Rose & Camellia Collection Review

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Fast Facts

He Rose Again on the Third Day

The Rose & Camellia Collection is a compilation of five miniature fighting games, each strongly emphasising story. Throughout the titles, I met a wacky cast of characters who fight one another over increasingly trivial things. Did the package impress? Find out in this Rapid Review.

Throughout each game, I was introduced to a handful of girls with whom I fought. There was generally an overarching plotline behind these encounters, but the storyline was not particularly interesting. Often, the reason for the fights was petty and largely disinteresting. While the plot did help facilitate the different encounters, it was not a major selling point for me. There were a couple of funny moments, but to me, the narrative was nothing to write home about. 

Moreover, the characters themselves did not bring much appeal either. While each character had different things to say, they were not memorable and often did not matter much in the course of the storyline. Sure, it was neat to see the different character designs, but narratively, these different characters did not do much to excite or motivate me to complete the game.

Like Drinking Chamomellia Tea

To supplement the storyline, the Rose & Camellia Collection features slapping fights which are somewhat similar to combat in Punch-Out. In these battles, I watched for indications from my opponent about when they were going to attack so I could attempt to dodge. Then, in between attacks, I could counterattack with a slap of my own. In premise, this sounds like something I would enjoy, especially since I enjoy the combat in the Punch-Out games. In a vacuum, it was neat. I could swing my hand while pressing A to slap and I could dodge while pressing R and swinging my hand the other way. While I did dislike that there was no option to play with a pro controller, the controls worked well here to facilitate the combat. 

However, navigating the story was incredibly tedious, even considering the short run time. Each combat encounter felt incredibly similar. The only real difference between opponents was that some of them swung more than one time in a row. Nearly every character had a simple swing with an easily identifiable tell which made combat quite boring. Some characters altered the formula with things such as multiple arms or kicking attacks, but overall, I found little challenge slapping my way to victory.

At the same time, despite how easy most fights were, some segments still felt random and unbalanced. My opponent can dodge my attacks and counterattack. Despite completing every fight, I never figured out whether there was an indicator for this. This meant that sometimes my attacks would fail at seemingly random. This was disappointing to me, as these tells were not obvious, and if this was random, it was not clear that there were no tells since the characters do many different things while waiting to be potentially slapped.

Slapjack!

While this collection is a port of a mobile/flash game, I was disappointed by the overall lack of content and variety here. Sure, there are five games included, but none of them iterated much over the others. I was bored by the end of the second title, and my excitement did not improve much throughout my playthrough. As a whole, I found the gameplay quite underwhelming, especially considering the price point.

The visuals, on the other hand, were pretty good. The game used clear outlines to show the different characters, even when an attack was intentionally excluded from clear focus. Moreover, each of the characters had a different visual style and slapping them often led to some funny faces. It was neat to see the different things. In between fights, I got to see the different characters talking too. While this was nowhere near a CGI cutscene, these moments did a good job of conveying the plotline. 

Additionally, I enjoyed listening to the different sounds the game had to offer. In addition to more traditional slapping sounds associated with combat, I enjoyed a fully voiced-storyline, which was nice. I enjoyed the pacing of the voice lines a lot. I rarely had to wait for the narrator to finish before moving to the next screen. The sound effects worked nicely here.

As a whole, however, I did not enjoy the Rose & Camellia Collection very much. The gameplay was not universally interesting, and while the concept is fairly novel, there is little depth here, either in the story or the combat. This would be fine for a cheaper experience, but coming in at such an expensive price point seriously hinders my ability to recommend it. While there are some decent pieces here, I do not recommend checking this one out.

Rapid Reviews Rating

2 out of 5

2

You can purchase the Rose & Camellia Collection on the Nintendo eShop here.