Illusion Connect – 2020 First Impressions and Thoughts

So I just tried out Illusion Connect.. ’cause not only did it just release a couple days ago, but I had several people request I play it.
And you know what? I was not at all disappointed. This is a lotta fun.

You start off with the option to either participate in the tutorials or skip them. Having played quite a few mobile games naturally I opted to skip them.
Unfortunately that just skipped the introduction to the game and left me with a half hour of tutorials still.
After making my way through the tutorials I learn that I’m some type of “Commander” and I get to command my own harem of waifu’s. Literally I’d recruited 29 odd women and one guy. Naturally I put the guy on guard duty and took the 29 waifu’s out to save the world.

Honestly, the graphics are really good. They’re super cute and the character models – both in battles with their chibi animation style and outside of battles with their portraits are absolutely beautiful to look at.
The animations look great, both physical movement and abilities.
Admittedly though you don’t have the option of using any abilities, when deploying your waifu’s in battle you choose where to place them on a grid and they go about using their own abilities without any input from the player.
This makes combat a little less engaging than it otherwise could’ve been but honestly it wasn’t bad.
Your characters auto-attack after being placed down but each have their own strengths and weaknesses so being aware of this when selecting who is going to be in your party is crucial to the success of various encounters, especially as they grow more difficult.

As you’d expect of a game like this there are various Chapters, and each Chapter has their own selection of Missions. Each Mission is either story-related, having you sit through lines of text learning the history of the world, the characters and what you’re actually doing.
Otherwise you fight in instanced battles that consist of a group of enemies occupying the opposite side of the grid.
The story itself actually isn’t bad. I was pleasantly surprised to see how dark and depressing it was as these are my types of games.

Translations were pretty good, the game itself was a lot of fun, the combat looked great but was admittedly a little less engaging than I would’ve liked.. but man this was a good game that was an incredible amount of fun.
While it’s nothing groundbreaking, nothing special, it’s something new to spend some time in and if you enjoy these types of games – you’ll likely find this more than worth the time invested.