Welcome to our review of Nanotale – Typing Chronicles, a new game on Google Stadia that is fun yet frustrating at the same time.
Nanotale – Typing Chronicles is an atmospheric typing adventure RPG set in a colorful vibrant world. Follow Rosalind, a novice Archivist, as she journeys out to explore a distant world. On her quest to gather knowledge, she collects samples of mystic natural beauties. Everything is peaceful. War is a thing of the distant past.
In the shadows, a tale of dissonant magic is spreading, instilling corruption into broken hearts. Combine powerful spells, change their shapes, and enhance them to defeat enemies. Use your magic on the environment and make it resonate with your creativity. As a member of the order, your role as an archivist is to gather knowledge. The more you learn about the world, the stronger you become.
Embark on a journey to the Ancestral Forest, discover the Blue Desert and try not to get lost in the Sunken Caves. Meet the inhabitants of these new lands, be amazed by the beauty of the flora blooming in these diverse biomes, be intrigued by the critters roaming on your path but be careful not to cross paths with the dangerous creatures looming over. Step in a fascinating story with multiple faces that have left their mark on these lands. Meet people, listen to their tales, and catalog mysterious occurrences, in an attempt to unravel the secrets behind dissonant magic.
This is really a fun idea for a game and when I played it, I really felt like the archivist I was playing as. I was gathering information about everything possible and I explored pretty much everything around me. I was solving basic puzzles like setting off water plants so that the grass around it would grow, then setting off a fire plant so it would free the path for the next puzzle.
A cool atmosphere and it is just so much fun to walk around the forest. Easy upgrades if you do not forget to keep track of your surroundings and the archival part of the game, but then the game mechanics hit you full frontal in the face during the combat.
Combat on Stadia is truly horrible. It is possibly one of the worst I have seen on the platform and it’s a sad sad experience. So basically you need to move your cursor with the right thumbstick so you can highlight the enemies and then attack them. In itself, I think this was one of the best approaches to this mechanic, the other making the game a more or less twin-stick shooter.
But it just does not snap to enemies, it disappears the second you touch your left thumbstick and it resets the entire timing. I never felt so frustrated while playing a game because I just knew that this game could be a solid 9 out of 10 experience, but not like this. The first few times you got inbound enemies, this will not annoy you much. No, plenty of time to take aim and fire that magic attack.
But when you got more and more happening on the screen, which does not really take that long, you either run like a chicken and try to escape or you get hit by too many enemies and you get frustrated because you just know you can do better. Heck, you are better but the mechanics are the ones that need improving…
All this kind of ruined my experience this time around. I wish it was different but I can not say it is a Stadia thing, because I always look at my bandwidth to make sure I am going at full speed. Stadia is as good as your internet, a saying I heard elsewhere and it is true, but not for this game. Nanotale – Typing Chronicles did not seem to lag, bandwidth was well above average and it just felt weird.
Did they really play it like this with a controller in hand? Do I need to play it with a mouse and keyboard instead? But I want to play it on my Stadia kit, the TV and controller way. I guess I am just too demanding here? Also, on a weird side note, the game had no audio for the entire opening loading screen (after pressing X to start) It felt like a shortcoming, not a basic tune or anything.
In conclusion, an awesome and appealing game versus the horrible controls that feel like they are breaking the game more than anything. As a game, this is a 9 out of 10, this is the harsh truth. The controls ruin this experience way too much to give anything more than:
