Yumeria (PS2) (2003)
Developer: Namco

Review by Faididi and Co.

Sweet loli dreams

Story: Average

Tomokazu's dreams literally come true when a girl he sees in his sleep one night mysteriously appears beside him in his room the next morning. This girl, Mone, can speak only her own name (kinda like a Pokemon, but slightly less annoying). Nobody else seems to care about that, though, so Tomokazu does the smart thing by making a girlfriend out of her. The truth is that Mone hails from the dream realm, and whenever the kids magically go there by slumbering off, they don spiffy costumes and use kick-ass weapons to beat up evil beings who resemble Xevious rejects.

Not atypical for the genre, the story offers a total of five heroines. Besides Mone, there are the gentle classmate, Miduki; the big-sister-type caretaker, Nanase; the peppy younger sibling of that caretaker, Kuyou; and the amusingly adorable catgirl, Neneko, who always hides her ears under her cap. The girls are each sweetly likeable in their own ways, but the plot is predictable, and the characters' median age is something you probably don't want to mention in front of the police. But, hey, balancing school life with the job of leading mostly loli superheroines clad in dangerously cute bodysuits is never dull.

Gameplay: Average

Namco's Yumeria is a romance-themed text adventure that differs from the rest of its genre with its real-time 3D graphics and its small amount of simplistic turn-based combat. Divided into 11 chapters, the game is mainly played in the text adventure mode. Tomokazu only makes decisions at certain points, like choosing which girl to accompany during a busy day, choosing whether to wait for more friends to arrive before facing some bad guys, or choosing whether to take a risky dose of sleeping pills in an emergency.

The turn-based battle mode occurs for relatively few scenes, when the heroines and the Xevious rejects take turns pummeling each other. Tomokazu's decisions in the adventure mode will influence the various heroines' levels of affection toward him, and those in turn determine their offensive strengths. Tomokazu's primary role lies not in hitting enemies himself but by charging up his friends, who wield all the heavy firepower. While the girls wreak massive death with their nuclear cannons, hyper bows, telekinetic drones, and spinning blades with 16-inch twin retracting claws, his own attack is a crappy energy shot.

In any case, the combat's extremely simple nature is not an exaggeration. There are no experience points or magic points of any sort to be collected. The team always fights a single enemy at a time, and every encounter is prescripted. The heroines are essentially equal in ability, all of them capable of healing as well as attacking. Stranger yet, the heroines don't allow Tomokazu manual command over their actions until they gain enough affection toward him, which is odd because their behavior on automatic control already prevents the team from failing. The encounters are so easy that Tomokazu actually needs to try in order to lose a fight. There's even one chapter that contains zero encounters and zero choices to make. As such, the battle mode feels pointless, and it hardly makes the gameplay stand out in any serious way.

Controls: Excellent

The controls include the usual handy options, like viewing a history of the dialogue, quicksaving, and fastforwarding through the scenes. For the battle mode, the turn-based setup means Tomokazu has all the time he needs to make his decisions, at least in the later scenes when the heroines aren't automatically winning the fights.

Graphics: Excellent

Of course, Yumeria's biggest draw is its full-blown real-time 3D graphics. The fantastically rendered, fluidly animated heroines possess a vividness never seen before in the genre. We're talking visuals where clothing and strands of hair sway realistically under ambient lighting, and where the very irises of the characters can narrow or widen to convey feelings of fear or worry. There is almost no need for the opening to use a prerendered intro movie, as the real-time cutscenes look nearly indistinguishable in terms of animation quality.

Audio: Excellent

Perfectly matching the breathtaking graphics is the impressive voice acting, even in Mone's case. The sound effects are flawless, too, especially the abundant ambience effects. When Tomokazu takes a walk in the park, for instance, birds can be heard chirping peacefully over the wind-swept grass. Or, when he tries to survive another day in the classroom with Mone and Miduki, his fellow classmates can be heard murmuring among themselves, until the teacher enters. Or, when Tomokazu meets up with Neneko throughout the city, cars can be heard whizzing by, honking their horns from a distance. As for the music, it's tender and moving without being emotionally overbearing.

Overall: Above Average

Yumeria doesn't play truly differently from other romantic text adventures, because its turn-based battle mode is simplistic to the point of being meaningless. However, it sure wows the eyes with its amazing graphics and cute heroines.

OST: Above Average

Published by Columbia Music Entertainment, the Yumeria soundtrack contains all the music from the game, including the full version of the song heard during the opening movie. It also comes with a bonus track, which is a monologue by Mone. It's not much, though, because no one can really understand what she's saying anyway.