KonoSuba – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire!
Developer: mages.
Publisher: PQube Games
Platforms: PlayStation 4 (Reviewed), Switch, PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $49.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
When it comes to light novel series out of Japan, the isekai genre has been a flooded market for well over a decade to the point that a number of extremely strange adaptations have been made, especially in recent years. However there was one such series that managed to be one of the first to take a more humorous and parody styled approach to the isekai genre in the form of KonoSuba. This series flourished both in Japan and the West with an incredibly popular anime series with a third season currently in production and a fully translated and released in English set of light novels. Longtime fans of the franchise have likely been eager to see the various misadventures of Kazuma, Megumin, Darkness, and Aqua in new forms of media, especially since the novels finished their English release in 2022 and now PQube is here to deliver a new story that relishes in the series’ unique brand of humor and some solid fan service. KonoSuba – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! approach to a visual novel is one that fans will love but may find a tad bit frustrating and certainly one that only fans will appreciate.
Story
One day while out on a quest to eliminate a number of monsters Kazuma and the rest of the group find themselves struggling as usual. Megumin has already used her Explosion magic, Aqua is panicking, and Darkness is flailing around as little more than a tank while Kazuma does his best to dispatch the targets. After managing to survive the situation, Megumin reveals that she has found a strange black tablet and red gemstone on the side of the path and, with the help of Wiz, learns that the strange black tablet can be used to create clothing with the help of magical items and other supplies. This seemingly innocuous clothes creating slab is nearly abandoned until the next day when the real issue with the slab appears in two forms.
Aqua, Megumin, and Kazuma find that Darkness is no longer acting like a massive masochist and has instead started taking a stern tone with the rest of the group, acting more like a sadist commanding them around and to make matters worse, Sena from the city’s government appears and accuses Kazuma and the rest of the gang of being thieves as the magical tablet belongs to a noble that has reported it stolen the day before. The unknown noble is willing to forgive their “apparent” theft if they create clothing that he desires within a certain timeframe but therein lies the other issue. Upon reading the fine print hidden on the mysterious slab the group learns that every time it is used to create a set of clothes it will randomly curse one member of the party that used it, twisting their personality to often the complete opposite of their usual selves, revealing the truth as to why Darkness is now ready to drive the group into corporal punishment compared to gushing over being verbally abused or used as bait. With their party’s personalities and their personal freedoms on the line, Kazuma and the rest must work as hard as they can to reach these deadlines all while managing their ever-changing personalities by fulfilling both the physical and mental desires the affected person has.
KonoSuba: Love For These Clothes Of Desire! is written as something of a side-story to the original novel and takes place after the second season of the anime, meaning that characters such as Wiz, Vanir, and others will appear so anyone who hasn’t watched at least the anime will feel like they are lost throughout most of the game as it does not make any effort to really build or explain the story for newcomers other than having the premise be ridiculously humorous and showing how helpless most of the cast is right from the get go. That being said, any fan of KonoSuba should almost immediately know that they are going to be in for a good time as the writers for the game have managed to nail the humor and characters perfectly here. A lot of this enjoyment comes of course from being able to see these characters in a brand new scenario separate from the novels/anime but also because it allows for a perfectly explainable collection of “what-if” style interactions. Thanks to the curse of the stone, all of the characters including Kazuma will suffer from personality shifts that will have them act completely different from how fans are used to often leading to some truly hilarious laugh out loud sequences and some wonderful consequences afterwards.
Throughout the game players will make various choices and interact with the various female characters and either raise or lower their affection depending on the choices made or whether or not they are given an outfit to try on. These dialogue choices are generally obvious in nature and there is even a readily available “affection meter” on the pause screen as well as the ability to quick save and quick load should players make a mistake. The title features a rather surprising amount of endings, two each for the main girls Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness, and a single ending for Wiz, Chris, Yunyun, and even Sena. These endings are rather meaty in size and offer some rather enjoyable scenes in their own right, feeling natural within the setting of the series while also offering plenty of replay value. In fact, the amount of optional content throughout KonoSuba: Love for These Clothes of Desire is shockingly high as players will stumble across unique scenes that can only appear when certain tasks or jobs are done a number of times or assigned to certain party members, including ones that might be terrible at them. These scenes usually don’t affect the affection gauge but are enjoyable nonetheless and stumbling across them is always a pleasant surprise even if actually finding them can be a pain.
Gameplay
KonoSuba: Love for These Clothes of Desire is a split between a visual novel and time management game, giving players a bit of extra intractability with the title beyond a usual visual novel where usually only choices matter. Every time players are given a set of clothing they must make, they are given a time limit where they must then schedule out a three day set of jobs followed by a day of rest/character interaction and a fifth day for possibly creating clothing. This means that every phase is five days long, so players will need to plan accordingly as the deadline can approach quite quickly if they aren’t careful. Assigning individual party members to small jobs will provide rewards if they are successful with certain characters preferring specific jobs while quests involve the entire party and can involve hunting monsters or gathering materials with better success rates depending on how long they are on the quest for.
This means that players may want to play a bit fast and loose with the save and load system to make sure they manage to actually get all the materials they need within a time limit. This is because while every chapter has a plot-focused piece of clothing to create, there is often one or more optional pieces of clothing that players can also craft that are only available in certain chapters and can be used to unlock brand new scenes when given to a character and raise their favorability as well. There are even special items players can purchase using the in-game money “Eris” to unlock additional CG variations of some of these optional outfits. While creating extra costumes isn’t necessary, the new scenes and temporary personality shifts that accompany them are well worth it for any fan of the franchise and trying to play optimally can be a bit frustrating, especially since success and failure for some jobs/quests is seemingly random.
Of course, players don’t need to try and focus so hard on trying to obtain everything at once as the game does offer the usual visual novel elements of being able to skip previously read text to zip through the game faster on replay and focus on obtaining new endings or new costumes they weren’t able to previously. It is worth noting that alongside the randomness of some failures and the hidden nature of some scenes, the game does get a bit grindy when it comes to gathering materials. This isn’t too much of an issue as there are usually small scenes with Kazuma talking to different members of the cast every week but it can be a bit repetitive. There are also a rather surprising amount of spelling errors throughout the game as well, something that isn’t too obnoxious but is noticeable when they appear.
Audio & Visuals
The visual novel makes use of the anime’s take on the characters and features a wide variety of portraits for each character including a few when they are wearing special outfits. These portraits are expressive and are bright and colorful, fitting the aesthetic of the anime. The numerous CG scenes are wonderfully designed and often filled with various types of fan-service, be it Darkness wearing Dominatrix gear, Megumin in a school outfit, or even Yunyun wearing a cat maid costume, there is tons of fan service here and it is all presented gorgeously.
It is worth noting that PQube has not provided an English dub for the game but all of the Japanese voice actors have returned to reprise their roles here, meaning any fan of the franchise will be able to feel right at home with these characters as they talk to one another throughout the visual novel. This is an extra special touch especially given how the personality shifts give us a new unseen side of some characters, with the aforementioned sadistic Darkness being the best early example. The entire voice cast has handled their characters expertly here which makes sense given how long they’ve performed as them. The background music is fairly standard fair for a visual novel but the opening theme is certainly quite catchy even if it is only heard once outside of viewing it through the gallery.
Overall
KonoSuba – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! feels like a natural side-story within the grander tale of the franchise and gives fans a chance to see their favorite characters act in new and unusual ways all while providing the series’ signature humor and wonderful visuals to match. There is fanservice galore but the title also doesn’t really explore much beyond this element and the humor involved. The gameplay mechanics are straightforward and a bit on the repetitive side which is unfortunate and anyone unfamiliar with the series will be left in the dark, but those looking to experience more of their favorite KonoSuba characters will find this a great way to do so.
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