DanMachi – MEMORIA FREESE – 2020 First Impressions and Thoughts

So when I downloaded this game I was under the impression that it was called “DanMachi – MEMORIA FREEZE,” and up until this very moment.. I hadn’t realized it was “MEMORIA FREESE,” I’m not sure if that’s a supposed to be “freeze” with an “s” or I just don’t know what Freese means, but.. yeah I feel stupid.
Anyway, the game – which I’m just going to refer to as DanMachi henceforth throws you into the game with an introduction right out of the Anime – which I’m a huge fan of by the way.
You’re given tutorials you can’t skip, cutscenes you can’t skip, and then you’re finally, after several minutes of unskippable tutorials given control over your character.

And I mean physical control over your character. Albeit the control you have is highly limited. From what I played through, I could only run horizontally, left and right, through a linear dungeon.
There was no vertical movement present, which highly limited what I could do and where I could go, but I mean at least I could move a little bit, right?
The game progresses through your typical chapter and mission system: There are chapters, and each chapter has its selection of 10 or more missions for you to make your way through. The final mission of each chapter takes the form of a boss battle, with boss battles being slightly more difficult than normal.
I do want to note though that after completing 3 or 4 chapters and over 40 missions, the game felt very repetitive. I hadn’t really encountered any kind of variety in terms of enemies, and each battle consisted of 1-shottable enemies.
Even boss fights were over before they even got their turn. I expected this from the early stages of the game, don’t get me wrong, but I made it through 4 Chapters so I’d expected a slight increase in difficulty.
But that wasn’t really an issue. I just felt like a more challenging game would’ve made it more fun and would’ve incentivized actively battling yourself instead of letting the game auto-play for you.

The story follows through what I watched in the Anime so it wasn’t anything new for me, and the translations were actually a little rough at times. But not enough where I couldn’t follow what was going on. They were just kinda.. stiff. As were the characters.
The character models looked pretty cute though, and the portraits looked fantastic, like they were ripped right outta the Anime.
The caves – dungeons I entered were all pretty much the same thing, just differently colored, interestingly enough.

Speaking of battles earlier though, I’d forgotten to mention that this is turn-based. You select an ability from your characters’ repertoire of learned skills and select a target to attack.
The abilities looked pretty good. Nothing amazing, but enough where I can see myself being entertained while playing.. if I didn’t have it auto-battle for me, not because it was easier, but purely because it was.. well, not challenging.

Overall this is kind of a faithful interpretation of the Anime. I had some fun playing through it but wouldn’t dedicate time to it long-term. Not because it’s bad, but because it isn’t as good as some other games I’ve played that take up my time otherwise!