WitchSpring R (PS5)
When you start playing the role-playing game WitchSpring R, it would be easy to think its heroine Pieberry is a bit simplistic and juvenile. The little witch picked her own name based on her love of pie and strawberries and her desire to leave her isolated forest home sounds at first like its solely motivated by seeking out better pies to eat. Once she leaves home though, you’ll come to see Pieberry lives in a tumultuous fantasy world ruled by a stifling theocracy. Brutal witch hunts, human experimentation, and rampant dark magic all make this outside world darker than the cute art style implies, but that is why Pieberry is such an important protagonist. A ray of sunshine in a world in need of it, her nearly unflappable cheerfulness is exactly the force needed to cut through this unfortunate status quo.
WitchSpring R starts with Pieberry living on her lonesome, a survivor of the witch hunts put in place after humanity stole magic from the gods and set about ruling over the world themselves. While Pieberry will eventually have to contend with the Pope trying to keep magic only in the hands of those loyal to him, the early days of this adventure are more about helping Pieberry learn about the world in general and develop her own powers to face the dangers it holds. The most important moment weirdly enough is her encountering a tiny round bird named Black Joe who has a wide knowledge of the world’s nature and its deep history, and while at first their relationship is mostly comedic as she’s not afraid to roast the bird if it doesn’t help her out, it ends up being one of many of the game’s slowly growing relationships you can’t help but get invested in.
Pieberry begins as an adorable protagonist, her excitable and innocent nature making for an early game filled with happy moments. She makes new friends, starts learning about the wonders of the human world, and her remarkable gifts as a witch mean she doesn’t face too much trouble. As she begins to meet other important characters though, Pieberry starts to serve as an important pivot point in their personal lives, partly because her untainted view of people means she can sometimes see the good in others even when they don’t want to see it themselves. Pieberry is quick to forgive even her enemies when she knows they’re not as bad as they’ve been made to act, and it is with her faith and support that people can start to actually examine their own personal issues and start to push through them. WitchSpring R isn’t too quick in traveling these narrative arcs either, giving them time to grow naturally or face unexpected complications, but even Pieberry will eventually reveal herself to have some depths she might not have been aware of through these relationships as well. Because she is normally so bright and cheery, it’s even more heartbreaking when something manages to break through and jeopardize the little witch’s joy.
Ultimately, the broader plot of WitchSpring R is about Pieberry seeking out the springs belonging to the old gods so she can use their blessings to fight against the Pope’s powerful dark magic. While this leads to some battles with big monsters and recurring human villains, there are definitely points in the story where WitchSpring R becomes more about walking between the same small selection of locations just to talk to characters again and again. This is ultimately justified, it’s much harder to build up the relationship between Pieberry and the retired old witch Anna through dungeon crawls and conflict than it would be with a character like Livya the reluctant witch hunter who can find reason to fight you directly or reluctantly accept your aid in facing more dangerous foes. Admittedly, WitchSpring R is not above having the unsatisfactory kind of boss battle where you easily trounce a foe only for the follow cutscene to instead show you handily defeated, but it can at least lead to injections of action during those slow periods and eventually WitchSpring R starts to pick up the pace and better mix meaningful character interactions with worthwhile activities. Much like how Pieberry’s early behavior informs the later conflicts, the quieter and less demanding period of going back and forth to meet people pays off down the road when the action directly threatens that which you’ve come to hold dear. Even though the voice acting is only available in Japanese or Korean, the performances still come through well enough that even if you can’t understand the words they are saying, their particular quirks endear you more to the characters and the emotional high points hit even harder.
The shape of the more interactive side of battle and developing Pieberry’s skills actually shifts a good bit as the adventure goes on as well. Early on, there’s a fair bit of focus on things like crafting, training, and weapon development. Materials found in the world or earned through combat are crucial to not only getting the useful healing items needed early on, but creating Pieberry’s magic spells. While she can eventually find a few swords and focus on physical attacks, her spells are much more useful in the game’s turn-based combat. A fire spell for example can ignite a foe, causing them to take gradual damage that ignores their defenses. Hit them with an ice spell instead though, and you’ll slow them down, meaning you’ll get more turns to attack. More advanced spells can behave in different ways, such as being able to hit multiple foes with individual fireballs in a turn, causing a chain reaction of lightning that bounces around clustered foes, or firing a huge beam that can blast through monsters near and far. Training allows you to better hone Pieberry’s skills to your liking, a range of simple yet fun minigames letting you bolster stats like health, magic, strength, agility, and defense to shore up what needs help or push her best features into even greater prominence.
The early development of Pieberrry’s abilities gives the battles of WitchSpring R their depth. Needing to pick which magic spell can handle the situation best is key, especially as you learn the ways even regular foes can be threatening. A small pack of little pebble creatures can seem harmless, but when they all attack at once they can be more devastating than a powerful beast. Choosing the right spell for the fight, balancing when you heal or restore magic power, and even regularly defending so you can survive some tougher hits gives the conflicts substance, WitchSpring R also not too harsh in that it lets you retry battles or set you back only to your last battle victory should you need to abandon the fight entirely. Enemies are also visible in the world and often approached on your terms, so you can prepare before going in and even use items to give you boosts at the start of a fight. Dungeon exploration early on is done well because of the variable threat levels found in regular foes and bosses, and there will usually be some puzzles at play in a dungeon to engage you beyond it being just a sequence of fights.
As you get deeper into the adventure though, WitchSpring R starts to lavish you with a few too many tools to increase your battle competency. Black Joe, your little bird pal, can freely use an item every few turns, so he can easily handle healing or special boosts. There are various monsters in the world you can mind control to serve as your pets, these pets not able to be harmed by enemies and only able to execute a few attacks. However, as you get more pets and grow in strength yourself, Pieberry can call on more pets at once to help in combat, their strength only limited by them having specific costs so you can’t have all your strongest ones out at once. At the same time though, once you’ve started to get some of the tougher pets, they can do so much on their own you can often let them sit back and do the fighting mostly, even against the game’s secret super bosses. The blessings from the springs also give you yet another advantage, blessings giving you powers you can use once per battle that often don’t cost a turn to use but can deal huge damage, give you absolutely impenetrable defense briefly, or slow foes drastically. The pile on does start to rob some conflicts of their teeth, although thankfully it will be a while before you can sit back and let the pet parade do all the work. People looking for a tough end game to reward all their work elsewhere will probably not find it as rich since the pets and blessings mean a lot more than training, special weapons, or powerful crafted spells, but it will at least be some time before the main story path allows you to be so complacent.
THE VERDICT: WitchSpring R’s early game does feel a fair bit different from its later course, the simple adventures of a precious young witch where she works for her strength in battle giving way to conflicts with more serious foes that she can handle much better with the power she no longer has to work much to develop. The path of the story is well done though to get you invested in every step of the journey, silly interactions leading to touching moments as Pieberry’s friend group grows and she faces the harsh parts of the world with a smile she fights to keep. The action that began through careful spell use and deliberate investment does start to become a bit more basic when you start facing the strongest foes, but there are plenty of fights and dungeons before then to keep the action entertaining until you’re so invested you won’t mind the simplified battle strategy you end up slipping into.
And so, I give WitchSpring R for PlayStation 5…
A GREAT rating. This remake of a mobile game was directed, programmed, and written primarily by one person, Suyoung Jang, and that unified vision leads to a rewarding and heartwarming story about a young witch spreading her positivity in a world in need of such an unflinching positive influence. That singular creative mind and the adaptation to a format outside of a phone game may have lead to some of the undercooked parts, either with things like blacksmithing that feels tacked on or the snowballing strength that you earn at least through your own efforts. You do have to take the initiative to get the best pets, develop a good staff and range of magic, and invest in the early training, but the payoff does perhaps leak into the course of the main adventure a bit early, some climactic final battles not hitting as hard when you handle them pretty soundly. Before then though you will have combat even with regular monsters that can cause some strain even when you start to get the early spring blessings, WitchSpring R not a totally even experience but when it works it works very well. This is particularly true of the story, putting you in contact with a small set of characters who appear throughout that you come to love even before they’ve undergone the most important developments of their story. A comedic relationship like that between Pieberry and her reluctant servant Black Joe can end up having a surprising amount of heart without it having to be too blatant about that shift, and even the seemingly straightforward Pieberry can keep certain thoughts and motivations secret in a realistic way before they come to a head in an emotional moment.
RPGs putting the ability to cultivate your own strength can often run the risk of letting players grow too fast should they elect to do so, but WitchSpring R actually has a few barriers in place to keep it from happening too early and also builds up its cast well during the growing period that the motivation to continue supersedes the desire for a deeper challenge. It is strange the superbosses aren’t as tough as they could be, but the battle systems work well before they let you become too powerful so you are entertained and invested for the majority of the adventure. It’s a bit surprising the game about a girl who named herself after her favorite food can end up becoming a tearjerker, but Pieberry’s journey is all the sweeter because of that enthusiastic energy she brings to the situations she finds herself in and the people she meets along the way.