Growing up I wasn’t much into anime whether it be comics or games. Sure I embraced and loved the Final Fantasy series and Mega Man games but beyond that, zilch. It wasn’t until I became a full-fledged games journalist, coupled with my love of RPGs, that I truly embraced Anime inspired RPG games. So when ININ Games‘ WitchSpring3 Re:Fine – The Story of Eirudy came across our desks I jumped at the chance to review it. I wasn’t even intimidated by the fact the title had a “3” in it, presuming it is the third game in the series, and I knew nothing about the WitchSpring mythos. So join us as we review this cute and adorable RPG called WitchSpring3 Re:Fine – The Story of Eirudy on the Nintendo Switch!
Some Background
An example of the awkward translation
As suspected WitchSpring3 Re:Fine is the third in a series of mobile RPG games developed and published by Korean game company Kiwi Walks. In this mobile to Nintendo Switch port, you play a cute, adorable witch that lives all alone in the woods. She has these dolls that she can bring to life and there are all sorts of monsters living around her in the Misty Forest. She’s a loner from the get-go with not much human contact at all. She winds up meeting Adrian, a young man trying to save his mother. You decide to help each other and then the story goes on.
A Familiar RPG Of Sorts
Radial battle wheel. Here you can choose to use melee, magic, summon a doll, etc.
WitchSpring3 Re:Fine is a turn-based RPG that has a lot of the systems you’d expect from an RPG. The game pivots on a day-clock cycle. If you need to recover your health and energies, for example, you can sleep which pushes the calendar to the next day. You can gather materials and vitality, which oddly enough are always in the same place on the map but respawn after a given amount of time. You gather and grind in order to craft magic spells and to imbue life into dolls that act as allies. You also have the usual skills-based system so that you can choose where to focus your strengths on, e.g. your skills with dolls, magic, or the sword. Playing into the calendar-based system there’s also a training option. You can schedule your week and choose your focus of study to build stats.
Hw to schedule training and then watch the clock move forward…
A lot of these are welcomed features but overall nothing comes across as exciting or invigorating. After a while, the game just starts to feel boring. A lot of that comes into play because of the awkward text translation which overshadows the Korean voice-overs. Couple that with the need to revisit the same areas and same enemy spawns over and over and it just becomes uninteresting. At one point I basically had to just grind monsters to gather enough material to move the story and quest log along. Even the same enemies respawn in the same spot and the game tells you that.
The treadmill effect.
There are nice touches like the beautiful anime artwork cut scenes and the Korean voice-overs. Combat uses a radial battle menu which was a bit unexpected but not an issue to get the hang of. The doll summoning system was also a welcome feature especially since the first one you unlock is a healer. But getting enough resources to activate a different one, e.g. a doll with tank characteristics, does involve getting back into a grind.
The game played well for me in undocked and docked modes. I didn’t struggle with the controls. So in that regard things, in my case, seemed smooth. It all comes down to the uninspiring, repetitive feel that makes for a dull experience. Unfortunately, at this price point of $39.99, there are several other top-notch anime RPGs to spend your time on like the Aetlier series of games.
Note: Our review was done on a copy of the game on the Nintendo Switch with a code provided by PR.
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