Thank you Ghostlist LTD for sending us this game to review!

Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God is a really silly title for a really silly title. (See what I did there?) Here, the main character Pupuru is trying to graduate from high school, and she is suddenly chosen to complete an extra challenge, where she has to take on a dungeon by herself and retrieve a magic orb. When she gets to the top, she finds the orb – but a rabbit-like creature she names Kuu eats it right up! Her teacher, the poorly clothed Ms. Saffron (with unrealistically massive cleavage) does not believe her story and kicks her out of school.

Despondent, she does not know what to do – until she arrives at her favorite curry restaurant. She sees the huge chain store opening up nearby, and her small town favorite Smile Curry has no customers! She promises to find new recipes to attract back his lost customers. She then hears about the Legendary Magic Curry – which she determines to find so she can help out Smile Curry.

Sorcery Saga is proof that if something is cute enough, it will find an audience. And man is this game cute. The art style, especially the 2D hand drawn art during which conversations happen, is simply incredible. The characters, and their associated voice acting, are superb and adorable. The character dialogue is also hilarious. I also loved that nobody cursed – but they did use phrases like ‘darn it all to heck’ which I found funny.

The meat of the game is actually a Mystery Dungeon-style dungeon crawler. For those who have not played that kind of game, it’s a top-down map with a square grid. Each attack or movement action causes everything on the map – both you and your enemies – to also perform one action. Your main goal is to look for each exit, as well as any loot you may find along the way to make you stronger. In this game, each time you die, or even start a new dungeon, your character loses all levels, and you only keep items if you complete or safely escape a dungeon at specified exits. Even if you do safely escape early, you still lose all of your levels and have to start the dungeon over.

If that wasn’t bad enough, save scumming (the process of reloading saves if you fail) is impossible without taking advantage of Windows – that is, alt+tabbing while playing and copying around save files. I did this because this game can be incredibly tedious otherwise. Every few levels I made a suspend save, which saves during the dungeon. Then, I copied the SorcerySaga00.SAV file out of the Documents/My Games/Ghostlight Ltd/Sorcery Saga directory, and copied it to a temp location (my desktop in this case). By doing this, you won’t lose everything when you die. You can store things in your room, but you typically take your best weapons with you. If you die but your pet Kuu does not, you thankfully keep your equipped weapon and armor. If you are both dead, you lose everything.

Generally the game is pretty easy, if you are careful, but literally one step in the wrong direction and you can lose everything – or at least it can feel that way as you lose pretty much all permanent progression. For example, one time Kuu, your pet rabbit-like thing who can eat literally anything, had a status of 'So HUNGRY' – which means he will eat anything he walks over on the floor, no exceptions. Well, I was fighting an enemy that knocked my level 19 sword out of my hand. I took one step... and he ate it. Poof. Gone. Now, there literally is no other way to recover such a powerful weapon other than grinding for hours in the normal or grinding dungeons, of which there are a couple, or reloading a save (which is what I did, via the save file method mentioned above). The dungeon crawling is fun, and the bosses are not too difficult, but they are quite long and can be quite tedious.

The story, on the other hand, is charming and wonderful.  As Pupuru tries to explore dungeons in search of the ultimate ingredients, she meets more and more people who try to help her, or get in her way.  The interactions are cute and sometimes hilarious.  The writing and localization is absolutely top notch, and very well done.  The PC port is also pretty much perfect; I don’t recall any crashes or performance issues, on either my high end PCs or my GPD Win 2, which ran the game just fine.

The music is very good and fitting, and appropriately goofy. The voice acting is great, though all in Japanese. The graphics and art are wonderful where it is hand drawn, though the dungeon part is rendered, and is just serviceable – neither good nor bad. Overall, the mood is very lighthearted and charming.

Morally, the game is lighthearted and silly, but some of the jokes veer into suggestive territory, including things like ‘It’s like he’s eye-humping me!’ and ‘Those with neat, compact boobies can still enjoy life, right?’ Jokes also talk about others being perverted or a flirt. A few of the women are massively endowed, and some show that off in a way that is completely unrealistic. If someone were to attempt to look like her teacher or another character Cliora, they would probably get slapped with public nudity charges. Puni’s outfit is also ridiculous and manages to not cover anything and not show anything at the same time. It’s really strange.

Other than outfits, it’s mostly clean. There is animated violence, as you and enemies smack each other with weapons. You can also cast spells, and have magic performed on you. Enemies include various humanoids, fish creatures, and magicians that carry skulls and such. Spells include fire and lightning strikes, and other similar things. Of course there are deities, and the Great Curry God is one such one that you can meet when you beat the game. A character is one of his shrine maidens as well.

Overall, Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God has a cute and incredibly memorable set of characters built around an average at best dungeon crawler. If you are looking for a dungeon crawler that keeps you wanting to come back for more, this probably isn’t it. (If you do find yourself liking that part, dungeons are randomly generated and can always be revisited, so there is plenty of replay value.) But if you love cute artwork and funny dialogue, this game has charm to spare.