[Ecchi]Kotodama: 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa

This is one of those weird games I know of, but have been kind of dodging. This was on a good sale, is short, and I wanted a match 3/puzzle game before the end of the year.

Kotodama is a match 3 puzzle game where the characters(5 girls, 1 guy) lose clothing as you win. It’s also a Groundhog Day esque mystery. Eventually.

Story-5

So it starts with you already contracted to a demon who gives you the power of kotodama, but not the usual power of super suggestion/command that most things call kotodama. All yours can do is make people answer a question truthfully for about 3 sentences, and the ability to do that gets stronger as you collect interesting words in a book. So instead of a words of power(the usual meaning), it’s the power of words that you use.

So before getting into the actual game’s story, I want to mention that it makes the never happening prequel and sequel more interesting sounding then this actual game. Your character transferred in their senior year of high school because they kept looking into things and was getting weird looks, that’s all you are given. That’s why initially they don’t want anything to do with this game’s plot. There’s something there that sounds fun, detective protags are great. To bad you don’t really play one as the demon and super power kind of answer everything you do. That and the twitter knock off that is basically the most important thing for reaching the true ending. Reading the in-twitter in this game is required to make some content happen.

As for the sequel, this game’s ending solves the mystery but opens up actual bigger overall events, that never have been covered and likely would be more compelling then the actual story.

Anyway, first day of school. You get paired with the occult club member in your class for your tour of the school and against your will, get the seven school mysteries dropped on you. Being a naturally curious person, you end tagging along and finding some pretty simple explanations for them, but also the people in this school are stressed out or something. Like they keep flipping out and getting these crazy eyes thing.

Anyway, you reach the fifth mystery. Someone’s curse over committing suicide. You find some evidence and go to the roof to talk to the people involved, but the main member of the occult club lies about that evidence. Credits.

…Not. The game loops as someone wants you to find the real answer. That’s the rest of the game, make events play out to that person’s desire, and don’t die. Learn some more about what’s really happening.

Gameplay-3

The first choice of the game matters 0. I don’t think your gender is ever referenced in dialogue and there is no content unique to either gender, so just pick whatever and whatever name and go.

So the core game is a Vn, with match-3 “boss” fights to get the truth. To power up your matched icons, you collect words through just seeing them in the VN section which gives the 5 different icons xp and eventually they level.

So before explaining the match 3 stuff, I have to bring up that you have to see a fake out credits twice and start at the beginning of the game before it really starts. Until then everything is on rails and while you never get all that much control, there are fail states and things to find in each chapter, especially more words for more xp.

Anyway, the actual match-3 is weird. You don’t slide the icons, you tap and they go to the top of the board, shooting the rest of the column down one. If you tap the top of a column that piece just changes to another. This makes the actual puzzle nature of it odd. Not exactly difficult, but it took some getting used to with how different thinking about moves is. Honestly though, match-3 tends to feel more luck driven to me then it likely actually is, most of my wins never felt like I was the one who did it. Instead the game just spawned what it needed to let me win. Which it almost always did, I only lost like 3 matches total.

Each character you fight has a different favored icon, and getting that is bonus against them and adds to your get more turns bar, a risk versus reward thing where you rub their body with one of 4 items to get more turns or trigger that characters make the match harder thing, which are the only things that make each match unique at all. Either you use the 90% works 1 turn+, or the +5 turns 30% worker, or the two in between. That’s about it for unusual mechanics, beyond that if you match enough stuff you get some special icons to help clear and if you find the special word in each chapter, the junk blocks become their own special icon worth a hefty amount of points. Most of these are locked behind the final match of the chapter though, and at least 2 of them tied to a rerun loop of the entire game.

The actual goal of the game is figure out the mystery, and to do this you mostly just find all the words you can while solving the mysteries all the way, unlike your first read through. If you reach any ending but the true ending, you reset to the first chapter with your words and some slight changes based on certain story benchmarks. Then you replay all the matches as you can’t skip, which while not a huge time investment makes the actual intended way to play feel tedious.

I do want to point out, that for a game that should be easy to make a guide to everything, every guide only cares about achievements. So a few extras just get completely missed, namely one character ending off the true and a match you have to play to unlock the final bonus cg. I ended up having to do an entire extra run of the game following a video guide to get the ending. This isn’t helped by the fact that to check for the endings you have to do the final bosses levels and then reach the point of the game you cannot restart from as the true end locks you in and doesn’t allow you to reset the game anymore.

Lewdness-3

Most of the lewd content is the playing of the match-3. Our demon familiar mentions to imagine stripping layers off of something to use your power, your character goes with clothing. Each stage is cut into 4 clothing layers, and each character(5 girls, 1 boy) has 4 different underwear options for some reasons. Some of these are different sets they wear on the same day… Beating the match basically makes them orgasm and you get to see up to almost their nipples of them naked.

As for cgs, the core game has no lewd cgs. Literally all but one of them is going for creepy. The game does have 6 bonus cgs for beating the hard modes in the freeplay screen, and in here you get a swimsuit shot of the entire female cast and another one of the male cast. Also some slightly wet uniforms cg and a girls in a bed but fully clothed cg. That’s about it.

Final Thoughts

The concept is fine. The execution is lacking. Having to replay every match on your 3rd+ playthrough kills the experimental feeling of the game where you are hunting for the right answers, and makes it a constant annoyance of having to redo the same level with maybe a slight power up if you got lucky.

I also think they needed an earlier hook. The 7 mysteries themselves aren’t that interesting and the first answer is bland. It takes until the 5th story for the game to finally try to hook it’s players and make the demon pact thing feel actually important at all.

It’s okay. Closer to bad then good. Not remarkable for being bad either. It just is. In a way it really should have leaned harder into either its sex appeal or silliness. It takes itself to seriously outside the puzzle game for the stripping to feel like it belongs.

Save for Kotodama The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa

Save has all cgs and freeplays. It also has saves to the epilogues and to the two main endings with all words found for easier matches.

Gameplay: 3/10 Eroticness: 3/10 Story: 5/10

Completion:

Beat the game using a true end guide for all character story epilogues for voice stuff, reload and get the other ending to get the rest of the matches into freeplay. Then beat hard in each character’s freeplay mode for all cgs. It’s time consuming, not hard.