s not immediately clear that you need ten of these items to unlock each storyline. And in order to do that, you need 100 of the in-game currency. An in-game currency of which you get roughly ten per day. You do the math.
Even worse, there’s a gacha system. You go into a battle with a partner, called an outlander—subtle, I know—who fights the flamma for you. These outlanders are, of course, the love interests in different outfits. The only free one is Kapi, the main character’s dog. Any others cost 30 in-game currency for a draw, resulting in you getting the outlander and a card with an admittedly handsome drawing.
Leveling up Miiro’s fighting partners past a certain point requires you to summon them six times. It’s clear that the developers don’t expect you to build up the in-game currency for free. They aren’t even subtle about it, as there’s a package of 1,200 for $69.99. That’s the price of a brand-new console game. Buy one of those instead; you’ll be much happier.
A Melodramatic Story
Even the parts of It’s a Small RomanTick World that should have been the draw made me roll my eyes. Miiro is supposed to be special, because otherwise why would all these men fall for her? But her specialness is so mundane that it made it feel ridiculous.
That’s not the only silly thing in the game, either. Other characters act irrationally. For instance, the ruling princess in an area of Medieval Europe runs away from her retainers to go see if her fiancé really loves her. She ropes her knight and Miiro into it, and neither of them points out that there must be a better way to obtain this information.
Other issues, like the fact that even beating all the available levels didn’t level me up enough to continue the story, gave me a general sense of frustration while I was playing. A part of me wanted to see what ridiculous thing would happen next, but not nearly enough to put up with the gameplay and forced pauses.
