Towelket One More Time 3 Review
Towelket One More Time 3 is the first entry to the Towelket series, released on February 12th 2008. If you're new to this series, you're probably wondering why the first game is Towelket 3. Honestly, I have no real answer to that. The games are intentionally numbered weirdly.
This game has some weird history so I'll briefly delve into that. Towelket 3 actually has three versions, The original released in February, a remake released in September after the release of Towelket 2 and another remake, this time recreated in RPGmaker MV which was released in 2017. The game I'll be reviewing is the second remake since it's the only version that has been translated into English.
Anyway, the premise of this game is that while you and your younger sister are looking through the storage room, you accidentally come across a magical book that shrinks you both to microscopic size. As it turns out, this book actually belongs to a group of tiny aliens called the Kisechu, who plan to use it to take over the Earth.
The story sounds like something you would hear on the back of a children's book, and for the most part it plays out that way. The characters are pretty simple and don't go through any significant arcs. None of this is inherently bad. In fact, it would be quite endearing if it were not for the fact that this game simply drags on for far too long.
The combat is easily the most painful part of this game. There are traditional RPG elements in this game, though nothing really special. As someone who is not too picky about RPGs, this alone would not be enough to bother me, but the amount of grinding required to progress through the story is nothing short of nightmarish.
You'll often find yourself overpowering all the bland enemies in the area, only to be flattened by a random mini-boss with an obscene amount of health. The game isn't necessarily hard, just painfully unbalanced and generally uninteresting. Healing items aren't really an issue, as you can just buy a bunch in the shop, and with the amount of grinding you have to do, you're guaranteed to be a millionaire at any point in the game.
There are two additional aspects to the gameplay. When you open your menu, you'll sometimes be able to access "The Mind" and "Helpers". Helpers are just what you would expect. Random NPCs will decide to join you on your quest and you can use them as a fourth party member whenever there's room for them. It's an interesting concept, but aside from one character that appears later, these helpers don't really add much to your team.
Then there's The Mind. This area is much more interesting. As you progress through the story, different things will appear in your mind. Interacting with them can give you some money, a new skill, an item, or even extra dialog/scene. You can also heal here whenever you want. It's an interesting concept, but overall it doesn't really add much to the game itself.
You can also buy additional skills in your menu, but... to be perfectly honest, they all kind of suck, so you're better off ignoring them.
Anyway, that's enough about the gameplay. Let's go back to the story. As I said, the plot is very simple and reminiscent of a children's book... for the most part. Make no mistake, this is not a game for children. This becomes obvious as soon as you enter the first area and uh...
Yeah.
There are several moments in this game where it tries to incorporate shock humor in the form of sudden perverted jokes. At first, they did catch me off guard enough to make me laugh...but then it just...keeps going...
This game seems to love to drag things out, because the whole gag involving one of the characters being a middle-aged pervert just goes on and on, and it never gets any funnier as the game goes on.
Another aspect of the story that I wasn't too fond of was the amount of padding. It takes a good while for the game to get into the "meat" of its plot, but with how simple the story already is, it just feels like pointless fluff and an excuse to implement more pointless battles.
Overall, I don't think Towelket 3 is a good introduction to the series. I can't recommend this game in good faith as it constantly demands your time but doesn't have the content to justify it. A lot of people end up dropping the series after playing this game, and honestly, I understand. Even during my first playthrough of it, I didn't enjoy it and the only reason I managed to get through it was because I was curious to see how the rest of the series would turn out (spoiler, it's MUCH better than this). The only time I was able to look at this game fondly was when I wasn't playing it, which is really not a good thing.
So yeah. If you're interested in Towelket as a series, I highly recommend you skip this entry and go straight to Towelket 2. If you're curious about Towelket 3 anyway, I'd say play the first few minutes of it and see if you like it, because that's how the whole game will be.
I rate this game 1.5/5 Towels
