Mirror, where the ladies can take both the pain and the pleasure.
If you were under the impression that all NSFW games were poorly translated with lovely art and the only interactions you can do is fondle a swaying sweetheart, then Mirror is here to prove you wrong.
There’s always one gem in a bad batch and I’m happy I bought this game, and for cheap. Not only do you get great artwork to look at, but there’s 8 ladies to go through and two different endings for each one. Plus, there’s a toughness to the match-3 games as you continue progressing, which makes a nice challenge and reminds you that it is a game, not just pretty pictures with words.
- Developed by KAGAMI WORKS
- Published by Paradise Project
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FAQ
What is this page?
This is an in-depth critique of the game Mirror. I go all in with my review by picking apart the game, piece by piece. By doing this, I try to help not only the devs that created the games, but also future aspiring devs by giving my viewpoint on everything as an avid gamer, but please understand…
There may be spoilers.
Is there a supporter’s playthrough of this game?
We’ll have it within our courses:
Title Screen
Background
The background of the title page doesn’t really have anything to grab your attention, and it remains the same dark red with soft lights coming out from behind the main character that’s featured. And that is what the background is truly focused on–giving you that lovely artwork of any random character whose storyline you can go through, including the ones from the DLC, even if you haven’t purchased it, I believe.
It’s kind of like they’re all sticking their upper body out of a circular doorway.
All-in-all, it’s not very inspiring, but they can’t exactly give forth anything of what the game is about background-image-wise, due to so many different storylines.
Still…
Title Font
It’s a very elegant font style with an italicized lean to it and a soft blur behind the font to…I don’t know, give it more elegance? Make it stand out?
The O seems a bit more stretched out like it’s supposed to be a zero, and I’m not sure if that’s what they were going for, or if it’s just something that that specific font face does to that letter.
Hell, it could be a nod to all the big O’s that happen in the game.
Menu
The interesting thing with the menu is the fact that there isn’t any text. They’re all images that you kind of have to figure out by pressing on them. It’s nice that they cleared up some space by doing that, but seeing as the background doesn’t have a pretty picture to disrupt, I think they could’ve just added text.
- Microphone
- Music Note
- Picture
- Cogwheel
- Return
Both the microphone and the music note are for DLC-specific purchases. The former being for the DLC Mirror: Songs of the Maiden and the latter being for the OST DLC. I’m not really sure what the first DLC is for, but the second one is definitely for the soundtrack.
The picture represents the gallery. So any scene with the character that you’ve seen is unlocked here. That way you can just go back and look at those pretty pictures.
The cogwheel is for settings, and there aren’t many to go through seeing as the game is pretty simplistic in nature. You can choose whether you want torn clothes on or off, the game in windowed mode or fullscreen, your resolution, the sound effects plus volume bars, and then of course the language of the text.
Hit the return when you want to leave the game.
Gameplay
Achievements
You can obtain 114 achievements.
Plot
It is said that there is a magic mirror, which is closely related to the destiny of numerous beautiful girls. If you obtain it, you will be able to walk into the world of the beauties and experience a magnificent journey.
Game Length
Anywhere from 7-14 hours.
Obviously it’s going to be higher if you’re trying to get all the achievements, plus there’s the four additional girls, if you happened to have purchased the DLC for them. The match-3 games get a bit tough, so you might need to spend time earning money to get the certain skills that could prove helpful as well.
And read speed too.
There are a lot of factors.
Replay Value
I mean, if you haven’t played out every girl’s second storyline, then you might want to come back and play through them, but aside from that and achievements, there isn’t much replay value.
It’s always nice to come back and look at the pretty ladies in the gallery though!
Genre(s)
Despite the fact that there are some mini-games you’ll need to win against the character in question, this is a visual novel for the sole purpose that it’s centered around base images and a lot of text (with choices that matter at times).
Combat
The combat comes in the form of match-3 games, and while they start out as pretty simplistic and standard, you’ll quickly find out that they become more difficult with each new character you unlock.
Every character has certain abilities, and those abilities can sometimes really mess with your winning streak.
For instance, one character may have an icon that appears at the top of the board, and you’ll need to drop it all the way to the bottom of the board for it to disappear. If it doesn’t disappear, then after so many rounds, it might heal the character for a pretty huge chunk of health. And continue to do so for as long as it’s there.
Other character’s abilities may come in the form of a combative move and increase their strength or scatter bombs on the board that will blow your health up if left undealt with.
For a match-3 game, it’s pretty complex, but super fun as you can purchase and use your own abilities against them for a specific price.
Interactions
Most of the interactions you’re doing in Mirror are either during the scenes where you’re taking the girl to the height of pain or pleasure with the icons shown on the side of the screen, ranging anywhere from a hand to a tongue to a candle to a dildo and so on.
The other type of interaction you could deal with are the sex scenes, where you have to move your mouse back and forth at a specific pace in order to fill up a bar up top. Those are…a little odd.
Characters
Looks
Every character you come across has a unique look given their specific storyline, and they pretty much all look damn good. Some illustrations might not look as clean as others, and I think that pertains more toward the DLC–as if they rushed certain areas, but still, the quality of the ladies are almost all S rank.
You’ve got the priestess, a zombie (still hot to this day), a nun, a dragon girl, and more.
Voice Acting
I very much enjoyed all the voice actors. If I were to point out any flaws are the long pauses some of the characters have in their speeches. As someone who doesn’t speak Japanese, I never know when they’re quite done talking, so when they do a long pause, I’ll continue and hear a partial bit of the next sentence coming through.
Not a huge flaw, but something that happened on numerous ocassions.
Abilities
There’s a shop that you can purchase a variety of spells and abilities to help you in combat with a specific amount of cash to each one. You can get a total of 20 abilities, some useful when you do an actual match 3 of a specific icon while others you’ll have to click on to activate.
You also can’t use every ability in a game–you’re limited to four slots, so choose wisely.
The female characters each have their own sets of abilities, and you can learn about them in the upper portion where their health bar is. An icon will show what attack they’re using next and in how many turns.
Narrative
Subtitles
The subtitles are at the bottom within a bar that has a slightly darker gradient backing to it. To the left of the subtitles will show an image of whoever is doing the thinking or speaking.
As far as speaking goes, there will be brackets around the text. For thoughts, there won’t be any brackets.
Errors
Of course Mirror has some faults in their subtitles, but definitely not enough to raise a flag in the main game. It’s the DLC that had a lot more errors with the spelling of words, again making me think they kind of rushed to get it done.
Graphics
Style
I love the visuals of Mirror.
The different backgrounds of the scenes have a slightly more realistic vibe to them, even though they aren’t exactly realistic. The main characters have a mixture of cell-shading with touches of soft-shading.
Soundtrack
Background Music
I’m pretty sure the background music is the same throughout the entire game. While it does get pretty stale and monotonous if you actually tune in to it throughout the entirety of Mirror, it’s also kind of pleasant due to the mild relaxing tones.
So if you expect intense battle music during the combat scenes…don’t.
Sound Effects
There aren’t any sound effects for progressing the text, so most of all the sound effects occur during the match-3 games. There are little blings when you match pairs, and then the hard punch sound effect that you’ve probably heard a lot in YouTube videos.
Final Thoughts
If there was ever a NSFW game to play that changes up the whole match-3 side of it into something a bit more fun and challenging, it’s Mirror for sure. The artwork is great, you’ve got two different paths for every character that you can aim for, and not only that, but you can just go straight into the fondling session once it’s unlocked on the females, in case you don’t want to deal with the game side of it anymore.
As a whole, it’s got quite a variety to it and by far surpasses a lot of the more stale hentai games out there.
