Hello, and welcome to my latest review video. I’m reviewing a game I recently played through called Viola A Heroine’s Melody.
Viola is a game developed by Jelle van Doorne (check pronunciation) and tells the tale of a Viola who is trying to learn how to play the Violin as her mother did. While continually failing she falls more into her self-doubt and belief that she is unable to do anything right. While this happens Viola is suddenly sucked into a portal and is transported to some cave area. Confused as to where she is she starts to head through the cave and is appropriately encountered by a monster. As the slime is about to attack, there is a quick slash on the screen and standing in the slime’s place is Fenrys. Fenrys is the first companion to join you on your journey to get Viola home to where she belongs, well after the initial not-so-friendly hello from Viola. This starts as a tutorial with Fenrys doing triple jumps and wall jumps that you follow along whilst heading out of the cave, here Fenrys also shows you how to battle monsters.
Viola: The Heroine’s Melody is a Platformer and RPG, the traversal through the levels is typical platforming, you can triple jump with jumps 2 and 3 gaining more height for reaching higher platforms or platforms with a longer distance. There’s the wall jumping I already mentioned which is easy enough as you don’t need to do directional presses to wall jump, but the jumps from the wall are shorter with no direction presses and that only means you take a little longer getting up the walls from my experiences. There are other things that help with moving around the levels like cannons, cannons propel you some auto-fire and some you fire yourself same with them moving some you move some move alone or simply stay still. these canons are also used to solve little puzzles to reach chests. throughout your travels, you will meet up to 10 people who can join your team, though only 5 people can be used in battles at a time. Teammates that sit out fights gain only half the XP. Keeping everyone even with their levels means swapping and changing but I swapped and changed my team when trying to get everyone’s friendship rating up. Basically, after doing a level and getting to a Wishfire you can talk to the companions that have joined you, each time you do you get closer as friends. When you get to a rating of A you get a personal quest, and this is why I switched around my team to get these quests finished and to build stronger bonds. Each time you gain a rank in friendship the companion you grow closer to learns a new move for combat. Other times your band of musical warriors chat is during levels where you find odd stone statues and you can press a button and there’s be a small bit of chat between 2 or 3 people.
Though speaking of the combat It’s pretty interesting, you have 5 options in combat, you can attack this means you attack with two attacks and you get a small bar with button icons scrolling and you have to press the buttons with the correct timing, here you get good and perfect for the attacks which are successful and if you miss the timing you get meh, each of the 3 changes the damage amount. you can use items which means you can well use items… you know health potions and magic potions… You can defend which increases your defence whilst defending and it means that sometimes when an enemy attacks the person defending will block a person and take the hit with reduced damage instead of the original target of the hit. You can use Magic with takes AP and like attacks will require button presses with good timing or button mashing or holding a button for a certain amount of time or sometimes all 3. When you select magic during battles there are two options One is magicks which I described, and the other is crescendos. Crescendos are attacks that are much more powerful and use CP, the crescendos are more difficult to pull off than the magic and gaining CP is done by taking damage. Oddly there’s a book or a few giving a little info about it in the game, it’s explained as if it was some kind of research.
Viola has a nice art style it’s pixel art and for the most part, is fluid and well made, I think when the characters talk and do a little dash it looks a little odd as they seem to e solid in the scenes, but it’s not enough of an issue for me to warrant any really dislike to it, it’s just a tiny bit jarring at the beginning. The characters are all very different and unique from each other and the world areas are nice to explore with some interesting imagery, like tries that like like Violins.
Audio-wise the game has some great tracks, the boss fights in particular are great. The battle music is great in general. The overworld has some lovely music throughout, it captures the areas well, with places having some more mysterious elements to it, this is more in caves and the like. Music is also performed by your group, not massive amounts, think of it like Ocarina of Time, in that you toot on an Ocarina to play a tune to get to somewhere, it’s similar in this you play a small tune that will allow you to travel, or open a certain doo, or grow a plant. The difference here is the music is played with the instruments of the people in your current part for the most part you’ll have tunes played with 5 various instruments, with the occasional tune being played with all 10.
When it comes down to it Viola is a competent game in both battling and platforming, but I think my favourite part is the story and writing. The story is simple enough with Viola just trying to get home, but it’s the character stories throughout the game that make it. With it tackling various themes from grief, depression and more, the main theme of the game though is about believing in yourself and when needing it having help. It’s well told and appears genuinely heartfelt, while the character interaction is interesting and at times really funny.
I did have a few issues, the most annoying was a spell needing me to mash a button and the button displayed was the wrong one, which is a shame as all the other attacks were fine. Overall the game is well worth a look and is an enjoyable experience with an interesting story. I’ll be rating it 7 Pugsley.