htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary Review

Nippon Ichi is a creator of niche games and is most famous for their Disgaea series, a strategy role-playing game that focuses on grinding and its insane damage numbers. Once in a while, they create other games and IPs, such as Phantom Brave, Zettai Hero and La Pucelle. That leads to htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary, a game with a confusing name and some frustrating gameplay.

The main character of the game is Mion, who wakes up to find herself in some strange ruins, with amnesia. Joining her to help her escape from the ruins if a firefly named Lumen, although it's not known why it is helping Mion. Also helping Mion is a dark firefly named Umbra, but as with Lumen, its reasons are unknown. It's not exactly the most interesting story and it can be confusing as well, plus you get little tidbits when you find the Memory Fragments, which are something akin to collectibles. There is a story lurking there, but it's up to the player to do some detective work to piece it together.

While Mion is the main character in the game, you, as the player, do not directly control her. Instead, you have complete control over Lumen, who you can move around the screen with the touchscreen. Moving Lumen to either side of Mion will make her move in that direction, sort of like dangling a carrot in front of a turtle. However, Mion is quite fragile and many things can kill her, some of which are obvious and others that are not.

Naturally, things like toxic waste or being crushed or even falling from a great height will kill her, but there's something else lurking in the shadows (literally) that you need to be careful of. Shadows are a large part of the game, as there are enemies in the shadows that will kill Mion if they touch her own shadow.

However, lurking in the shadow is a friendly "face," who goes by the name of Umbra. This firefly thrives in the darkness and as such, can only move in the darkness. Switches that can be hit with Lumen, can also be hit by controlling Umbra. Using both Lumen and Umbra, you need to guide Mion through the ruins, avoiding enemies and any other hazards you come across, which can be difficult, given the game's controls.

As already mentioned, the touchscreen is used to control Lumen, the bright firefly, who will control how Mion moves, while the touchpad on the back of the Vita is used to control Umbra. The only problem with this is that in some portions of the game, you will need to see what you're doing and you will need to be quick, so having a finger take up the screen can be troublesome.

Luckily, you can go into the options and switch the control scheme to use the analog stick, as well as the face buttons. The bad thing is that the controls still feel somewhat imprecise, making the game more challenging than it already is. For example, there are some mazes in the game that require precise movement with Lumen, where touching the sides will fry the little firefly. A slight flick of the analog stick will send it moving more than necessary, making it so you will likely touch the walls more than necessary.

It's even more complicated whenever you need to have Mion move a crate or box from one place to another. When Mion attaches herself to one, the only way to remove her sticky hands from it involves either pushing it off a ledge or climbing on top of it and then stepping down. It doesn't appear that there isn't any other way, such as pressing a button, to make Mion let go of an object. The worst part of this is that there's an entire boss devoted to that mechanic.

Despite the control issues, The Firefly Diary is still a puzzle game in the end and it does have a few challenging ones. Of course, the controls might make those challenging puzzles more annoying and that's my main complaint with the game. The controls sort of act like an artificial difficulty for the game, which prevents a beautiful looking game from becoming that much better.

Speaking of looks, The Firefly Diary does look amazing, especially on the Vita's screen. The game has a sort of hand-drawn feel to it and everything moves together very well, especially when you see shadow effects as you move around Lumen. In fact, the best thing about this game is that it looks so pleasing on the eyes.

Unfortunately, the same can't be said about the audio section of the game, as there isn't really much in the ways of music in the game, except for a few choice spots. So, pretty much throughout the entire game, you're stuck with what seems like noise in the background, as well as the sound effects of the area you're in. It provides a very minimalistic approach to the game's sound, which fits, but is still lacking in something.

For a puzzle game, you are looking at something in the ballpark of 8-10 hours to get through the story for the first time. It might last you more, depending on how many times you die (and you will die a lot). Outside of that, you might spend a few extra hours trying to get all of the Memory Fragments, as some are very well hidden and will require a different approach than simply going through the level as is.

Overall, htoL#NiQ: The Firefly Diary is a beautiful game that mainly suffers from a lack of precise controls. If the game provided tighter controls, it would have definitely improved it, as there is a base for something good there. Should you push your way through, which will be most likely because of wanting to see exactly what happens in the end, unless you get too frustrated before that.

A downloadable copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the Playstation Vita.