Developer: Pippin Games
Publisher: EastAsiaSoft
Genre: Action Adventure
Reviewed For: PlayStation, Xbox, PC
Anytime there’s a good role reversal that comes into play, I’m usually here for it. I recognize that many generations, even up to today, receive a lot of one sided, classic fairy-tale style backdrops for their games, movies and books. The boy is the hero or leader, the girl is the support or the helpless love interest, and everything is seen through the lens of why someone with testosterone is going to be the reason it’s all okay. So I was at least intrigued by the concept of Wife Quest, the newest release from eastasiasoft that hopes to turn the classic trope of saving the princess on its head. However, there’s more to a good game than sex and gender, and there’s certainly more than just laying into stereotypes as hard as possible.
You play Mia, a human in a world that’s positively overflowing with mythical creatures like fairies, orcs and elves. For whatever reason, the monsters you see here aren’t the usual affair, and, instead, are all different shades of monster women. Don’t worry, weirdos in the audience, the monsters aren’t full fledged beasts, but rather mostly cute anime girls with large chests and small extra ears to indicate they’re some kind of creature. Anyways, Mia has this husband, Fernando, who is sweet, kind, and some kind of magnet for overly frisky monster girls. Mia has to watch as orcs beat the hell out of her and steal her man right at the very beginning, yelling insults about how Mia is flat chested and they just want to play with Fernando. Mia, filled with absolutely righteous but somewhat misplaced anger, grabs a sword and gets ready to beat the hell out of everything and everyone in order to get her husband back. Yay?
Personally, I think there was some kind of ambition from the drop to make this game into a humorous adventure, one that’s a lot of winks and nods amid a shockingly difficult metrovania approach. As Mia, you can walk, jump and swing a sword to fight against various monsters strewn across the land. Beating up the monsters (who are all monster girls in some capacity) nets you coins, and the coins are used to purchase incredibly important upgrades from a shop where you clearly hate the shopkeeper. Shopkeeper is also a woman, but not a monster girl, yet her clear interest in Fernando causes Mia to essentially threaten her life every time she goes shopping. Mia increases her health, her weapon strength, and adds on various potions of healing in order to survive long enough to conquer multiple monster girl bosses and save Fernando. Simple enough, I suppose. Hack and slash, save the man. Got it.
Aesthetically, Wife Quest is a delightful little jaunt, full to the brim with decent modern pixel art and the clear direction of someone who enjoys anime games and tropes and wanted to create their own. When I look at the character designs, I get the vibe of Tenchi Muyo or Ranma ½ and that era of big eyes, buxom divide and flamboyant personalities. The visual are clearly not an issue within the game: nothing goes too far in terms of being overly sexual or lascivious, but, instead, presents like a cartoon aimed a bit more at teenagers than children. There’s a lot of thought that went into the level design as well, with good platforming and some scattered secrets keeping the investigation portion of the game exciting and interesting. There’s some serious satisfaction to stumbling into a hidden nook where you might pick up a couple hundred coins in a single go.
Having said that, the design lends itself more to an adventure platformer, not a metrovania, which gives Wife Quest a bit of a disingenuous side. You can and will go back and re-explore different areas to pick up things that you clearly couldn’t get the first time (items out of reach, platforms that appear inaccessible), but it’s done through a divisional map that feels more Super Mario Bros. 3 and less Super Metroid. In fact, if the game description page didn’t insist it was a metroidvania, I would have never considered that I could go back and try some of the places again. I would have just thought I sucked at platforming and moved on. There’s just not enough meat there to make players instinctively want to rerun and double check, so I suppose the tag is important to clue players in “maybe not right now.”
The other aspect of replay in Wife Quest is the shocking difficulty of the boss fights. Mia can, for the most part, breeze through the main level portion of the game without needing to slow down or retrace her footsteps too much. Checkpoints are plentiful, enemies can and will drop healing items, and, if you should die, the respawn is generous and unlimited. Why is it, then, that I am BEATING my head against the wall trying to get past boss after boss with double health bars, omnidirectional attacks and zero chill? It gets better the further you go on, but the early bosses ask you to grind the stages over and over, sinking in quite a bit of time, to farm coins and max out Mia’s stats so that you can survive long enough to get at least one upgrade that’ll make subsequent fights that much easier. Still, the shift is pretty sizable, and players who aren’t Souls heads will get quite bothered by how fearsome the different bosses can be.
Lastly, and maybe this is just me, but the tone for the game is simply off putting at points. Mia doesn’t seem like a pleasant person to be around, even if she clearly loves Fernando. Her adoration of him is just as powerful as the monster girls’, and her constant refrain of violence and slinging vitriol puts her on the same level as the villains she seeks to conquer. There’s a lot of insults about appearance, specifically chest size, and implications about sexual activity that feels shameful instead of just expositional. Also, when you knock out a monster, you get an unconscious body that Mia then has the option to…I guess murder? Each monster girl you successfully hit and get coins from you then can do an extra “fatality” move where you choke, strangle or stomp a helpless monster until it disappears. What in the sweet hell, Pippin Games? Not only is it just needlessly violent (no blood, thankfully), but completionists will be compelled to do this since there are unique animations for each different monster! It was borderline disturbing, and simply not my favorite part of the game.
If you can get past the first boss fight, Wife Quest opens up and becomes more enjoyable, but the difficulty balance is never restored. Breezy levels with grinding monsters and forgiving jumps coupled with ridiculous boss fights that only get marginally better as you Mega Man your way into the best Mia you can be. If you like to cheer and laugh at a woman hating other women to save their prince, excellent, this game is for you. Otherwise I might suggest supporting the OG explorer, Samus, and rocking out a metroidvania where no one has to be criticized on their cup size.
Wife Quest
Solid pixel art and smooth design help support Wife Quest, but the difficulty and undercurrents of anger detract from the experience.
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