Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

• Genre: Visual Novel
• Spoiler Free Review: Not entirely, it's mostly story, so hard to not talk about that.
• Time Played: ~10 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine.
• Did I cry: I choked up a couple times, maybe got moistened eyes.
• Soundtrack: Really good. Definitely need to acquire.
• Why I played: It just looked like a cute game, and even though I haven't played it, I always hear/see how Red Strings Club is so great and it's made by the same people. I also like witches and thought the card making might be neat.
• Jank: I played it on Switch and it was quite a bit janky when it came to the controls. You wouldn't think so, but the pointer would often get stuck and instead of being able to just use left/right to select things, I would have to move it via free movement of the right stick. This wasn't a consistent issue, so I know it wasn't meant to function that way. A minor inconvenience all-in-all but you would think something with so few controls would have the issue.
• Difficulty: Zero. There is no way to lose.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Both pleased and disappointed. I really liked it at first but it kind of diminished as it went on.
• Recommend to others: Maybe? I still really like the card creating aspect and actually wish there was more to do in that regard. Story options may affect perception and the game is certainly interesting. It's a hard call.
  

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a game where you play as an exiled Witch and create your own divination cards - many story paths/elements are dictated by your readings. It's is kind of an odd case because I feel like it's both good and bad. Sometimes the writing is clever, cute, fun. Sometimes it's crude, tactless, amateur. The mechanics are fun and neat, but restrictive and confining. Besides the mechanics behind the choices you make, at least in my playthough, I was barely provided with enough resources to continue making cards I wanted to make. Even toward the very end of the game.

And there is the weakest aspect of the game, the end, not just the end, but the whole later half, maybe more than half? The game ends up just being a political race between your friends and managing that campaign. There are additional readings throughout it, but they are almost all concerning the current campaign in some way or another and it's just... not interesting or fun, and I feel like depending on some very early game choices, inconsequential to anything else you do? Based on what has happened, some choices I made, and some defining story elements, this campaign should be a drop in the bucket, and yet it's the majority of the game. I just cared so little about this campaign for next head witch. Maybe because I didn't take the option to be more personally involved, maybe because why should I when I already know how things end? Also the last like... dozen days of the campaign literally nothing happened at all. I just kept having to select the option to sleep and resend my people out to promote. It kind of digs itself into a hole, leaving nothing to do for a good portion of the game, and I just didn't care what was going to happen with that, and then the game is over, and then it just ends and the main character is just like "Oh well this sucks", and I can restart the whole game I guess, if I want.

Can't carry over any of that work I I spent working on those cards. It doesn't have manual saves or save slots for the same playthrough, it's 100% autosave, and maybe because they want to stick with your decisions as part of the games supposed lesson? But with the specifics of power you wield as a Witch, and especially considering options you're given at a certain point, it would make far more sense if you could pick up from anywhere you left off and you know... rewrite fate.

There are just so many things about this game that annoy me.

But, overall, I like the aesthetic, I like the card building, I like the music, and I like the writing more than I dislike it, and maybe if I didn't get the "bad end" per se, I would have been more satisfied with the conclusion. However, as it is, it offers me no incentive to replay the story - having to recreate all my cards from scratch - or just entirely new ones. Maybe if there were more elements to the card making, that could be more appealing, but I think it's just enough for a single playthrough. Maybe two if you're super into it, but the fact I was really stunted on creating more at the end - and there are so few more readings by time you have enough resources to making more, just feels like a big misstep. It definitely should have let you carry over your creations. I didn't even draw several of the cards I created at any point, another waste. Even if it did, I'm not exactly eager for everything to culminate into a political campaign and debate. The game kind of lost me at that point and I just don't care enough to want to revisit it to see how it could play out differently.

It's fine though. I don't explicitly not recommend it, maybe if you play better than I did so to speak. It's a very "your mileage may vary" experience.

Anyway, here are the rest of the cards I made not displayed above. Even if I can't access them through my in-game file any more, at least it saves them to view in the title menu: