REVIEW : Wonhon: A Vengeful Spirit (PC)
Despite beneficial advances such as improved health care, Korea’s early years as a Japanese colony were difficult. Arrests of dissidents and corporal punishment, Japanese monopolists are taking over local businesses, cadastral reform robbing the vast majority of peasants of their land rights, harsh censorship – and the bloody suppression of mass protests in 1919 as the crowning achievement of the so-called sabre policy.
The colonial authorities softened their stance during the next decade, but this was not the case in Wonhon: A Vengeful Spirit.
Live and let die
No one, however, has stated explicitly what type of invaders the Korean people are dealing with. Unidentified troops burn villages, rape children, and slaughter anybody they come across, and it is through their hands, the protagonist is transported to the next world. However, the “khan,” a mystical connection with the living world that occurs when a person is extremely enraged before death, prevents them from reaching the “final.” Hundreds of souls are stranded between realities for the same reason, and the God of Death is wringing his hands in irritation – it’s difficult to take them any further, but the harvest plan must be carried out in some way. The cunning child strikes a deal with the gloomy figure: she fulfils the “perplexed’s” final requests in exchange for the opportunity to rejoin with her family.
The unfortunate fellows’ difficulties are similar:
- Getting vengeance on the wrongdoers
- Getting comrades out of the enemy’s camp
- Returning a valuable object
They start repeating themselves so much that the heroine herself interrupts the briefing in the middle of a phrase – it’s evident, they say, I went. Even though the villages and military locations where she is thrown for a new career are not particularly diverse, it’s not that Sean Sheen from Vancouver could have expected Mimimi Games-level design talent. Still, you’re lost when fantasy isn’t enough except for snow-covered copies of the same limited set of the landscape.
On the other hand, unlike Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun, the avenger does not have to plan a path or ransack locales for an extended period. The game is basic, and the stages often pass you by in a flash. The girl, delicate in her “normal” shell, is endowed with only two abilities: the ability to transform into a ghost and occupy passers-by for a brief period, similar to the angel Bob from Messiah… Two sorts of soldiers roam the maps at first; approaching them from a distance of a few metres and catching one of them is not difficult.
Then comes the sabotage – either arrange a firefight (by the way, if you jump out of the body, your comrades-in-arms will still kill the offending comrade) or order the “vessel” to finish himself off somewhere in the corner and slip into the right place while the patrolmen are running to scout the situation… Finally, you can go farther into the enemy’s rear and get out there under the pretext of “your own”; the guard will regain his calm and meander back to the station as if nothing had happened.
They are not permitted to walk about in the flesh of another person. Only the time limit interferes at first: the girl is ejected from the victim as soon as the special scale becomes empty. There’s just one way to keep the pleasure going: sucking the energy from the dead. Furthermore, the military has shepherds and sorcerers at its disposal, both aware of the possessed. And, when you get closer to the centre of Wonhon, a Vengeful Spirit will usually make a feint with his ears, releasing huge rats and turning soldiers into tentacle-wielding monsters.
When you slap this, he stomps to the post and comes to life. Fortunately for the heroine, all NPCs are deaf, blind, and devoid of initiative. Even though they had rushed to the crime site, they were too slow to peek around the next corner, so they stopped motionless and dispersed. It is simple to encircle such persons with the finger, and issues arise only when there are many adversaries, and the task involves the evacuation of the target. Battles with “bosses” are gruelling and lack any semblance of grace.
