Mystic Messenger First Impressions

More Mystic Messenger Content: Full Review | Interface Analysis

So, if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you might know that I’ve gotten into Mystic Messenger, an otome game by South Korean game studio Cheritz. I’ll admit it, otome games are a guilty pleasure of mine. But I was also skeptical since it was going to be on smartphone only with in-app purchases. Fortunately, it’s surpassed any expectations I had for it, especially in the user interface department.

Writing

I’m not in far enough to justify being able to talk about the story. So far it’s been about character interactions, and I’m sure the story will pick up once I’m set on a route. The characters themselves are quite entertaining. Seven is who I’m going for right now, but I’ll probably try for Jumin next. I’m not expecting to finish all routes since the playboy types and super-happy types aren’t really my thing, but I’ll see what my friend says and decide if it’s worth it. As a whole, characters are all quirky in their own ways, making interactions somewhat unpredictable (especially when Seven is involved) and interesting to see. The game was translated from Korean into English, and sometimes the translations are clunky or unclear. This is very occasionally a problem, but I find it comes off as endearing mostly. In addition, Cheritz is a smaller company whole main audience is probably not English speaking, but I certainly appreciate their efforts to deliver a product that works 95% of the time. The protagonist writing is the only issue, as she’s bland as hell and you’re supposed to project onto her while only having 2 dialogue options in most cases.

User Interface

I wrote a more detailed post about the user interface here!

Phone System

The premise of the game actually is really meta. Aside from the fact that you yourself are not in face in someone’s apartment, the game makes jabs at your downloading an app (and even goes as far as saying the purpose of downloading the app was to “talk to hot guys”). The game uses phone related systems like talking on chat rooms, texting, receiving phone calls, emailing, and viewing social network profiles (to a lesser extent). There’s even an in-game explanation for why everything is in that app specifically, so it doesn’t reach beyond it of course. The experience of using the system on your phone does wonders for projecting into the protagonist and feeling involved in the game. Truly, it wouldn’t be as effective without the platform it’s on. I’m extremely impressed at Cheritz’s ability to create such an atmosphere.

Chat System

The chat system deserves its own section, as it’s where you spend most of your time. This was particularly interesting, as Cheritz was able to make widely text-only conversations between characters very lively. Various fonts, text sizes, and text bubbles are used to properly convey emotion in the place of a character portrait used in traditional visual novels. Someone’s happy or excited? They’ll use a hand-drawn looking font and  perhaps a cute pink text bubble. Someone’s talking seriously? Times New Roman. Perhaps Jumin is talking about cats? There is literally a cat shaped text bubble. It’s incredible how much this system adds personality to something as plain as a Facebook Messenger interface we take for granted. Much like real life, the chat system goes out in real time, although you can bypass this mechanic for the paid in-game DLC currency. This adds an interesting layer that may make some players anxious (especially for someone who is working most of the day), but overall serves to reinforce the atmosphere of the game.

Connectivity and Customer Service

Something I’m less enthusiastic about is how the game syncs up to a server each time you save. This means I need to use a little data each time I play that I could have been using on Pokemon Go, but also that I can’t play when around bad network coverage areas on the train. You also need to rely on the server working, and Cheritz didn’t expect the reception they received. As a result, the game has had some connectivity issues including the server being overloaded or just being down too long for maintenance. Since it’s time based, Cheritz has been very generous in compensating players for their patience (so far, there’s been more than $10 of DLC sent out, with more expected tomorrow). In addition to compensation for server downtime, Cheritz has made their updates public on their Tumblr account, reassuring fans that they are indeed present and working on bugs.The DLC itself feels justified, seeing as how their past games both cost $25+ and contain less content than Mystic Messenger. Cheritz has been treating their fans better than many triple-A studios have lately, and it makes me eager to support them more.

Overall a very worthwhile game, and I’m very eager to finish it up. Next review shall come once I finish Seven’s route. Thank you for the read!

Photo picked up from the app’s official Google Play store profile.

More Mystic Messenger Content: Full Review | Interface Analysis