Kokoro Clover Season1

This is the first time a game has actually gotten me to write a review so let me get straight to the point: I absolutely love this game. It's amazing. If you took one look at the steam page and said 'I vibe with this game' then I highly beg you to pick it up. The story is an absolute blast to play through and the animation is absolutely incredible.

BUT there are some things that I have to address. Firstly being the price point. As many others have pointed out this game is nearly twenty dollars for what is, at most, around five to six hours of content (Mine is higher due to playing through episodes several times). Kokoro Clover is a very short game that can be played through in an entire afternoon. This actually has a solution though it involves a bit of patience.

See Kokoro Clover likes to pretend it's an actual TV anime, and it frequently makes allusions to airing weekly. Thus, I recommend doing the same thing. For me waiting a week between episodes was too much so instead I paced myself by only playing a single episode a day. Pacing it out helped make up for the short run time and I'm glad I did as it hardly feels like only six hours at all.

Now... The combat. I'm not going to lie, the other reviews are right. The combat is dead simple, with an elemental chart that you can basically start ignoring halfway through the game and a button that makes you unable to be hit. Personally I didn't mind it too much since battles are kind of a breeze but I do have some problems with how the upper-tier characters are handled. Once the combat shifts from long range to close counter, the game has trouble switching from standing attacks to moving attacks, which results in you taking more damage since moving attacks have shorter range. Also, while you get advanced characters for Wind and Fire types, you don't get any for Earth and Water which I think is a shame especially doing the final boss rushes.

Finally, I'm going to circle around back to the story itself. Season 1 is NOT a complete story. It does go through two 'arcs' but the story is absolutely still on going. According to the developer's website, we're only on episode 12 of FIFTY. This isn't even counting the upcoming SUN or the side story PHANTOM. If you're familiar with waiting for the next season of your favorite anime... then that's exactly what you're going to get here.

All in all if you can accept those things then this game is a solid rec from me. Necoco/10. Almost Purrfect.

Except for the fact that despite the marketing, Phantom Thief Cherry doesn't get much screen time. I hope she has a bigger role in Season 2!

The gameplay is very basic and kinda bad, but the story is a great little Saturday morning cartoon. Looking forward to the next installment.

The kind of game that you play for the presentation.

Gameplay is inoffensive and incredibly easy, but the story pretty much makes this a playable anime that indulges in its tropes and as such is incredibly enjoyable, and I recommend experiencing it at least once. Personally, I like to think of it as a full season of an anime with gameplay parts attached to it.

This is a short (around 5 hours) but surprisingly well-made indie game, my 7- and 9-year-old daughters and I enjoyed it a lot more than we expected! The pixel artwork is really great, the music is fun and catchy, and the story (while pretty simple) is interesting and engaging, with goofy and adorable characters. If you like games that are cute and wholesome, then you'll probably enjoy this. I was really impressed when I found out that there's only a single developer, with just a few others for voice acting, music, and localization. They're using a pixel art game engine, but I'm no less impressed at how well it turned out.

The gameplay itself is probably the weakest element of the game, but I don't really mean that in a negative way. The main focus of the game is definitely the story, with the platforming and fights acting as more of a glue that ties the story together. Also, the fighting is pretty easy, because dancing (which is extremely fun and adorable) literally makes you invincible, and you also have a healing ability that recharges pretty quickly.

Overall, if you like cute story-heavy games with loveable characters, then I can pretty much guarantee you'll enjoy this. My daughters and I were super bummed out when we realized season 2 wasn't out yet, but after googling the developer's name, I found their personal website (search google for ひこてる and go to the wixsite website in the first few results, but be aware that it's in Japanese) which shows that season 1.5 is coming out in December of 2024 :) I couldn't find out anything about season 2, so hopefully season 1.5 is still focused on the main story, rather than something else. We really want to find out what happens next!!!

Also, if you read this developer, have you considered making the soundtrack available as DLC? My daughters and I really loved the music, and I would totally pay for a copy! Spotify would also be great :)

Cant wait for Season 2!