KONOSUBA

Are you the kind of fan who can not get enough KONOSUBA? Have you read the books and watched the anime—including the film and Megumin spin-off—multiple times? Did you even watch Isekai Quartet and its movie just to get that little bit more of our four hapless heroes—yet still find yourself dying for more? If so, this game is for you… and no one else.

KonoSuba – God’s blessing on this wonderful world!! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! is a visual novel side-story set in the KONOSUBA world. As the plot revolves around making sets of clothes within a given time limit, it’s no surprise that the gameplay is based on a system as old as the visual novel genre itself: a scheduling system.

Typically, you have eight or more five-day weeks to produce the noble’s clothing—in addition to any other clothes you choose to make. For the first three days each week, you can assign Kazuma, Aqua, Darkness, and Megumin-specific tasks to gain the money and materials needed to make the garments in question. These can either be side jobs, which can be done individually, or quests, which require the whole party of four to attempt. The remaining two days are spent on resting and making the clothing/shopping respectively.

It is in gathering materials that we run into the game’s major issue—its randomness. Be it a quest or a side job, the amount of materials you receive from each is random. It’s possible to get 10 or 20 of several different items one time and zero of those same items the next. This means that if you’re aiming to play as efficiently as possible, you’ll be reloading the same week dozens (perhaps hundreds) of times at some points just to get the drops you require.

Is it possible to beat the game without saving and loading ad infinitum? Yes. After all, for each chapter of the game, you only need to technically make one set of clothing—two if you’re looking for one of the main three’s “good ending.” However, there are dozens upon dozens of additional outfits you can make (and you can only make a maximum of one per week). Each of these grants you a new scene with one of the female characters, raises their favorability (which in turn decides the ending you will get) and often unlocks a new side job that makes collecting certain materials easier. Because of this, I found myself trying to be as efficient as possible while playing—both to see as many scenes as possible and set everything up to get as many endings as possible in just a single playthrough.

Speaking of the game’s various endings, there are 10 endings to the game—two each for Aqua, Darkness, and Megumin and one each for Wiz, Yunyun, Chris, and Sena. Each of these endings is rather meaty—taking thirty minutes or more. But even that’s only the start of the massive amount of optional content in this game.

Both quests and side jobs tend to have special 5 to 10-minute scenes you can unlock. Meanwhile, the aforementioned scenes that come associated with each piece of optional clothing are of a similar length—and are one of the main draws of the game. Each of these forces one of the girls to roleplay a cliché anime romance scene with Kazuma—many of which go comically awry in one way or another.

Meanwhile, the main plot takes this one step further. Each main cast becomes cursed at one point or another and has their greatest desires inverted. This, for example, turns Darkness from masochist to sadist—leading to many new comedy bits as everyone else is forced to deal with the sudden role reversal. Getting them un-cursed requires that their inverted desire be met in both “body and soul”—which is simply an excuse for even more fanservice cosplay.

Visually, the game is perfectly on par with most visual novels (even if I caught more spelling errors in this game than most others). Each character is represented by a series of static images that express various emotions. Each piece of clothing also comes with a special picture of the girl wearing said outfit—many even come with a “different” (read: “even sexier”) version of the picture if optional items are used in its creation.

It’s not the visuals but the audio that carries the game as a whole. Not only does the full KONOSUBA cast return and voice the entire visual novel but they also bring their A-game, delivering their lines with all the emotion and gusto you’d expect to see in the main anime. Moreover, the game gives the side characters (i.e., Wiz, Yunyun, Chris, and Sena) a chance to shine in a way they rarely get to in the series.

But when all is said and done, I found KonoSuba – God’s blessing on this wonderful world!! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! to be more monotonous than fun—even when I wasn’t saving and loading until the RNG gods decided to bless me with their favor. On its most basic level, this game is built around the idea that watching the KONOSUBA characters prattle on endlessly is its own reward. Sure, the game got more than a few laughs out of me at times, however, I am not a diehard enough fan to be entertained simply by being in the presence of these characters. Moreover, the main plot is often lackluster to say the very least and some of the endings feel more like an exercise in patience than a reward.

Yet, despite all that, I stand by what I said at the top. If you are the hardest of hardcore KONOSUBA fans, you will certainly enjoy this game. It’s just that, if you’re anything less than that, this game is a mixed experience at best.