Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time Reviews
Riddled with extremely tedious design decisions and frustrating technical hiccups, not even a believing heart can save this trainwreck.
The best thing I can say about Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is the good production value. Visually, the game looks very nice. Every line of dialogue is voiced. There are even short animated cutscenes every now and then. But this is all surface stuff. Dive into the game, and it becomes apparent very quickly that most of the focus on the game was just making it look good. It’s a game that barely manages to hold your attention for several hours stretched to almost 30. At a $60 price tag, I’d give this game a hard pass.
This could have been a good game with better choices, but instead it’s difficult to recommend to even the most rabid Little Witch Academia fan, much less the broader RPG-playing public.
Fans of Little Witch Academia will find something to do here in Chamber of Time. There's an original story from TRIGGER that is genuinely enjoyable and the interactions between the likeable cast are all great. It's just a shame that every element of gameplay is so massively flawed in so many ways. The groundhog day style repeating story was so promising and yet it has been produced in such a terrible fashion. There are plenty of good elements to the dungeon crawling, yet the levels themselves are dull and frustrating. A big disappointment.
Even hardcore fans of the series will struggle with this, and it's a shame because it looks so bloody good.
A good premise that just doesn't match up to it's execution, much like one of Akko's spells.
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is a disappointment.
There’s a lot of potential in Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time, the vast majority of which goes tragically unused. Though Chamber of Time looks and sounds gorgeous, the shallow gameplay, repetitive and needlessly complex missions, and framerate drops make it difficult to recommend to anyone who isn’t a diehard fan of the anime.
Verdict… do I really still need to repeat everything? I think not! So let’s just take this time to talk about replay value. This one in particular is saved for last so we could end on a positive note because I’m not trying to pick a fight here “Akko!” So when it comes to the game’s replay value I find it good because of infinite dungeons and PVP mode, while I never had the opportunity to try the PVP mode, it will be one thing that people may or may not go for but despite all that it’s one feature that could be enjoyed one way or the other.
While Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time's repetitive and sometimes dull gameplay is a let-down, you've got to appreciate the amount of heart and detail that's been put into it.
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is the video game adaptation you were not expecting and won't care about if you are not an hardcore fan of the anime. The game is a weird mix between an old-school 2D side-scrolling and a PS2 era RPG but does not stand out in any of the genre it tries to tackle. However, only once you forget about the core gameplay and simply wander around the aisle of the Academia speaking with Akko's little friends, then you can really start enjoying Chamber of Time. Not for what it is, but for what it is not : a visual novel set within the world of Little Witch Academia starring the cutest hero of all time, Akko!
Review in French | Read full review
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time looked interesting after the announcement, but turned out to be mediocre. It is unfortunate that Bandai Namco buried it in the forest of mistakes and shortcomings.
Review in Russian | Read full review
The fanservice (not that kind) Little Witch Academia Chamber of Time provides can be ever-so-pleasing. Unfortunately, it's not enough to excuse a rather dull game.
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is heartbreaking. I'm a huge fan of the original anime, and this game does a tremendous job of capturing the heart and personality of that world. Characters look and sound incredible, and getting to explore their school and experience new adventures with them is a blessing. Unfortunately, obtaining that blessing requires a two-mile crawl on your knees through the jagged glass and thorny ivy that is the busted, broken, and simply not fun gameplay of Chamber of Time. Battles are aggravating and exploration is mind-numbing. For as brilliant as the narrative and artistic achievements of Chamber of Time are, it's weighed down by unpolished game design choices that simply make it no fun to actually play at all.
It becomes readily apparent that those who will enjoy Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time the most will be existing fans of the series. The storyline and new animations are worth checking out, especially since the second season is still a ways out. Even then, they may be hard-pressed to deal with both the tedious exploration and the unreliable combat. For them, the game may be worth getting for cheap. For everyone else, this should be a pass.
If on one hand we appreciate the care from Studio Trigger in narrating the story and the animated cutscenes, on the other we can't ignore the rough gameplay and its limits. The game has still a lot to gift to the fans of the show, but it's hard to suggest the game to anyone else.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is a product made for the fans but they'd rather watch again the show than play this.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
If you're a Little Witch Academia fan, you may enjoy it even if for the nostalgia. If not, I'm not too sure you'll enjoy it much. I find it pretty hard to think platform fighter fans would jump into this game and find it fun. It's very aimed at the fans of the anime and I can see that the developers hoped that simple fact would draw in the sales numbers.
Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is average at best, but it might hold some value for the fans of the franchise.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
It is hard to recommend this game to anyone else because of its bland environmens and repetitive events, Little Witch Academia is a game that is aimed at the series fans first and foremost despite some unique designs that we liked.
Review in Arabic | Read full review