From its title alone, Isekai Villain promises a unique twist on the typical JRPG structure. It evokes the isekai tale of an ordinary person plunged into a fantasy world, but instead of using their alien perspective to become a saviour of their new home, they take on an antagonistic role. Isekai Villain achieves some of this.
The game begins with the protagonist so absorbed in the webcomic he’s reading that he falls into a sewer and passes out. He awakens midway through the story he was just reading, in a villain base with a dark new look. Aware of a great danger lying in wait, he resolves to escape before the hero destroys the villain group with which he finds himself involved, hopefully catching some exciting story beats along the way.
In pursuit of this goal, you approach Madre the villain boss in hopes of being assigned to missions in locations from which you might manage to flee the country. She first tasks you with smaller missions to prove your ability, launching the dungeon-crawler element of the game.
Both the dungeon maps and combat mechanics are standard for a JRPG and remain consistent throughout. There are occasional forks in the road, but only one that isn’t a dead end, usually hiding chests containing collectable items.You also collect items randomly off the floor. You encounter creatures by chance and enter an unsurprising turn-based fight.
The dungeons get larger as you progress, but not much more complex. The final dungeon before you complete the story introduces a teleport mechanic that makes the layout more challenging to track, but there is still only one route through it that isn’t difficult to find. The battles require more strategy as new characters join your party, but remain similarly simple. Despite having multiple unlockable healing and stat-boosting moves, it’s easy to sweep the game with a constant barrage of attacks. There are elemental and directional mechanics you can incorporate into your tactics that could be interesting, but that you can ultimately ignore and still get by perfectly well.
The enemies you encounter largely fit the typical JRPG model, inspired by both real-world animals and fantasy beings. The occasional wildcard enemy gave the impression that someone in the design team was having fun – such as a big sausage dog with elemental powers. There isn’t a lot of variation in enemies between dungeons. Some new models are introduced as you progress, but many are colour variants of familiar sprites.
Each victory grants your party experience as well as dropped items. Weapons come with their own option to level up, with specific weapon and armour stones that increase the power of your equipped items. Every so often you earn skill points you can invest in battle moves via your skill tree.
A lot of admin goes into trading in scrap and stones to level up your characters, moves, and items. When compounded with the multiple forms of currency – gold and evil stones and dark coins, that can each only be used in specific ways – the development and trade functions feel incredibly convoluted. On top of the $20 price tag, Isekai Villain also has a premium track where you can gain extra items and other in-game purchases. It’s disappointing feeling the game push you towards spending more real-world money in-game by overloading you with various increasing numbers and teasers for more you’re missing out on, despite having already bought the game.
Functionally, Isekai Villain is a fine JRPG, if not particularly innovative. The premise implies that the originality can be found in the story. The isekai factor is incorporated fairly well. The protagonist’s choices are driven by his knowledge of the plot, which gets less valuable as his decisions change the course of the narrative.
However, the villain element is sadly lacking. The only evidence that you are a villain is that you are in a villain base. Gaining notoriety points by opening chests in other people’s homes is a fun way to play with something that heroes do in every other JRPG, recontextualising the behaviour. But otherwise, your mission is heroic. You ultimately want to save the day, to protect not only your community but the entire country. You side with heroes. The side quests are hardly different from any other hero-centred JRPG.
There was a great opportunity here to critique the idea of what makes a ‘villain’ compared to a ‘hero’ when perhaps they are equally responsible for the destruction their clashes cause to ordinary people. But it hasn’t been realised to anywhere near its full potential. Similarly, if the focus was intended to be the story, it would have been advisable to go over the copy again before release, as much of the dialogue is clunky, with poor translation having a repeatedly jarring effect on the experience.
Isekai Villain feels underdeveloped throughout. Your first mission is to find a specific ingredient for a member of your party, who requires continued feeding to remain loyal. But you never actually have to find the ingredient or maintain stocks – it all happens automatically. This could’ve been an interesting item-management task, but was overlooked in favour of clogging your inventory with tiresome trade and upgrade items.
The game is bloated with lengthy dialogue scenes, including many that could have offered some simple choices to make the player feel more in control of the game and closer to the characters you’re apparently developing a relationship with. The side quests do little to develop the world, often require you to repeat a dungeon exactly as you’ve already played it and at times involve nothing more than watching a scripted cutscene with no player interaction whatsoever.
Ultimately, Isekai Villain ends up falling short of its compelling premise, offering instead another basic JRPG with only minor variations on the format. It opens up many original avenues begging for exploration, but does very little with them. Combined with the push towards additional purchases, these missed opportunities leave Isekai Villain heavy with unfulfilled potential.
