Long-time viewers of What’s It Like will know that I knew nothing about anime until I recently played One Piece Oddysee, a game that I thoroughly enjoyed. To continue my new trend of playing outside of the box, I decided to try my hand at the oddly titled “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime ISEKAI Chronicles” which came as a surprise to me as I haven’t heard much about the game leading up to its release, almost making the title feel like a shadow drop. What’s it Like? Assemble some villagers, get your town plans ready, and prepare to head out as we review That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime ISEKAI Chronicles for Nintendo Switch.
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime is both a weird and interesting concept. The titular character is fatally stabbed in the real world, and as he lies dying he visualizes the hot and cold he feels and gains resistance to those elements, and wakes up in a fantasy world as a slime, essentially reborn as Rimuru Tempest. After trudging through the world Rimuru stumbles into a cave where he meets the dragon Veldora, who grants Rimuru the power of sight and the ability to absorb monsters to grow in power. After absorbing Veldora at his request, and several monsters, Rimuru leaves the cave and finds new allies to create a village of goblins, dwarves, and all sorts of humanoid fantasy creatures. You won’t spend the game as a slime, however, as you absorb a dying comrade at their request and take on their form. While all of this might sound like a lot to take in, this is literally the first 10 minutes of the game, and it acts like a crash course into the world of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, meaning it is accessible to people like me who haven’t seen the series. Upon further research into the series, it appears this game highlights a lot of key points in the series, skipping a lot of minor plot points to provide a more comprehensive insight into the world.
The gameplay loop sees you head out to locations on a side-scrolling 2D plane to battle monsters and complete objectives in order to bolster your town. It’s fairly heavy on exposition at times, but I felt like it did a good job of filling in the gaps at times and explaining the rules of the world. Exploring locations usually sees you walk around, engage in combat, and defeat a final “Powerful Enemy.” These expeditions are short and add to the portability of the game, allowing you to complete an expedition in less than 5 minutes, progress some more, and then head back out. I think that the rapid nature of the gameplay loops kept me engaged despite it being a bit of a grind. The rinse-and-repeat gameplay might not be for all, but the story and town progression were enough to keep me on the hook throughout my time.
The strength of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime certainly lies in the combat system, which is easy to use with a simplistic approach, but also a fair amount of depth for those looking to maximize abilities. You can juggle enemies using your melee and spell attacks, call in support, switch to other characters in your party for more combos, and perform your “hidden ability” moves which trigger a stylish animation. It’s fast-paced and you feel slick dodging and countering attacks. It’s not particularly challenging and gives players breathing space to enjoy the story. I did find that sometimes I would press the wrong inputs for spells which are pressing X and a direction on the control stick, which can be quite hectic while you are dodging and maneuvering in combat. It wasn’t game-breaking but sometimes frustrating relying on the analog stick for both movements and spell inputs. Much like One Piece Oddysee, the game is completely voice-acted in Japanese, and has a wide range of characters that you can battle beside, and against, as well as support characters that work like the SNK Tag fighting games, able to summon them to jump in temporarily in battle.
Stats play a huge role in That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, and nearly everything you do will impact your characters in one way or another. Firstly, you can assign points to unlock individual stats on both main and support characters, but you can also build your town up to bolster stats as well. Each building in your town will add something to your overall stats, so it becomes essential to plan out things and restructure to get the best out of your characters. The good news for players who don’t like micromanagement is that you can auto-assign points and auto-build buildings if you want to quickly dive back into the action or story. There are some tropes and cliches we see in games of this nature, but I found the concept of this fantasy world an interesting one, and the characters have a certain charm about them.
The art style of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime is serviceable, with great-looking character models and combat effects, but watered-down environments and locales. Combat is fast and slick and the game doesn’t really skip a beat with the exception of when you break shields on a character, the game pauses to indicate the break which some might misconstrue as a dip in framerate. There’s a decent variation on enemies and locations, although I did find the backtracking to areas started to feel a bit repetitive as there was no change in the paths you could take.
For my slimes who are looking for accessibility options, there are no special features for vision impairment. At times, combat can be crowded, and switching between characters may be hard to track. There is the ability to have a mini-map in the top right-hand corner of the screen which helps you navigate expeditions, as well as in town. As the game is in Japanese, there are subtitles to help you follow the story and dialogue only progresses when you press a button to help you catch up, or you can have text auto-progress if you want things to flow faster. The ability to change the difficulty to “story” is a plus, and will assist in making combat a more accessible experience.
That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime will take you about 15 hours to complete, and there are plenty of side quests to tackle as well. It does have a rather steep price tag at $76 AUD, which might be a tough sell for people who aren’t fans of the series, even though the story does a great job of filling you in on the lore of the world. The hook of the story and concept is certainly a unique one which kept me invested in the game. The combat is fast and slick, while also being accessible, and despite the plain environments, the characters and effects look great. That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime is a fun action RPG that allows both fans and newcomers to participate in this interesting and unique world.
So, What’s It Like? That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime is like Tales of Symphonia and Sakuna.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by Bandai Namco, but this doesn’t impact my score.
