Sunday, March 9, 2014

Winx Club Believix in You

Since the 4kids Dub ended, Video Game rights for Winx Club switched from Konami to Namco Bandai in Europe. A lot of people don't like Bandai because while they do make ok games with nice graphics, their minimal effort clearly shows. But Namco Bandai gives different developers the job to develop a lot of games while they are simply the publishers. That being said.....Namco Bandai........ WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU GIVE DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS TO A COMPANY THAT HAS ONLY DEVELOPED CELL PHONE APPS. 

Anyway, the game was developed by Foward Games, A company who unfortunatley have only made cell phone app games. This is their first and as of now only console game.

So does that make this game bad, hmmm..... not really. The problem isn't that this game is bad, but it just feels like a bad cell phone app, which isn't surprising. With that being said, the developers clearly did the best with what they knew how.

Story:
Just a heavily simplified Season 4.

Gameplay:

You start the game out with t a bunch of still images of the girls going to earth to open up the love and pet shop and talking about the "Sorcerers of the Black
Circle" as they are called in this game. You play through  the game in Episodes and weeks and each episode you have a different objective. Mostly it will be to earn enough money in the love and pet shop, but sometimes you will have to win enough battles against the Wizards, Spend time with your boyfriends and also help people believe in Magic.

You do all of this through playing mini-games. You will always start off with the main screen. At the top of the screen it has a picture of gardenia also giving what week it is and how many credits you have. On the bottom screen you have the objective on the left and the status on the right. Depending on the objective your status could change from "Battles Won" to "Relationship level". You have to make sure this status is maxed out before you can continue to the next Episode.

At the bottom of the screen you have all 6 girls to choose from, you must play as all the girls to finish 1 week and continue to the next. When you select a girl you be brought to her profile menu. At the top screen it shows her Relax level and Love level along with her horoscope. Relax and Love will determine how useful this Winx is in Battle and if the weekly objective is related, then this will help max out the status on the main screen. The horoscope shows happy, calm and sad faces for "Work, Relax, Love and Believix".

The bottom screen has the many different activities you can assign to said girl. They are activities that play out through mini-games:

Work:
Credits +
Relax -

Relax:
Relax +
Credits -

Love:
Credits -
Relax +
Love +

Believix:
I'm sorry I forgot what Believix takes and gives

As you can see above, the mini games give and take things.

Credits are either needed to finish an episode or play other mini-games

Relax gives you magic points for battle

Love I believe gives you health
Mini-games

I'm not going to go into the Mini-games much since they really aren't worth talking about. They are more of a chore than they are fun

There are 19 mini-games in all
Each girl has her very own Work game and her very own Believix game. There are 4 relax games and 2 love games.








None of these games are very interesting. They range from pressing buttons to make a fairy pet dance to holding an umbrella over a couple so they don't get wet (???). Some are even heavily glitched and have control issues. 

But the best thing in the whole game is the Battle game. 
Depending on how you performed over the week, each girl will have an efficiency level telling you how useful they will be in battle. If your Love and Relax were high, then your Magic Points and Heath will be high and Vice Verca. In the very first Battle you will only have two attacks which are shield and Bolt which both cost no Magic points. Over the Course of the game the girls will unlock more Believix Powers/ The downside to this is that all the attacks and shields look the same. Before each battle the top screen will give you hints such as "use your shields to defeat enemy's" ect.  

This part of the game should have been expanded upon as it's easily the most interesting feature.

There is also a free play mode where you can play any mini-game you want and a multiplayer mode where you can play against someone else who has the game.(HA!)

Overall this game should have been given to a different developer. They tried their best with what they had but they probably didn't have the tools to make a great game.

I give this game 2 Wings down