Shinsetsu Mahou Shoujo First Partial English Fan-TL (1 - 15 chapters)
Greetings, today I bring you the first partial English translation of Shinsetsu Mahou Shoujo, an indie visual novel/SRPG hybrid from TS (author).
TS is a veteran of Japanese indie games who has been releasing game after game since the beginning of this century, all of which he has done as a solo artist. "Shinsetsu Mahou Shoujo" is a remaster of "Mahou Shoujo", his fifth game. As someone who has played all of his old games the change to SRPG Studio from Simulation RPG Maker 95 is greatly appreciated.
These last weeks I have been working on this project with ticonderoga67 (who has been in charge of redrawing and editing). This first partial covers up to chapter 15 of the main story (end of act 1).
For those who are interested in knowing what kind of story it is, I will give a spoiler-free opinion.
A character-driven story with very good gameplay-story integration:
To make it very simple, Shinmahosho is the story of a group of middle schoolers who use mutant powers to fight off an invasion of alien monsters. A story about their efforts to try to maintain a normal life, their relationships and self-discovery.
While there is a "mystery-oriented" main plot, that is not what stands out the most in this work. The core of this story are the characters and their relationships.
The story is divided into chapters, as an anime series would be. Almost every chapter starts with 20-40 minutes of narration and dialogue, followed by a SRPG-style combat section and ending with about 5-20 minutes of more narration and dialogue.
It's set up in such a way that the story and gameplay synergize. In this story you're not taking command of a group of knights or mercenaries in a medieval fantasy world, nor a veteran group of pilots of sci-fi robots, but a group of Japanese kids with an average age of 12-13 years old who have to face an invasion of murderous monsters that lack any capacity for reasoning.
These characters had normal lives as kids of our era until they became involved in the story. While many of them may seem archetypal at first, participating in combat takes its toll on them, physically and emotionally, and ends up affecting their day-to-day lives and their relationships with friends and family, bringing out other sides of them.
Shinmahosho features a huge and very diverse cast (more than 20 playable characters). While this is common in SRPG games where you will be controlling a (so-called) army, what is not so common is that each of these units is involved in the story and discussions and participates in them even long after their incorporation to the player's unit rooster.
In my experience I realized this in that, after finishing reading it, I remembered the names, surnames and powers of all of the characters, even those I had used the least in combat.
There are many mid-combat dialogue events and, even in the middle of the story part, the characters make constant mention of the hard time they are having in the fights. There are other details:
Character sprites on the status screen change to show attrition based on how much damage each unit has taken in that fight.
Proximity bonuses between characters are based on who they get along with in the story (not on who has been in close proximity for a certain number of turns).
Taken together, these kind of details enhance immersion and help the reader/player feel involved with the characters, the groups of friends that form, the rivalries and feuds, and the problems they have in their day-to-day lives.
Is this a purely dramatic story?
What I have mentioned so far might make you think that this is a story dominated by drama, but nothing could be further from the truth.
The comedy is also very present from beginning to end. The key is that both parts are well balanced. Neither is the comedy so strong that you lose all sense of crisis, nor does the drama drag on so long that it suffocates you and makes you tired of it.
For the most part, it's a very grounded story (alien invasion aside) with high amounts of Slice-of-life.
Gameplay part:
The gameplay portions consists on a turn-based SRPG style combat gameplay, with two diffilculty modes ("Novel" and "Real").
The whole thing is balanced around "Real" difficulty, making the other one so easy that, in my opinion, it can hurt immersion.
I have a general tip for combats: Don't always wait for the enemy to come at you, but also don't advance so far that a unit with mediocre defenses ends up in the attack range of several enemies at once.
Following the "divide and conquer" approach, the map design encourages you to lure enemies using defensive characters and kill them with other units on your turn, and then move forward again with the defensive ones to lure the next enemies.
Making the enemies start in separate groups that end up coming together if you allow it, the appearance of entities that generate new enemies, the total absence of permadeath and the limit of turns per combat imposed in the second half of the story are also ways to encourage you to go on the offensive.
As a tip, be sure to check the "Events / Info" section before starting each battle, as there are a number of extra events that you may miss.
I am translating this VN/SRPG as a hobby, and because I would like to have fellow readers to talk about it with. So, I would appreciate any comments. If you don't want to create a Blogger account just to comment, you can do it at this Twitter account
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