Chenso Club Review
Not Recommended
Chenso Club has good and enjoyable parts to it, but ultimately the Quality of Life issues irritated me more than it gave enjoyment or generated interest.
Gameplay is mostly fine to good. The characters certainly play very differently. But from the three I tried only one character felt like I could even do well with, that spoke to me as enjoyable and good.
I played many action platformers, yet the "casual" difficulty felt too difficult. The earlier levels are fine - with the right character - but when you complete one world there's a difficulty ramp-up mechanism and the second, then new-to-me world gets too difficult. So I die and start that next world again, and can do fine. Unnecessarily cumbersome and annoying. Especially when the difficulty ramp-up is not clear at all. I only spotted it in a tip. The character/indicator animation after a world completion is not descriptive, not obvious what it means at all, and also not to what degree or in what aspects.
Switching from casual to story difficulty is a baffling discrepancy. Story difficulty is certainly story difficulty as in very easy and you can easily clear it. Casual is just way too hard as the easiest play difficulty.
The story and dialog are not voiced. There's a lot to read. You can speed up dialogue to try to get by repeated dialogue faster, but there is no skipping. This is a regular annoyance when I want to play (not read that much), and especially so when the harsh difficulty and game design push to repeated plays.
The gameplay and level design have some issues too. The levels are auto-generated. Sometimes surprisingly and irritatingly so. Not all enemies are clearly visible. Back- vs navigatable foreground could be clearer. Progress to next screen should be clearer (not just side of screen but actual traversible path).
The startup intro "chenso club" voiceline is welcoming, but the non-skippable multiple org logo intros and input-blocking/-ignoring loading in menus are unnecessary barriers to speedy navigation.
There's a good core and world in here. But unfortunately through some design and technical decisions it could not deliver.
Gameplay is mostly fine to good. The characters certainly play very differently. But from the three I tried only one character felt like I could even do well with, that spoke to me as enjoyable and good.
I played many action platformers, yet the "casual" difficulty felt too difficult. The earlier levels are fine - with the right character - but when you complete one world there's a difficulty ramp-up mechanism and the second, then new-to-me world gets too difficult. So I die and start that next world again, and can do fine. Unnecessarily cumbersome and annoying. Especially when the difficulty ramp-up is not clear at all. I only spotted it in a tip. The character/indicator animation after a world completion is not descriptive, not obvious what it means at all, and also not to what degree or in what aspects.
Switching from casual to story difficulty is a baffling discrepancy. Story difficulty is certainly story difficulty as in very easy and you can easily clear it. Casual is just way too hard as the easiest play difficulty.
The story and dialog are not voiced. There's a lot to read. You can speed up dialogue to try to get by repeated dialogue faster, but there is no skipping. This is a regular annoyance when I want to play (not read that much), and especially so when the harsh difficulty and game design push to repeated plays.
The gameplay and level design have some issues too. The levels are auto-generated. Sometimes surprisingly and irritatingly so. Not all enemies are clearly visible. Back- vs navigatable foreground could be clearer. Progress to next screen should be clearer (not just side of screen but actual traversible path).
The startup intro "chenso club" voiceline is welcoming, but the non-skippable multiple org logo intros and input-blocking/-ignoring loading in menus are unnecessary barriers to speedy navigation.
There's a good core and world in here. But unfortunately through some design and technical decisions it could not deliver.