EDITOR'S NOTE:
Ah, reliable PS Vita snapshot function. How we love you, friend, once more. This game adds a small watermark, but that's OK, right?
Click each picture to embiggen, as is tradition around here.
Also, to clarify, we played both the Japanese version and the English digital release, both on PS Vita, but our shots are from the English version. No Steam coverage here, punks!
Yep, Gaming Hell back for more punishment at the hands of Nippon Ichi's Masayuki Furuya.
I had faith the game would turn it around though, and it... Sorta did?
We might need a bit of context for this one. Anyone who's read this website for more than a week or long-time Twitter listeners will know that we were not exactly enamoured with 2014's htoL#NiQ -The Firefly Diary- (henceforth htoL#NiQ) a game that seemed utterly determined to squander its aesthetic virtues by way of making the experience far too difficult and painful. To the point where invoking its name remains a little in-joke amongst friends (much like Resident Evil 6). Some time later, Nippon Ichi announced a spiritual successor- done in the same storybook style, with the same director, Masayuki Furuya- titled Rose to Tasogare no Kojou (most sites translated it as Rose and the Old Castle of Twilight, but it was ultimately released in Western territories as A Rose in the Twilight, so that's the name we've gone for). Gaming Hell was put on Defcon-5 immediately, but an early tidbit about the game saw Furuya mention concerns raised about htoL#NiQ's difficulty and wanting to correct this for this new project. Alarm bells did start to ring when the demo for the game dropped, which includes a sequence where you can instantly die due to off-screen bullshit, but overall there seemed to be a lot of improvements, enough so that we decided to give the game a chance.
Kinda paid off this time.
Similar to its spiritual predecessor, Rose and the Old Castle of Twilight starts with a mysterious little girl waking up in a strange place. This time it's Rose, a black-clad girl who finds herself alone in a grey, lifeless castle seemingly frozen in time and ensnared by lethal rose thorns almost everywhere. Early on, she discovers that only objects and creatures that are coloured blood-red are allowed to move, and that she can suck that power out of them and bestow it to inert objects to let them move instead. Then, she finds a friend, an impervious giant (let's call 'em... Giant) who can lift objects that Rose can't among other things, and so their quest to escape the castle and solve its mystery begins, with the player switching control between Rose and the Giant to solve puzzles and avoid the traps and (relatively few) monsters that haunt its walls. Right off the bat, the control scheme is a huge improvement over htoL#NiQ solely because you actually have direct control over Rose. No more praying to several deities to ensure Mion moves when you want her to! Just press the buttons! Additionally, protecting Rose is a much easier prospect- she'll kneel down in place automatically when you're not controlling her, and the Giant can carry her around to make getting to the exit less hassle (both have to make it to proceed). While Rose is just as fragile as Mion- dying in one hit from enemies, thorns or from falling too far- having her Giant friend around really helps to mitigate that somewhat, especially given that any traps that come from the top of the screen can be nullified by the Giant carrying Rose.
The game is definitely more focused on puzzle-platforming than the previous game, drastically reducing the amount of enemies encountered (and bosses, too- only two, one for both the normal and true ending) and making you use the toolsets of the two characters in fairly interesting ways to make progress- freezing a platform in place with Rose, then throwing Rose on there with the Giant, etc.. There's also Blood Memories to collect that fill in bits of the backstory in non-interactive stage plays (unlike the Memory Fragments from htoL#NiQ, you just watch these play out) but you must reach them without holding any blood to collect them, adding a little more challenge to figuring out how to get to them. For most of the game, the puzzles and traps are definitely fairer than the ones in htoL#NiQ, as while there's still plenty of traps for Rose to get done in by, it generally goes at a slower pace, giving you time to think about what you're doing and even the timed segments are generous. Additionally, each area of the castle has a different theme across puzzles, giving the game variety- the Courtyard has you using a blood watering can, the Clock Tower has you speeding up and slowing down the movement of objects, and so on. Not so much an issue now, but this did present a problem for early importers- the Library has you solving book-related puzzles with text clues, which we, uh, got a little stuck on for a while. Ahem. Additionally, while your path through the castle is mostly linear- you tackle one area at a time, with later areas locked off by Blood Memory requirements- once you've entered a room you can warp straight to it via the map, especially handy once missing Blood Memories are added to the map (it's also used for the rather fun Time Attack mode, unlocked later in the game).
As nice as the variety is, many of these puzzles revolve around physics, such as balancing platforms on top of one another, and while the concept itself isn't bad, its execution doesn't quite hit the mark. The collision detection and the general physics (especially jumping) feel very flimsy and iffy, which is both a blessing and a curse, in a way. The curse, of course, is that sometimes you swear you should be able to reach something but it won't happen for you, or a platform or block you've moved will act in a completely unexpected way. On the other hand, this does lead to perhaps unintended solutions to puzzles. As an example, there are catapults in the game that have one character pulling the switch to launch the other character to a higher platform... Except some are clearly not meant to be used by both characters at once, yet with the right timing, you can kludge it and launch both of them. Things get really wild when grabbable platforms get involved, especially if they're from the infinitely-stocked piles of platforms, as the slightly-off physics and weird collision detection allow you to construct solutions that absolutely do not feel intentional. On the one hand, it's a positive that multiple solutions are supported, but at the same time I constantly had this nagging thought, "Does the game really want me to do it this way, am I doing it wrong?"... Although that may just be the unorthodox solutions I came up with. Less forgivable is one puzzle in particular, right near the end, which will have you stuck for ages with no way to kludge a solution until you realise the checkpoint you're given is after a barrel you need to march back and grab. This seems like a pretty mean thing to do to the player, as unlike most of the other puzzles this really isn't obvious, and you'll waste a lot of time trying to figure it out without the essential barrel.
At the very least, most of the time when you die or fail a puzzle, it's going to be your fault, and checkpoints are quite frequent, but there are exceptions. The game's distinct and muted colour scheme (one of its highlights otherwise, it really makes it stick out from its predecessor) does mean that it's hard to tell whether thorns are just background or foreground decoration (if Rose touches them when they're not decoration, she dies). Most other things, such as monsters and interactive objects, are very clearly marked, but not the thorns, which is unfortunate, especially given the spotty collision detection. To give a more specific example, there's one particular segment that, while not nearly on htoL#NiQ's level, came close to being game-endingly frustrating. In the Clock Tower area, there's a badical, tubular plank-surfing section that will kill you repeatedly until you realise you can very subtly adjust the plank's trajectory by moving Rose to different parts of it. The adjustments you make seem really haphazard and inconsistent, though, so it's easy to lose a lot of lives here and get frustrated. On the plus side, the plank-surf is at least short and has a checkpoint right before and right after, a mercy that htoL#NiQ frequently denied the player. The two boss encounters can also be sticking points, until you remember Rose auto-crouches when she's not being controlled, and they at least telegraph their attacks a little better.
About the only other thing to really mention is the tone of the game, which has similarities to htoL#NiQ in that it's a fairly downbeat tale of a girl trying to figure out who she is and why she's in this place, but it approaches the story differently. htoL#NiQ was unsettling and played with its Memory Points to make it seem like the game was crashing and glitching with startling results. A Rose in the Twilight is less subtle and goes for a much gorier, violent approach. This is evident in its death animations (whereas Mion would simply topple over, Rose can be eaten and have her blood spilled) and the entrances to new areas, which are actually a bit morbid and certainly not for the faint of heart. It's established early on that those with Rose's affliction keep coming back to life, and these doors require a blood sacrifice, leading to Rose getting guillotined, hung from the neck, even crushed to death. It's quite a shift in tone that, honestly, took me by surprise at first, so I figured it was worth a quick mention.
So... This is an odd one. It is most certainly an improvement from htoL#NiQ just in terms of giving the player direct control over Rose, offering more protection from bullshit traps through the Giant and generally offers better puzzle and level design. Additionally, the dual-character set-up leads to some interesting puzzles, and the colour scheme and general aesthetics make the game feel very distinct from its predecessor. However, those positive steps forward are offset by the reliance on a dodgy physics engine for so many of its puzzles, and its often-annoying collision detection. Those are major things for a game to fall down on, especially in a game that leans on it so heavily. In terms of Nippon Ichi's pocket horror games, though, this is definitely a step up from htoL#NiQ, but didn't endear itself to me nearly as much as Yomawari: Night Alone did. It's... Alright. OK. Middle of the road. Not nearly as frustrating as its predecessor, but nothing outstanding, so be sure to know what you're getting in for if you give this one a try.
For being an improvement from cruelty, A Rose in the Twilight is awarded...
In a sentence, A Rose in the Twilight is...
Less likely to destroy your Vita than a certain firefly.
And now, it's that time, folks!
EXTENDED PLAY!
Just a super quick thing to note before we're done here. You see, funnily enough, the minigame on A Rose in the Twilight's official website is exactly the same as the one on htoL#NiQ's site. Roll, Rose! She can even float, just like Mion (except she just does a full dive instead of using a brolly). This one's harder, though. We couldn't finish it. Sorry.
Normally, we'd end on a Game Over screen... But this seemed more fitting.
You know what game the caption for that one came from, rght? Huh?
