That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles already has some odds stacked up against it in my review. First of all, let’s do away with the absurd as usual light novel title and use the shorthand Japanese name like how every sensible weeb does, we’ll be calling it “Tensura” from here. Second, I’m not a fan of this series. I gave it an honest try for a set of episodes but by the time they were recruiting dwarves I pretty much saw the writing on the wall: “Not for me.”

For reference on what I like, one of my all-time favorites is “Tenggen Toppa Gurren Lagann” and my current recommendation for the season is “Too Many Losing Heroines.”

But anyway, Bandai Namco has always been in the business of making games off anime IPs. I do praise them when they try to make originals like Code Vein which I personally enjoyed and Scarlet Nexus which didn’t quite cut. Their regular bread and butter is making a rather generic game based on a popular anime titles and making it look good enough for people to try out. Some of them are epic, some of them are a simple reskin or update, and others I’d rather not talk about.

So which of these three categories does Tensura Isekai Chronicles fall under? Well, I’m at least talking about it, so there’s that.

This title makes an effort to stand on its own and not entirely depend on the story events of the anime itself. While it does make use of the premise and the starting point, it does deviate and take a story of its own rather quickly. So let’s get through those visual novel-style exposition dumps that these sorts of games usually make, and get to the game. Let’s break it down.

Production (2 / 5)

I went and did my initial research on the game before actually playing it. I first thought “Oh, this is a mobile game.” And it’s not unheard of to get gacha or mobile games ported to a console, which in this case is a PlayStation 5, so I didn’t give it too much thought. But as I launched Tensura Isekai Chronicles, I didn’t need to make an account or anything. So suddenly I thought “Oh, it’s a retail title?”

So let me justify why I initially thought it was a mobile game. First, the models and characters are simplified. It’s the whole larger heads, smaller bodies deal. This is usually done to keep development costs lower and to allow devices that have weaker graphical power to handle it. So, typically, these weaker devices would be phones. The game is also presented primarily in two views, one isometric view for village management and a side view for dungeon crawling. The deal is the same for these dungeon stages, clearly simplified and convenient to go through. There is some variance with the areas you get to visit and the monsters that come along with that, but that’s about it.

Cutscenes are presented in several different ways: First would be the typical visual novel style of talking heads and still images. It makes use of the recent innovations in technology by making use of Live2D avatars instead of still images, though I have to say that these avatars look awkward with the floaty animations left on them when they’re not speaking. Next would be the making use of the in-game models and world, which looks about as you’d expect, decent. Then you have the 2D animated cutscenes that match up to the anime, which I have no issues with. Finally, there are these strange fully-rendered 3D movies that should ideally look the best of all of them, but is in my opinion, the worst. The root of my ire on this end would be the frame rate, which is clearly a notch or two below 30 FPS. The game itself, while simplified, runs on the PS5 without issue, and these pre-rendered cut-scenes have no business looking this bad. I have no idea why it turned out this way, but this is unacceptable.

Getting back to the in-game models, the characters look good enough even in their chibi forms. The designers were able to maintain a good amount of detail and properly express the identity of each major character even in a low-poly setting. They also animate uniquely from each other, even though many of them are functionally similar.

The visual effects and interface for combat ideally function properly

On the audio end, you do get the VAs of the anime to reprise their roles in Tensura Isekai Chronicles. So if you’re fan of any of them, you’ll get to enjoy their performances once again. Though on the music end, I actually can’t remember anything noteworthy.

Mechanics (2.5 / 5)

Tensura Isekai Chronicles divides its gameplay into 2 general sections. One is village management, and the other is dungeon crawling. Let’s go through the dungeon crawl first.

You wander rather simple maps with minimal branching paths through a 2D perspective. Where you will run into either a treasure chest or a monster encounter. You open treasure chests and there’s a tiny QTE event for it. Moving on, what’s the combat like?

The game is set up such that you can make use of your entire party at any time, so long as your current active one isn’t committed to a major action. These actions are attacking, using skills, and dodging. While the combat-capable characters have their skill points for their regular skills, the more powerful, secret skills make use of a charge bar that is shared among the party of five members. Think Tales of Legendia (PS2, yes old game, I know) but combat isn’t quite as thorough.

Attacks and skills have their unique animations and effects, but if you take a closer look, they’re all functionally the same. Usually, they have one skill for higher damage, and then they have another skill meant to hit a larger part of the screen. Everyone’s secret or ultimate skills are pretty much wave attacks that fly across the screen. Still, you can be a bit creative with certain characters, as their normal attacks are distinct enough to let you play with combos a bit more. It would have been nice if there was a way to switch between characters mid-combo, or at least a way to slow down the action because sometimes it’s hard to follow where the character I’m controlling went amidst all the chaos.

What you want to pay attention to when playing is the enemy’s super armor bar and how to dodge their incoming attacks, as well-timed ones allow you to give a punishing counter.

At the end of each combat section, you will be rated for how well you did your combo and how much damage you managed to dish out in one go. Having a higher rating results in getting better GP (think of this as experience points) and gold. Very much like Odin Sphere (PS2, this one got a PS4 remake). The combat is fast and that’s what keeps it rather interesting, and sometimes this pace makes the gameplay lean toward the hectic side.

Now onto the village development side of the game, where you take on the role of a mayor and a city developer. This sounds like an interesting concept, but generally, this alternate side reminds me a lot of Clash of Clans, except you don’t have to wait for days to finish a building.

You start with several plots of land, and Tensura Isekai Chronicles gently guides you along to what to build next like an overbearing mother at your grade school talent show. So you pretty much have to build a farm, a canteen, and whatever they tell you to do to progress the game. Of course, you need to gather materials to be able to craft these structures, and that’s how the game naturally loops the building and combat aspects, textbook stuff.

Aside from these being your required objectives to proceed with the game, they also serve as Rimuru’s (this is the protagonist) stat boosters, which you can double-dip with if you visit one of the structures before heading out to a dungeon.

Later on, you can also build structures that passively train inactive members, produce items for trade, and more. These two systems loop with each other, ideally, but Tensura just didn’t make it feel flexible and rewarding enough to be engaging for me.

Content (2 / 5)

I have to say that Tensura Isekai Chronicles did something commendable by making a separate side story to build the game around. It makes it easier to keep the game’s events cohesive without worrying if what they make may disturb the canon of the series. What we do get is a character metaphor so on-the-nose that Kojima would be envious if he didn’t think of it first.

The side-story features a few new characters to the ensemble, where a powerful goblin named Kataki is out for revenge. You’d never guess his name meant revenge if you weren’t familiar with the Japanese language so thankfully he tells you that when you meet. He fails, and comes back stronger, making the story play out like you’re fighting your weekly bad guy in a Saturday morning cartoon show.

The game cycles you through a set of tasks that are your quests, these will vary between collecting item X, doing action Y, or slaying enemy Z. All of which gain you gold and GP. GP or Growth Points are used to learn and expand the passive skills that each character has. I truly do wonder why this system bothered existing when all these skills are stat-boosts for every character and each of them gets the same buffs. Why not just let these be character levels and spare me deciding what stats to increase? Why did I have to do bureaucratic work so that my party members know how to get stronger? If grinding is generic and repetitive, why do I have to do extra work for similar rewards across all characters?

Speaking of characters, there’s an abundance of them, especially for those who are a fan of the ogre characters from Tensura. It’s a bit of a shame that you don’t get a lot of opportunities to interact with these characters aside from a few side-quests that pad out the game time by a bit. Still, as the story progresses, they’re able to see the cast and their goofiness as well as how badass they are if you’re willing to let the cut scenes play. As for me, who has already stated that I’m not a fan of the series at all, I was comforted by the existence of a skip function.

Features (1 / 5)

I checked, and I double-checked. I can’t name any real features this game has. What I mean by features are usually extras you get out of the title without it being necessarily about the core gameplay. And unfortunately, I didn’t find anything, except maybe tutorials you can always revisit, and an auto-save function which really shows how I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here looking for something to bring up.

If anything, I’d be relieved to report that Tensura Isekai Chronicles ran stably and never crashed. I never experienced a bug at any point, big or small. I’ve seen smaller games mess up giving a clean gaming experience before. So at least I wasn’t wrestling with in-game bugs to move on to the next part.

Conclusion

So, there’s a trend lately, at least for Japanese developers, to change the direction of a game they’ve recently released or developed. Or simply shift an F2P live service to a retail game that’s playable offline. I’ve seen Capcom do this with Megaman X Dive and Level 5 with Megaton Musashi. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, and it’s perhaps a good alternative when compared to just straight-up shutting down a game, never to be seen or heard from again.

Tensura Isekai Chronicles seems to be of this nature, only it decided against being your usual mobile gacha game midway through development. The simplified graphics, controls and the tendency for the UI to be pretty invasive of screen space tell me this kind of story. Unfortunately, as you have probably guessed, I’ve had a rough time with this title. The IP doesn’t really make me like the game any better, and the gameplay is sorely lacking anything I can sink my teeth into.

It’s for this reason that I can’t recommend That Time I Was Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles. The most daring thing they’ve done with this game is try to charge 50 USD for it. Maybe with better controls, and a bit more content to play through, I might be able to recommend it to fans. But for now, I’d rather wait for a sale, if not avoid buying it right now.

That Time I Was Reincarnated as Slime: Isekai Chronicles might have a better incarnation next time. Scoring a 2 / 5.

It’s on Xbox, Playstation, PC and Switch.