An interesting game in the fact that you can't really tell what the game play is about from screenshots. Following the rising trend, Doki-Doki Universe doesn't go in the direction of super realistic or super detailed 3D graphics, instead opting fr a simple yet charming cartoon style like a children's drawing. That isn't to say the game doesn't look great. It's bright and colourful and suits the game play. There's just something about the aesthetics that captures your attention. The game is played on a 2D plane where the character goes left or right like a sidescroller. So, what exactly does Doki-Doki Universe do? Is is a sidescrolling fighter or a platformer? It's neither of those and it's hard to describe the genre the game falls into. There are two big aspects of the game, the first is that the game revolves around the idea of sidequests. You end up talking to characters and fulfilling the tasks that they ask you to perform. The variety of the tasks is what makes the game tick. While they are predominantly fetch quests, there are enough minor variations to make it interesting... at least in the beginning. Another element that feeds off this idea is collectibles. These range from stuff hidden behind objects (still very easy to find) to "building" relationships with characters. Basically, you either want to make characters feel really happy towards you or very annoyed, at which point the prize is a collectible.
Every character has a prize for this and this makes it tedious when you're 80% into the game and you still have to do this. The second aspect of the game psychological quizzes designed to describe your personality. These quizzes are presented in an interesting way, gone are the typical wordy scenario questions, there are a lot of pictorial types questions such as choosing which picture you would want on your shirt or which planes you'd rather fly (hi-tech, low-tech etc). The results are interesting and it's always fun to see if the descriptions are accurate (I find that they are pretty good 60% of the time purely because there's no answer that jumps out to you for some questions and you end up choosing one that you feel is the best that describes you but not exactly what you wanted). This is a very visual game, it likes to communicate in pictorial messages but they are intuitive and easy to understand. The simple humour makes the game charming and yes, it even tells a basic story. It's actually not a bad premise, you play as a robot that has been abandoned and now must prove and show his "humanity" to be accepted once again. It immediately attaches you to the character and wanting him to succeed. I liked the story and how the main character learns about humanity and helps other NPCs out. It's a feel good story and the ending was nice.
With all the positive things there are still a few flaws that spoil the experience. First and foremost are the glitches, the game will frequently freeze to the point where you have to restart your console. I have only played this on the PS3 but at its worst, the game froze four times within fifteen minutes, which ruins the fun when you have to repeat the tasks because the autosave didn't get up to that point. I think on average, the game freezes once or twice per hour. The game will occasionally stutter, especially when it is saving. I've also read that the Vita version suffers from heavy framerate issues too. The other thing is that while the aforementioned sidequest and psychological elements are fun, after the first three hours or so, it gets sort of boring as the game becomes predictable and more of a chore to complete. After around three hours, the activities start to become boring and mechanical. I think it would be better suited if the game was around five hours long instead of the roughly ten hours it is right now. Doki-Doki Universe suffers from blatantly advertising DLC by showing locations on the map and making it inaccessible, instead "offering" to take you to the PSN store to purchase it.
This is not a freemium game, you pay to purchase it, they should have just advertised DLC on the title screen and if you do decide to purchase it, make a new portion of the map appear. As it is now, it makes it seem like they're pushing DLC into your face. There are a lot of collectibles, over 450 in fact but they are absurdly easy to find. The majority of the collectibles can also be "summoned" which means just making it appears in the game world. There are 330 of these in the game and as these are used for the sidequests, a better way to sort through them to find what you want would have been good. Currently it just gives you the most relevant items based on what the game expects from the NPC's request. It works most of the time but there were some instances where you had to refresh the selection multiple times to find what you want. Conceptually and in execution, I enjoyed Doki-Doki Universe. It presented a different type of game, exuding innocence and charm. However, the constant freezes and glitching ruined a lot of that enjoyment so I can only tentatively recommend this game if you can get it for a really low price and do not mind the technical difficulties that you will surely experience.
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