Spoiler File
(4MB, 1920x1080) Spoiler File
(9.7MB, 3840x2160) >>9924 (OP)
>>10467
Moving to the non-gameplay elements, I think probably the biggest disappointment from this game for me was the lack of characterization for ANYONE. Despite the smaller cast, barely anyone is given any time to be fleshed out. There is only one side event per character and two fanservice events which give you the idol and bath CGs and that's it. As a result, the characters never really get the opportunity to feel like more than mere set pieces. For example, Natsume's profile lists her as being a giant fangirl for Chim the Garden Eel and her character event is about hugging a body pillow of him and then dreaming him, but then that's it. Chim is LITERALLY NEVER brought up again. Who even is he and why is he so popular? Why is Natsume such a fangirl for him? Questions that go completely unanswered. Another example; Hotaru's side event reveals that her parents are famous wrestlers and part of her reasons for being so withdrawn, insecure and lacking in confidence is that she's a pipsqueak who can't live up to her family's legacy despite really wanting to. And that's the entire extent to which this part of her is explored. Fuck, I wanted to see Luchador Hotaru or fucking something. Have an arc where she grows into the role in her own way and then have her do the Tombstone on the final boss or something. But no, we get nothing. The others are even worse. Mona's event is more about IROHA than it is her, and that's just sad. Granted, that may be justified in her case for plot reasons, but still. Compile Heart is usually at least decent about investing in this part of their games, with Mary Skelter being a standout and the bar with which I'm comparing here, and God does Tokyo Clanpool come up short here; Mary Skelter is WAY, WAY better about fleshing out the Blood Maidens and even Jack, every character there has 4-5 events per game plus side material and as a result the Blood Team just completely destroys the Diet Dolls here. The game has a distinct lack of actual CGs, too, as there's only like 6-7 actual CGs which makes me think this game was made on an even more tightassed budget than the average Compile Heart game.
Now for the overall plot. Here be spoilers.
The fact that most of the bosses have Biblical theming and names becomes quite clever in hindsight when you find out the big reveal. See, the Dark Realm got ravaged by this big red dragon in the past and managed to seal it underneath the royal castle, but now it's about to reawaken. In the midst of their panic, they somehow came upon a copy of the Holy Bible from Earth and read about Revelations. This made them come to the conclusion that the red dragon they're so afraid of is actually the Biblical Dragon of Revelations (aka Satan), and was originally from the Bright Realm (their term for Earth). So they concoct this elaborate plan to send it "back" by basically reverse-engineering the Christian Armageddon with themselves playing the part of Biblical figures. Thus things like Isperica's title as the Envoy of the Seven Barrels (the barrels being the Seven Trumpets of Revelations) suddenly make sense as he basically positioned himself as the herald of the apocalypse. Obviously the plot culminates in you fighting this dragon and upon fighting it, it becomes quite clear that this is NOT the actual Satan, and you promptly beat it with the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP™ (ah, good ol' JRPG tropes) but between all the icons you can pick up pointing to the Dark Realm worshipping dragons in a religious manner, the abundance of them in the Tower, especially in the Abyssal Cradle where the Red Dragon sleeps, and icons of the Calamity itself, I guess you could say that for the Dark Realmers, it may as well be Satan. But it's clearly not OUR Satan, and thus the plot essentially becomes an exercise in just how far some will go to dump their problems on someone else.
Before all that, though, the "lesser" twist is that Natsume herself is actually a Dark Realm princess who was cast to Earth to eventually be used as a piece in the plan to cast down the the Dragon and the Abyssal Cradle. The villains spend the first act of the game trying to "awaken" her, and I was waiting for the climax of this to be Natsume temporarily joining the enemy and having to be beat back into the party, but no, when she finally "awakens", all that happens is that Shelingula, her sister and the Dark Queen, just takes her energy and leaves her. It was a rather anticlimactic resolution with few long-term effects. Natsume quickly rebounds and simply doubles down on her Japanese identity in response. I get that since there's only four party members, you can't really afford to take one away even if only temporarily, but this twist's execution is hard for me to forgive. I was REALLY expecting a Dark Natsume/Aniuse plotline here. At the same time, the old guy Yoshitoki is revealed to be Adulsas, Isperica's equal in rank in the Dark Realm, prompting Chiyo to literally cry uncle. His title/role is as the False Prophet, everything that lead to the establishment of the Cybertactics cabinet and the Diet Dolls was part of his game and unexpectedly he shows little remorse when you finally strike him down. The characters themselves muse over whether he had actually hoped to save both realms with his plots, but an answer is never given. As far as anyone knows, everything he did was for the Dark Realm and he refused to apologize for it. I actually quite liked that, there is no shame in doing what must be done to protect your people and world.
Shirocca ends up heavily underutilized. When you rescue her from Gerinberth, she's treated as this big plot device that will have significant ramifications down the road, but all she ends up used for is as a "tank of royal ether" to force Natsume to awaken. After that, she's rescued by the party and never plays any further role. You see her become more and more human and develop more and more speech, but that's all that comes of it. What was the point of her again? I expected her to at least be something that pushes Natsume to do something significant, but no, she's just reduced to a cheerleader after her moment much like the rest of the Diet Dolls. Her entire role in the story is as a tool for one purpose and sadly that's all she amounts to in the end. A bit of a sad conclusion for a character like her.
All in all, the plot had a clever premise, but the execution was sloppy as hell. And since Tokyo Clanpool was a one-off, nothing will ever be elaborated on. It really makes me think with all the seemingly rushed and half-developed plot elements that this game had a rushed development. It very well could have; I think this was the last title Compile Heart developed for the Vita, which was very much in decline by 2017. They were shifting all their resources to PS4 development and I think Tokyo Clanpool may have suffered from that.
In the end, while I think it was a solid dungeon crawler with some ambitious elements, the execution of many elements left much to be desired and for Compile Heart DRPGs I would still point to Mary Skelter as the definitive Compile Heart DRPG series, particularly 2 and the Nightmares remake. One thing I CAN say in favor of Tokyo Clanpool here is that the port, especially on PC, is MUCH better than the atrocious Mary Skelter 2 PC port, which is why I was surprised to find that Ghostlight was behind this port as well. Everything runs smoothly here with few major dips, it is well optimized for low-mid power machines and there are almost no glitches, the only one I found was just an annoying menu glitch where sometimes pressing back in the Data Room or Diet sometimes fails to return you to the previous screen, which I resolved every time by just mashing B until it worked, with the character voicelines overlapping repeatedly like a broken record.