When I first started up Little Witch Nobeta, I thought that this would be a fun and breezy little game that I can play to unwind after a long day. After getting comfortable, I played the first stage and thought that the game was simple for the most part with a dash of challenge here and there. Then, I came upon the first boss and everything changed. Within mere seconds I was dead and my entire evening went from relaxing to teeth-grinding intensity. By the end of the evening, I hadn’t made much progress and I felt quite defeated, but perhaps that is a good thing.

Little Witch Nobeta is referred to as a 3D Action Shooting game on its Steam page. To define it as such is underrepresenting the overall core aspects of the game. Does it have action? Yes. Does it have shooting? Yes. Does it have more than that? Absolutely! The boss fights, and eventually the basic minions thrown around the stages, make this game feel like a Souls-like in terms of difficulty. Could this be because I played the game at the highest difficulty? Probably, but there are quite a few other things that give this game the flair of a Souls-like that we are familiar with.

The first thing that I noticed was the enemy difficulty, which I have already mentioned. The basic enemies in the first stage are pushovers for the most part and aren’t able to take a lot of punishment. Once you complete the first boss fight, all of that goes out the window. The enemies become more intelligent and are better placed and grouped up a lot more so that it takes much longer to get through them. While this proved to be something that I wasn’t expecting, it came as a welcome surprise since it gave me something to look forward to.

The second thing that I noticed about Little Witch Nobeta’s Souls-like inspiration was the use of spots on the ground for tutorials. While there aren’t any hint spots left behind by other players that have gone through the levels, the spots that are there allow you to learn the basic mechanics and controls of the game. They even provide you with hints that can help you in a new area. However, they aren’t entirely foolproof.

There was at least one instance where I was stuck on a puzzle and had no idea how to proceed. After seeking help for the puzzle online, it became clear to me that many people who had played the game became confused by the puzzles because the game simply didn’t tell them about the ability required to solve it. This seems like an odd thing for the developers to do and I would’ve expected them to have remedied the situation before the Switch release dropped.

One of the things that I enjoyed was the fact that there are no English voice lines. While some people may want it, I believe that this helps cement the game as being a love note of sorts to anime fans who are on the side of subs over dubs. While I am not educated in the Japanese language, it does appear from conversations and other reviews that the translations are done well, to the point where the full range of emotion is translated to English ears. It would probably be interesting to see how an English voice cast would’ve handled the work. However, I understand why the studio didn’t bother with it.

Overall, I believe that Little Witch Nobeta is the perfect game for people looking for a perfect mixture of anime goodness and Souls-like combat. Is it going to fully fill you up in those two categories? I doubt it, as the game doesn’t seem to dive deep enough into either of those categories in order to make something that truly stands out amongst the crowd. However, it is still good enough that people could get easily sucked into the game under the pretense of anime goodness.

They also could walk away with a sense of pride for finishing a game that had just the right amount of difficulty. If you want to look at more Switch games, make sure to check out Alexx Aplin’s Bayonetta 3 review right here.

A Nintendo Switch Review Copy of Little Witch Nobeta was provided by Idea Factory for this Review.

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Little Witch Nobeta

49.99

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Range of Difficulty
• Optional Tutorial Hints
• Good English Subtitles

Cons

• Some Aspects Unclear
• Sudden Shift in Difficulty
• Very Expensive