When comparing Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time vs Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition, the Slant community recommends Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition for most people. In the question“What are the best PS4 (PlayStation 4) games?” Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition is ranked 51st while Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is ranked 150th. The most important reason people chose Devil May Cry 4: Special Edition is:
You'll immediately notice how nice it feels to attack the enemies with each slash, strike and shot having an impact behind it. Enemies will flinch, get thrown back and get suspended mid-air from your attacks, making it feel like you're always the dominant force. It's especially amusing seeing an enemy flail about and slamming it into the ground with your demonic arm. Some of the stylistic elements add fun as well. The prime example is Nero's greatsword the Red Queen, which is equipped with a motorcycle-like gear shift. You can use the gear shift mid-combo to add a flame effect to your sword. This increases your damage and the range of your combos and also looks very nice. It's especially awesome to see your character ascend in a whirlwind of flames.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Funny story premise of the protagonist trapping her academy in a time continuum
The basis of the story is entertaining in how silly it is. The main character, a young witch named Akko, is so clumsy and irresponsible that she manages to accidentally get her magic academy stuck in a time continuum. She tries to solve the problem with her friends, who seem to be the only other ones who don't notice that the school is stuck living out the exact same day over and over again. It's funny seeing the other NPCs act like all is well when things are clearly wrong, and it's even funnier seeing how hopeless Akko is at figuring out the whole conundrum. The game never takes itself too seriously, giving you the chance to laugh over Akko's antics and the absurdity of the situation.
Pro Fun and flashy beat 'em up-style combat
Combat is satisfyingly fun with lots of spectacle. Playing as Akko with her group of witch friends, you delve into dungeons within the magical academy. Sidescrolling your way through dungeons, you use your wand to fire off colorful magic abilities against the hordes of goblins, skeletons, and other monsters. Enemies are relentless, filling up the screen with their presence as you fight back with quick bursts of spells like a beat 'em up game. Everything looks and feels great, keeping things exciting for plenty of hours of dungeon crawling.
Pro Accessible to newcomers who haven't watched the anime
Even if you haven't watched the Little Witch Academia anime, you won't be lost. From the beginning, the game introduces you to Akko's friends by showing you key scenes from the anime that give context to each character. The slower pace at the start also goes a long way to introduce you to the world that you're in, making sure that you really know who everyone is and how the time and magic lore works. You don't have to spend hours catching up on the source material; you can jump right into Chamber of Time and understand what's going on.
Pro Great anime visuals
The 2.5D art style and animations during cutscenes are wonderful. Characters look amazing, animated in natural ways and drawn with bright colors that stand out from the backgrounds of the school corridors and classrooms. Everyone's personalities shine through in their designs as well, with calm, collected characters looking put-together and in control, and more gregarious characters like Akko gesturing wildly or making funny expressions. Chamber of Time is a lot like an anime ported to a game, pulling off a unique and charming visual style.
Pro Fun combat
You'll immediately notice how nice it feels to attack the enemies with each slash, strike and shot having an impact behind it. Enemies will flinch, get thrown back and get suspended mid-air from your attacks, making it feel like you're always the dominant force. It's especially amusing seeing an enemy flail about and slamming it into the ground with your demonic arm.
Some of the stylistic elements add fun as well. The prime example is Nero's greatsword the Red Queen, which is equipped with a motorcycle-like gear shift. You can use the gear shift mid-combo to add a flame effect to your sword. This increases your damage and the range of your combos and also looks very nice. It's especially awesome to see your character ascend in a whirlwind of flames.
Pro Great soundtrack
Most of the battle music has the lyrical styling of progressive rock while mixing in dark electronica guitar riffs. It matches the rhythm and speed of the battles really well, spurring on your combos and devastating attacks.
The exploration sections and cutscenes have an entirely different style of music. It ranges from divine vocals accompanied with organ music to eerie pieces with harp and piano sounds creating a bone-chilling ambience.
Pro Highest level of combat depth in any hack and slash game
An open-ended cancelling system (Jump Cancelling) stacked with individual character mechanics (Dante styles and style/weapon switching, Nero ACT and parries, Vergil being Vergil, Lady and Trish are the weakest in terms of combo-ability of the 5 but you can still style with them) and system physics create a combat masterpiece that rewards practice and creativity.
Pro There's a bunch of stuff to do even after beating the game
You can replay the game on higher difficulties, try to find all the hidden missions or collect all the upgrades. You can even try to get the max style rank on all the missions. Doing any of these will award you extra collectibles or unlock new modes.
There's also the The Bloody Palace, which is an arena consisting of 101 levels. Each level contains enemies and bosses found within the main game. The first few levels are quite easy, but each level becomes increasingly more difficult. Only the most skilled players can reach the end, giving you another goal to strive for.
Cons
Con Some of the dungeons are boring
Not all of the dungeons are that fun to play through. Some of them are designed well with lots of traps to dodge and mini-puzzles to figure out, but others are just a drag. They're not inventive or exciting at all, with samey designs and almost no challenge involved with the enemies and bosses. They really bring down the quality of the exploration and gameplay.
Con Characters repeat the same combat lines over and over
The repetitive lines characters shout out during combat can easily get on your nerves. Each time you shoot your spells, everyone says the exact same line again and again, with little to no variation. It's so bad that you might want to consider turning off the voices altogether, and possibly turning the volume back up once you're finished dungeon crawling for the day.
Con Stiff controls for running and jumping
Running and jumping during combat isn't always intuitive. If you just run and stop, you have to watch your character skid to a halt before she decides to react to you controlling her to jump next. You have to chain the two actions together -- running and then transitioning to a jump -- to keep things smooth. Your character won't simply react in a timely way as she should, making things feel rigid.
Con Occasional difficulty spikes
Upon reaching the first boss you'll encounter the first difficulty spike. The boss attacks a lot faster and stronger than the enemies leading up to it. Messing up means you'll die in a couple of seconds, which can be really frustrating. Especially because you have to switch gears so suddenly and adapt to a new playstyle, where the enemy stands on equal footing.
Con Recycled stage designs and lack of character-specific bosses
Capcom basically just slapped on the 3 new characters (Lady, Trish, and Vergil) and they suffer the same problems that Dante does, and that's lack of bosses designed specifically for their toolset. They run through the same bosses and levels instead of getting unique missions.