Huusuienbu - Chapter Spring and Summer

Review

As a Feng Shui master tasked with a very important mission, use your Feng Shui powers while travelling the land looking to bring a water vein and its spiritual powers back to your village in this strategy, tower defence adventure by REAL Co.Ltd.

You play as Takeruhiko of the Kiryu family.  In the village where you live there hasn’t been rain for a while; the river waters are getting so low that the water vein which sustains your village will dry up if the rains don’t come soon. Your mother is a Huusuisi and has the power to pray to the water gods to make it rain, but as the waters are so low, there are no spiritual powers in the village and the rains don’t come. So, you are tasked with finding and bringing back a new water vein to the village; the destiny of the whole village is in your hands. Honoured with such an important job you set off with your raccoon friend, Saburota, and go in search of a new water vein.

Upon starting a new game you’ll be taken to a very nicely styled and colourful world map, with trees, villages, mountains and river running through it. At the bottom of the map is your starting point, indicated by a pair of binoculars. This is the tutorial, where you’ll be taught how to play the game by your mother (so pay attention or its early to bed with no supper). You’ll go over the basics of how to move, attack and how to create Feng Shui towers and upgrade them.

Once you’ve completed the tutorial, you’ll be taken back to the world map where there’ll be a new location for you to visit. You’ll have to complete your current location before you’re able to move on to the next one; you can also back track on locations should you wish to replay any of them. Each location will consist of either a battle objective to fulfil, like protecting a building or someone from masked villains, or not allowing one of your characters to die in battle. Some locations will reveal the story as you progress and maybe introduce new characters that will join you on your quest.

When in battle you’ll play it out over an area which is might be bigger than your screen. So, you’ll have to scan the area quickly to determine where any threats may come from; they could come from several directions at once. There is a map in the top right-hand corner of the area, which will also show any threat currently working its way towards you. You’ll have a short time in which to prepare for what’s to come, so now it’s time to place some Feng Shui towers down to help you in the oncoming battle.

Each Feng Shui tower you summon consumes a certain amount of Feng Shui energy, reducing the maximum charge of the Feng Shui energy. So, place your towers strategically as you’ll only be able to summon so many of them. There are six different towers that you can use: Huusui, Support, Resource, Summon, Medium Huusui and Explosive towers. The Huusui towers offer basic defensive cover with an average range of attack and can be summoned quickly. The medium towers offer a higher range and firepower but are slow in reloading. The explosive towers are very slow at reloading but can be a devastating weapon dealing massive damage. A resource tower will consume all the natural power in an area and then convert it in to gold coins. The summon tower will summon monsters who’ll fight with you. If any of your towers are destroyed, or you remove a tower from play, then your Feng Shui energy maximum charge will increase.

You can upgrade your towers by using any gold coins you may have.  Upon reaching a certain level you’ll be able to add Magatama Beads to your towers. Magatama beads are crystallized natural elements, which you’ll collect along with gold by defeating enemies. There are six types of magatama beads: Wind, Water, Soil, Fire, Gold and Tree, and using these in different combinations will change your tower into something much greater.

Each tower has a certain number of slots in which magatama can be added; for example, the Huusui tower only has three slots to hold magatama. The magatama of wind can split a projectile, the water magatama is effective against enemies and can widen the range of a tower. The magatama of soil can slow the movement of an enemy, gold magatama can penetrate the enemy. Tree magatama adds a defensive shield around your tower for extra protection.

You also have three skills you can use, and these will consume some Feng Shui energy. The three skills will activate automatically but you can control them on your own by clicking on the skill you want to use. They can be found in the bottom left corner along with your health, Feng Shui energy, your level and the two types of medicine available to you, which are also dropped when defeating enemies. The red medicine will recover some health for you while the blue medicine is to restore some Feng Shui energy.

On the main menu screen in the bottom right corner you’ll find the language and difficulty settings. The game starts in Chinese, but clicking on the lower part of the writing in the bottom right corner will change the text to English. The upper portion is for the games difficulty, which can be set from easy to horror. Should you need to change to the English language, this will also reveal the main buttons in the middle of the screen: Start Game, Challenge, CG Mode and Exit Game and the in-game text.

Start Game will take you into the campaign.  In Challenge, you’ll combat hordes of enemies until you complete an objective, such as killing 800 mushroom creatures.  I’m not sure about CG Mode yet, as I’ve not been able to unlock or do anything there so far. While in game if you press the escape button, you’ll be greeted with a box, which sadly is in Chinese. It details the magatama by the looks of it, and at the top of the box are four smaller ones; the one on the top left opens up a tutorial of screenshots which details everything in the game. The two in the middle are greyed out and the one on the right will take you back to the main menu. Hopefully the developers will translate everything into English at some point in the future.

I’ve quite enjoyed playing the game; it has very nice graphics and music, and the story, while it has a few spelling errors, is also enjoyable. I wasn’t able to take any screenshots using Steam; maybe this will get sorted out in the future. This is part one of the story and part two, when it’s released, will be free to those who own part one. The game is in early access currently so it’s not totally polished but very playable so far. The developers also plan to bring more game modes etc out sometime in the future.

Review written by Piston Smashed™ for Zeepond.com!