I almost titled this post “Doki Doki Majo S**tpan” but I’m trying to run a clean(er) ship these days. Besides, such a perfectly descriptive name would leave me with nothing left to write about this game, one of the dullest, most joyless things I have ever experienced in my life.
Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! is a game about a boy tasked with rooting out witches and bringing them under heavenly jurisdiction by investigating and fighting them and eventually touching them in suggestive places. Despite the worthlessness of both the premise and the resulting game, the original evidently sold enough to warrant two sequels and a manga. I know it’s pointless but I’m going to ask anyway: WHY?!
The most obvious answer, and the reason I tried this, is that fans must enjoy the silliness and fanservice that comes with touching girls. Heck, they just enjoy touching girls, period. Having actually played for 2 hours and having indecently assaulted two of said girls, I must ask again, WHY?!
To put it plainly, this game simply isn’t fun. For all the controversy about touching little girls and fanservice and stuff, there is surprisingly little titillation available. What there is plenty of is talking. 95% of the game consists of moving around on a tiny little map vainly trying to progress what little story there is. Click on an icon, get a snippet of story, click on another icon, get another little bit. After several in-game days, you catch up to a witch and the other 5% of the game begins. First you defeat her in very simple touchscreen combat and then comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the witch-poking part.
Which is sleazy and soulless as hell, and unsexy to boot. First off, if you do it right the procedure takes all of 30 seconds to complete. Even if you stretch it out to fulfill your easily-satisfied sexual(?) desires, what happens barely counts as fanservice. Apart from short skirts and some minor cleavage, the girls are largely covered up. Thus the only fanservice you get are perfunctory moans, weakly fluttering skirts and stiffly bouncing boobs.
Really only 9 years old.
On top of that, the actual womanhandling process is very pedestrian. In your arsenal you have a hand for poking and stroking, an eye for staring, a mouth for blowing air and a grin for leering. That’s it. I’m not demanding cattle prods and feather dusters a la Criminal Girls, but a tiiiinny smidgen of imagination isn’t too much to ask for, is it?
Most importantly, nobody enjoys it. The girls seemed almost bored at some point. The main character makes no comments at all during the activity, perhaps treating it, sensibly enough, as a routine medical examination. And as the player I really couldn’t see the point. Story-wise, by the time you reach that point you’ve already amassed enough evidence of the girl’s witchcraft. You’ve already beaten her into submission in a magic battle. There’s no room left for denial – and if she tries you can just beat on her some more – and thus no need to “find the witch mark” on the victim. I know I’m being picky, expecting a child molestation game to actually have a sensible reason behind it, but I can’t help it if I have normal thought processes.
Apart from the sordid gimmick and its disappointing result, the other main attraction of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! is the characters. Or, more rightly, the character designs. SNK Playmore must have guessed – correctly as it turned out – that a fan of this sort of game wouldn’t about things like personalities and character development and other non-essentials. That’s why the girls in the game are cute and busty and as interesting as a puddle of piss. I can’t help comparing this game to Criminal Girls, which was just as vile gimmick-wise but had rock-solid gameplay and some of the best on-screen character development I had ever seen to make up for its moral failings. S**tpan has nothing to commend it but cute art and half-assed fanservice.
Is that really all it takes to please some people? I’m not trying to position myself as morally superior or somehow ‘above the influence.’ It’s just that after years of gaming one naturally develops some basic standards of quality. Cute art, yes. Everything else, fail, especially the gameplay. It might be worth trying once just to say you did (though why anyone would want to admit that is beyond me) but otherwise give this a miss. Please.
Your ability to see bad games through to the end is seriously amazing (and possibly misfortune?). I’d completely forgotten this was a thing that existed, so thanks for the closure on it being absolute shit. Why DO you finish games like this though?
…except you stated you’d played two hours and stopped (I can’t read ._.). Sorry, had your Trails of the Sky review on the mind.
You’re not wrong in that I used to force myself to finish lots of crappy games. I used to finish crappy anime too. Why? I’m not sure.
Sometimes I was hoping against hope things would improve. A lot of games start out okay or have some interesting ideas. Some games I finished just to say I did. Some games are bad, but not quite so bad I stop playing. Sometimes I had a lot of time on my hands. And in very rare cases (Stella Deus, Tactical Guild) the perseverance paid off. It was all on a case-by-case basis.
Nowadays I don’t bother. My life’s much busier right now and I’ve seen enough crap. Guess I finally grew enough of a backbone to say “Enough is enough.”
My sincere apologies for reminding you of what was deservedly forgotten.
[…] and how a male character would never get away with half as much, then I remembered games like Dokidoki Majo Shinpan and Criminal Girls and just shook my head. Oh, […]