steemhunt for Kamidori Alchemy Meister: The god captor

First I want to apologize for not using the interface provided by steemhunt.com and you might think it's abusive of me to use the steemhunt tag, and I will remove it if you guys decide it should be removed. I wanted to post using directly steemit in order to show more images and links to the game because the editor from steemhunt.com is not the same (But I'm sticking to the rules though), since it's really a wonderful game, with that said:

I wanted to post a steemhunt about a game that despite being at least 7 years old is still a unique and great game, the name of this great game is Kamidori Alchemy Meister: The god captor. This game is an 18+ Japanese style tactical RPG for PC, similar in gameplay to the fire emblem series, but more focused on exploration and the creation of items. 

The story of me and Kamidori

The story of how I came upon such a jewel is an interesting one: As an avid gamer and fan of Japanese games and anime I was bored of playing only mainstream games, and since I can’t play online games I was getting bored of good ol’ same, so I thought of expanding my reach and try a niche group of games, the 18+ games (I’ve played games like The Witcher or Mass Effect, but while those games have explicit scenes their main focus isn’t these scenes). The 18+ games section has quite a few interesting games, but I never expected to find a game like Kamidori inside this group.

Kamidori was developed by Eushully, a Japanese company, in the year 2011, the game tells the story of Wilfred Dion, a fledgling alchemist in the town of Yuidora and how he meets three girls: Yuela, Servalwi and Emelitta and how he goes from fledgling to meister (and magnus in NG+) while growing both as a man an as alchemist. 

Story and setting

The game’s storytelling is a bit linear, using a format similar to visual novels, however it has three main routes, one for each heroine and many interesting secondary stories. Several parts of the story has explicit scenes depending on the heroine’s route, and while I highly encourage the 18+ version, there is also a version without those scenes if I remember correctly.

The story starts in the town of Yuidora, a town where the alchemist’s guild is located and where alchemists work for developing new wonders using the power of mana and nature. Wilfred Dion is a man who successfully completes the entry exam for alchemists and starts working as one. He then meets Yuela, a swordswoman from Dysnafrody (an eastern country not unlike japan) and promises her that he will fix her sword. This meeting marks the beginning of the story and the start of Wil’s adventures. As the story goes on, he meets all sorts of mystical creatures and elementals, spirits of the wood, angels, succubus, and even the good ol’ nine tailed fox.

Gameplay and main features

In the map you can select from several places to visit: The church (that weirdly enough also functions as merchant), the arena, the workshop, special events and combat stages. The church allows you to buy and sell items, though it’s better to sell most items from your workshop, and allows you to uncurse items. The arena has several challenge battles divided in 4 categories, 3vs3, elemental battles focused heavily on elemental resistances and weaknesses, gauntlet battles where only 1 unit is faced against others, and a special category where 1 unit faces against multiple battles alone. As you advance in alchemist rank and progress the story more and more challenges in the arena will be unlocked. Special events are located usually in the city, but can appear in outside maps as well and are events to progress the story or access optional content. Combat stages are the stages where you’ll fight and earn experience and materials, every stage is unique and has several hidden challenges, I strongly encourage that you refer to the Eushully Kamidori wiki for more details on these hidden challenges.

The workshop is the place where you’ll build your items, set clerks, upgrade your furniture, etc… there are also many unique events related to the stuff in your workshop. The workshop’s features are directly related to your alchemist rank and the furniture you have inside. The workshop is divided in 4 places, Room, Shop, Workshop and Yard. In the room you set furniture related to your knowledge and the amount of clerks you can have selling your products amongst other unique effect furniture. The Shop is where the items you made are sold, here you’ll need to attract customers, then sell your product for a price from a given stock, as you upgrade the shop and increase the size of the workshop you’ll get more furniture to boost these stats. In the workshop you can place furniture to boost your skill, tools and mutation stats, these influence the creation of items during alchemy. The yard is the place where you plant trees, and other elements to get free items upon your return home.

In the combat stages you move in a 4 direction grid in an amount equal or inferior to your MV stat in the zones you control and only 1 tile in zones you don’t control, this also applies to enemies, making zone control a very important factor in the hardest stages. Once in range you can attack enemies using combat skills, some are ranged and some are melee, you can move and attack in melee, but you cannot move and attack using ranged attacks. Combat and movement are heavily influenced by the skills a unit possess, you gain skills depending on your items and on your level, as well as by enhancing your clothing.

The game has no difficulty setting, but is pretty hard, not dark souls or fire emblem lunatic hard, but hard. Farming and grinding is easy, but some maps require a real tactical setup; when facing dragons, reapers, leviathans and other boss class monsters you’ll need to be prepared.

Additional content

The game also has 3 main expansions that add content allowing for playing extra stories and adding even more elements to enjoy the game once you’re reaching the end, in some forums this game is regarded as a 700 hours game, this is due to the huge amount of items, maps, quests, and content in general… the game is worth playing 3 times, one for each route; since the 3 routes have significant variations (the main story remains the same).

The game is Japanese, but there is a free translation you can easily find online, there are also many mods for changing gameplay and making it a more erotic game if you’d like.

Conclusion

Pros:

• Simple but good (and addictive) gameplay.

• Good story for all 3 routes.

• Hard difficulty, but not unfair, RNG barely influences the results of the game.

• Nice and smooth graphics, even 7 years later.

• Over 200 hours of content during the mainstream game, many more fully exploring it.

• Alchemy and enhancement system (not atelier level of alchemy, but good), plus an interesting customization of the workshop.

• Special challenge maps for the hardcore gamers.

• Grinding maps for those gamers without the patience or the skill.

Cons:

• Combat and movement animations are a tad slow, and with the game being hundreds of hours long, it can get boring. A simple solution is to use the Cheat engine speedhack to increase speed to 2 or 3 times the normal speed and problem solved.

• Early game can be daunting. The game has many features, but in the early game the lack of movement, units and materials make it seem a lot harder and repetitive.

• Not all content is available from the start, you’ll need to advance the game and play NG+ in order to get access to the full game.

• Lack of different class changes. I miss the possibility of manually changing classes according to my play style, while you can select the skills and equipment of characters, and every character is different; I miss this feature (maybe I’m just too used to fire emblem games).

Final words

Well, as always, remember to upvote or downvote (it motivates people like me to make a great effort writing these articles), and if you enjoyed it, rather than just casting a vote, please leave a comment, I’d like to meet other people who may enjoy this game as much as I did.

If you’d like me to do a steemhunt of a particular game of a particular genre, leave a comment saying the genre, device and other details, for example:

“Hi, nice post, I’m going to take a look at this game whenever possible and I’d like to see a steemhunt about a dungeon crawler for Nintendo 3DS, preferably one that has lots of content and cute characters”, (I’d pick Etrian Odyssey myself BTW)

I will answer to all the comments with at least one game that fits there that I’ve personally played, and I will tally and make a steemhunt with the general most requested genre and device.

Disclaimer: I’ve played thousands of games, but please keep requests to games who aren’t online since I cannot play those. I would prefer if you select games from one of these platforms since I’ve got the most experience with them:

Super Nintendo, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, PSP, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, PC. (I’ve played games from other consoles as well, but those are my main)

Kind regards and happy gaming.

Eilder Jorge