Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 18/Mar 03:26

Menherarium – Review

Like so many of you, we love ourselves some Balatro, and with good reason. LocalThunk’s hit game wasn’t the first gambling-inspired roguelite, but its poker-based formula felt like lightning in a bottle. Its success opened the floodgates too, with countless Balatro-likes hoping to achieve just a fraction of LocalThunk’s unintentional success. Today’s review covers one of these Balatro-likes, although you probably wouldn’t immediately say it based on the key art. What does an anime girl have to do with a “big numbers go up”-simulator type of game? Story The ‘menhera’ in Menherarium’s title is a Japanese slang term used to describe someone with a mental health disorder. Knowing that should already give you an idea of the direction that this story takes. The game opens with you getting drugged and kidnapped by a mentally unstable girl. While her true name is never given in-game, she’s “affectionally” referred to as Menhera-Chan. She forces you to play a dice game with your very own blood as the wager. Over the course of a week, you’ll need to reach an increasing target score every day, but every roll of the dice will cost you some of your blood. If you can survive for seven days, then Menhera-Chan will consider granting you your freedom… maybe. Graphics On one hand, the brightly colored, anime-style aesthetic contrasts with Menherarium’s dark narrative. On the other hand, this juxtaposition of cute vs unhinged emphasizes the general feeling of unease that permeates the game. Menhera-Chan’s design stands out as particularly strong, although more visual variety would have been welcome here. Aside from the brief opening cutscene, the entirety of the game takes place in a single room, and Menhera-Chan barely moves. Her animations are simple and limited, and we’re led to believe that she only wears a single outfit over the course of a week. The in-game store screen stands out simply because it at least gives you something else to look at. Generally speaking, Menherarium’s visual performance is okay, although there were occasional issues, like text running off-screen. Sound With Menhera-Chan being so front-and-center, it was important for her voice to match her twisted personality. Yuko Natsuyoshi, the character’s voice actress, definitely understood this. Menhera-Chan’s voice has a lovey-dovey quality to it, but there is an underlying darkness, as if she could snap at any moment. It’s a shame that the game is only partially voiced. Sound mixing isn’t always up to snuff either, with the soundtrack occasionally overlapping with Menhera-Chan’s dialogue. Speaking of the soundtrack, it’s serviceable but not particularly memorable. Gameplay Gambling-inspired roguelites typically take inspiration from existing games: Balatro is based on poker, of course, while Luck be a Landlord uses slot machines, and Raccoin uses coin-pushing machines as the basis. Menherarium’s inspiration is perhaps less well known in the West. The game is built around a traditional dice game known as Chinchiro in China and Cee-Lo in Japan. In this game, you roll three dice, trying to score higher combinations than your opponent. Most winning hands involve rolling a pair, with the third die acting as the score, although there are stronger combinations, like three of a kind or a 4-5-6 roll. The core of the dice game remains the same in Menherarium, but the game’s weekly structure sees you trying to reach an ever-increasing target number at the end of each in-game day. You get up to five rerolls per round to improve your result, but the caveat is that every roll costs blood, which acts as both your health and a timer. If you lose too much blood, it’s game over. To improve your odds, Menhera-Chan will sell you items with which you can improve your odds. New dice faces, charms, talismans and other items will let you modify your rolls, provide healing, boost scores, or otherwise manipulate outcomes. As is typically the case in games like these, finding the right combination is what keeps you going, particularly in higher levels, where extremely powerful setups are needed to increase your scoring potential. Each day has its own gimmick too, comparable to Balatro’s ante bosses, that alter the rules of a round to your disadvantage. Sometimes these are minor inconveniences, but more often than not, these will severely hamstring you. As usual for this kind of game, luck plays as much of a part in your success as risk management and build optimization do. Individual runs are short affairs of between 20 and 30 minutes, with Menherarium being built for replaying and experimentation with different builds. There are different endings to unlock, as well as a standalone mode where you try to survive not just for a week, but simply as long as possible. This is, of course, easier said than done, because poor RNG can really screw you over, not just when it comes to dice rolls but also when it comes to shop items or negative gimmicks. That’s something that is simply part of the roguelite experience, and because runs are so quick, it’s easy to fall into that “one more run” trap before you realize hours have flown by. What isn’t part of the typical roguelite experience, however, is that there are some persistent glitches here, such as dice not being read correctly after having been modified, and even the occasional softlock or game freeze. While Menherarium does feel much smaller in scope than some of its more mainstream contenders, that’s not an excuse for the lack of polish. None of the issues are really game-breaking, but we’re still hoping to see the kinks ironed out in the coming months. Conclusion We’ve seen many different versions of the gambling-inspired roguelite formula, but they typically boil down to “Balatro, but with x instead of poker”. Menherarium already stands out in this regard, not only because it uses a game that is much less well-known in the West, but also because it is structured around a twisted, character-driven narrative. What the game lacks in polish, with minor gameplay glitches, visual issues, and poor sound mixing, it makes up for with its bizarre mix of cutesy charm and unsettling underlying horror.