When Gash introduces Kiyomaro to a fun action manga series he's been reading, its characters jump out of the books and start wreaking havoc on the streets! With the help of Tio, Megumi, Kanchome and Folgore, the duo sets out to discover the truth behind this incident.
The game features top-down view action where players control Gash, Tio and Kanchome alongside their respective partners to beat up enemies with physical attacks and spells. Characters can be equipped with a variety of the titular bookmarks to gain extra power and special abilities.
This game features the following tropes:
- Ability Required to Proceed: Some spots require Folgore to transform Kanchome into a ladder, rope or boat to progress further into a level.
- Absurdly High Level Cap: Level 30 is treated as sufficient to clear the game, as Kokomelo will gift a bookmark for each character who reaches that point. The actual cap is 99.
- Action Bomb: The stickmen enemies will explode if you damage them enough and leave them be.
- Action Girl: Tio and Megumi are one of the three playable teams.
- A.I. Breaker: When Souma is on the Saiso part of his first phase, standing right below him and a couple steps to the right will trick him into missing every attack by aiming to his left.
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: The library level in the endgame is actually mostly made out of areas from previous levels.
- All Your Powers Combined:
- Killing Star God uses variants of the four main Curse Squad members' abilities in his attack pattern.
- Souma copies the spells of Gash, Tio and Kanchome and cycles through them during the first two phases of the final fight.
- Animated Armor: An enemy type in the castle levels is a large suit of armor that attacks with a sword.
- Art Initiates Life: Biburio has the ability to imprison people inside books and use their heart energy to bring fictional characters to life.
- Artificial Stupidity: When you send a demon child away from the human partner, it will simply target the closest enemy with no way to switch between multiple ones.
- Assist Character: Several characters join Kiyomaro's group during the story but only appear in-game during super moves.
- Attack Its Weak Point:
- Nero controls eight orbiting orbs that fire lasers. On rematches against him, his weak point is the one orb that flashes red and it will change position every so often.
- Baltro must be baited into punching and stomping onto the floor, which exposes the enchanted roses that are used to control his giant armor. The game will helpfully point at the roses with a green arrow.
- An animated rock enemy in the last few stages takes 1 damage from frontal attacks but is very weak to back attacks. This is very useful because it allows even underleveled characters to catch up in the endgame, when the level select screen becomes locked to the final area.
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: The boss rush against Galmi, Bellba, Neo Nero, Massenet and then Killing Star God appears to be leading up to Biburio being fought as the final boss... but then Kokomelo reveals his true identity as Souma, banishes Biburio by burning his spellbook and is fought in a different level as the true villain.
- Barrier Change Boss: Souma will cycle between the spells of Gash, Tio and Kiyomaro while in Giga Doruku form, changing his immunity in the process. In the first phase you are required to beat him into the next attack pattern, forcing you to keep at least two characters leveled up enough.
- The Battle Didn't Count: Zofis, Wiseman and Zeon all get up after being beaten up by Gash as if nothing happened and leave, with the heroes not even having anything to say about what just transpired before the game cuts back to the level select screen.
- Big Bad: Biburio, a demon boy who uses a legion of fictional characters to hunt Gash, Kiyomaro and all of their allies.
- Big Good: Kokomelo is the one character from "Fortuneteller’s Fortune Protection Squad" who isn't antagonistic and helps the heroes against the Curse Squad throughout the story...
- Button Mashing: Initiating a Super Attack will display two gauges that require different amounts of either A or B mashing to follow into a different spell until one of them turns out to be a finisher.
- Canon Marches On: Both Zeon and Souma are portrayed as being able to cast Baou Zakeruga. The manga would reveal it is a spell exclusive to Gash that he inherited from his father and whose advanced forms only he could possibly control.
- Character Customization: Each playable character can be equipped with three bookmarks that raise stats or enable abilities.
- Character Select Forcing: There are a few ways the game forces the player to switch characters and to keep leveling up at least two of them.
- Massenet summons copies of the playable characters who cannot be harmed by the one they match, making it very difficult to get at him. Those copies will fade away after a while, though.
- Kanchome's transformations are required to get past pits, cliffs and rivers.
- A few rooms in the castle levels require Tio to use Saiso to hit laser-shooting enemies who are out of range, because the lasers come in perpetual streams and deal heavy knockback in an attempt to prevent progress. You can also send Gash out and hit the enemies in with Zakeru thanks to Hitbox Dissonance, but it is a finicky and likely unintended solution.
- Sousa's giant form will cycle between attacks based on the ones used by the protagonists. Again, you cannot damage him with the matching character. He must be beaten up to move on to the next part of the cycle, making it mandatory to raise the levels of at least two protagonists to be able to clear the game. Also, when Mitsuhiro jumps on a rooftop to cast Souma's ultimate spell in the final phase, only Kanchome and Folgore have no means of knocking him down because even Folgore's projectile doesn't hit that high.
- Charged Attack:
- Spells can be charged to become more powerful or to last longer.
- During the last phase of the final battle, Mitsuhiro will occasionally jump on top of the temple in the background to charge Souma's ultimate spell. You must knock him out of there in time, for that spell hits the entire field and deals massive damage.
- Chekhov's Gunman: One flashback shows Biburio and Nasuka barely defeating a demon boy named Souma by sealing him into a book. Under a disguise, Souma freed himself and was scheming to take them down the whole time. He dramatically takes the role of main antagonist near the climax of the game.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Red bookmarks are healing items, Blues are stat-raising equipment, Greens enable special abilities, Yellows are either ingredients or rare equipable abilities and Purples are key plot-related items.
- Combination Attack: Some finishers in a Special Attack sequence show the playable character attacking in unison with one of the assist characters, like Tio imprisoning enemies into a barrier while Gash shoots a Baou Zakeruga.
- Combos: The game awards bonus experience for every 10 combos stacked when an enemy is killed. Super moves are good for racking up combos, but will immediately reset the counter once they end. Also, the faster Charged Attack bookmark is awarded by racking up a chain of at least 100 combos.
- Confusion Fu: Many of the bosses have predictable attack patterns, but Giglio is one exception. When he's trying to stab the heroes with his stretching arms, sometimes he'll thrust straight ahead and sometimes he'll aim for both diagonals instead, making it difficult to dodge.
- Counter-Attack: Gash and Tio's shield spells automatically trigger up to three times every time and deal damage on contact. Gash's Rashirudo is the least effective shield, while Tio's Ma Seshirudo can block most damage sources.
- Creator Cameo: The author of the in-universe "Fortuneteller’s Fortune Protection Squad" manga is Torako Ikuma, whose name is an anagram of "Makoto Raiku". He looks the same as Raiku's Author Avatar, but wears a yellow bandanna with tiger stripes.
- Critical Hit:
- The heroes will sometimes deal critical damage to enemies, which is marked by the damage text turning orange while stars pop out. One bookmark improves the chances of this happening.
- Gash's Rauzaruku spell works by guaranteeing critical hits on physical attacks while disabling all of his other spells.
- Cycle of Hurting: The abscence of Mercy Invincibility for the heroes and the possibility of being paralyzed by attacks can lead to some quite humiliating deaths only avoidable by spamming healing items until they can break free.
- Cyclops: The visual motif of the minor enemies tied to the Curse Squad is that they are all cyclops.
- Dem Bones: Souma fights with spells themed around bones, such as producing an exoskeleton to punch or shooting drills from a cannon made out of bones.
- Denial of Diagonal Attack: The playable trio can only move and attack in the cardinal directions. Only Tio possesses a projectile with homing properties, which comes in handy in a few spots.
- Dual Boss:
- Robnos and his clone fight by crabwalking along opposite walls while shooting laser beams. Their second phase has them fusing into a large demon.
- Euphoria and Supheria are fought at the same time.
- Souma and Mitsuhiro are fought at the same time, but Mitsuhiro can only be temporarily stunned to disable his spells. Same goes for Zeon and Dufaux, but not the other two secret bosses.
- Endgame+: Clearing the game allows the player to replay the previous areas, seek out three secret bosses and fight the final boss anytime. The real Kokomelo will appear to aid the heroes at this point, since the previous one was revealed to be an impostor the whole time.
- Energy Ball: Wiseman's attack pattern involves him moving to the top of the arena and charging a massive sphere of dark energy that slowly moves towards your character. Annoyingly, time stops during this animation but the sphere starts moving before the player's control is unlocked!
- Evil All Along: Kokomelo, the heroes' guide on the fight against the Curse Squad, was actually Souma in disguise the whole time. As this is revealed, Souma is able to sneak on Biburio and banish him to the Demon World, claiming the role of main villain of the game from him.
- Eviler than Thou: The true villain Sousa is a cruel punk who would become a tyrant to the people of the Demon World, unlike Biburio who wasn't that bad and was just letting his partner live out her fantasies by bringing fictional characters to life.
- Experience Booster: The craftable Vulcan bookmark awards bonus experience from beating enemies.
- Fighting Clown: Kanchome is a goofy duck-boy in pajamas with two spells. One turns him into an ogre that can't attack and the other makes him mini-sized. The latter one is also deadly if you boost his attack stat, as it renders Kanchome invincible and lets Folgore, the only one out of the three human partners with a ranged attack, just stand back and effortlessly rack massive damage even on bosses.
- Game-Over Man: The Game Over screen shows the duo you were playing as collapsed under a spotlight.
- Golem: Enemies in the final set of levels include a large rock with legs that jumps onto the floor, a slab immune to frontal attacks that attacks with bent steel I-beams and a bunch of wood planks nailed together that shoot giant nails.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Brago and Sherry's powerful super move is only available for the two stages they're involved in, which does not include the final battle. Clearing the game will unlock it for the post-game.
- Guide Dang It!: The game includes a crafting system with only some in-game hints for recipes, but luckily enough they sold an official guidebook as well... On the other hand, all information about the secret bosses was officially available on the game's website
. - Harmless Enemy: The game features harmless flower-like creatures in place of treasure chests. When hit by anything, they drop a unique bookmark and remain dead with their corpse left on the field even on subsequent visits to a level.
- Heal Thyself: All characters can recover health by using certain red bookmarks. Tio and Kanchome also have a skill that lets them heal themselves.
- Healing Hands: Tio's Saifojio spell summons a sword that heals whoever it stabs. In the game, she normally can only cast it on herself but it also appears as a super move for healing Gash and Kanchome.
- Hit Points: Each of the playable teams has their own health meter.
- Incredible Shrinking Man: Koporuku makes Kanchome tiny and invincible to many attacks, allowing him to comically grab and slap enemies like a flea. It is also possible to unlock the spell for both Gash and Tio in the post-game.
- Infinity +1 Sword:
- By landing the final blow on Souma or Zofis with each character, you can earn bookmarks that enable a zero-cost version of Rauzaruku, Seushiru and Koporuku that can be equipped by any of them.
- The award for defeating Zeon is a zero-cost bookmark of Zakeru for everyone. By fusing 10 of it with the bookmark gained by defeating Zofis as Gash, they become the zero-cost Zakeruga bookmark. But then you'd have no real use for it anymore...
- Invisibility: Every so often, Wiseman can turn invisible and intangible at the same time while also dealing an unavoidable hit on your character.
- Item Crafting: Certain bookmarks can be fused into a different kind of bookmark. Some of them can only be acquired this way. Also, sometimes the game awards two or three bookmarks at once when a successful fusion is made.
- Joke Item:
- There are items that inflict status effects on the protagonists, but without any practical use for such a thing.
- There's also a green bookmark that constantly drains 2 HP with no benefits, for whatever reason.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Leveling up will fully recover a character's health and heart power.
- Limit Break: Pressing L and R at the same time will initiate a Super Attack at the cost of one stock. It is a chain of spells from the main trio and their companions that requires the player to mash either A or B to follow a "path" until it ends. It is a rather confusing system as it requires some trial and error to figure what leads into what if you want it to end on an actually powerful attack or on either Tio or Kanchome healing the current team. Furthermore, some spell animations are so short they fail to give enough time to mash buttons for the next one.
- Mana Meter: Spells deplete the user's heart power counter, which can be restored with pickups and items.
- Mercy Invincibility: Normal enemies will get invincibility frames if you hit them enough times without killing them. Bosses will get knocked down under the same circumstances, sometimes signifying a change in attack pattern. As for the player characters... this is entirely averted. Many attacks will combo you into paste, making it necessary to spam healing items to survive.
- Metal Slime: There are two enemies that rarely spawn on certain rooms and attempt to flee when hit but are also worth a lot of experience points.
- Mirror Boss:
- Souma and Mitsuhiro are the only demon child and spellcaster duo faced in the main story. They'll attack with various spells and attempt to cast a full screen Smart Bomb just like the player characters.
- Zeon and Dufaux are the other team who only appears in the post-game. As Zeon is Gash's brother, he can perform stronger versions of Zakeru and Zakeruga.
- Mook Maker: One enemy is a tree that summons plant monsters and another is an ankh that summons stickmen.
- No Item Use for You: The first phase of the final boss fight disables the inventory and unequips all bookmarks. The inventory is enabled for the third phase, but you'll need to manually reequip your bookmarks.
- One-Winged Angel: Souma starts out using Gigano Doruku to transform into a giant winged demon.
- Optional Boss:
- Zofis can be fought in one of the castle areas after the game is cleared. The reward for beating him changes depending of which character landed the final blow.
- Wiseman can be fought in one of the cave areas after the game is cleared, but you must also input the code Up, Left, Right, Down, B, Up, Left, Up, Down, B, Left, Up, Right, Down, B on the level select screen depicting said set of levels.
- Zeon appears in one of the forest areas after the player obtains 100% of the bookmarks. By beating him multiple times, you can earn copies of the Zakeru spell for Tio and Kanchome to use.
- Paper Tiger: Kanchome's Poruku spell turns him into a large ogre that enemies will apparently be too afraid of to attack, but he cannot fight in this state. Bosses are unaffected and the transformation will poof away if anything damages Kanchome.
- Party in My Pocket: You only see the duo you're controlling on the screen, but in-universe the other two and any other side characters that join the group are also present at all times.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: The final level contains a room where it's quite easy to repeatedly enter and leave while killing the enemy that dies in one hit from back attacks and is worth 180 exp points.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Curse Squad is a set of characters from the fictional manga "Fortuneteller’s Fortune Protection Squad" brought into life by Biburio's spells. Scheming to dominate people with curses, they confront the heroes several times over the course of the game.
- Randomly Drops: Enemies will often drop bookmark items or minor pickups that refill either health or heart power.
- Running Gag: Kiyomaro reacts with frustration every time Folgore sings "Iron Man Folgore".
- Scratch Damage: To pursue the 100 combos achievement and the unique reward that comes with it, one should keep Tio underleveled enough to deal tons of 1-damage hits to multiple enemies without killing them, while Seushiru is active for protection. Other than that, the only and more complicated option would to fight the rock enemy who tanks hits from the front in the specific room where there are two of them close to each other.
- Secret A.I. Moves: Zeon can shoot Zakeru on eight directions, move while firing a Zakeruga and cast Baou Zakeruga on the field when the playable Gash can't do any of that.
- Sequential Boss:
- Towards the end of the story, four members of the Curse Squad must be fought in a row, each of them stronger than in previous encounters.
- The battle against Souma has three phases in total, and the player's inventory will be locked until the last one.
- Shock and Awe: Gash and Zeon's spells are themed around electricity, such as firing bursts of lightning or summoning an electrified barrier as a shield.
- Squishy Wizard: Tio has a projectile with homing properties, two shield spells and a healing spell, but she's also the most frail of the three playable demon children.
- Status Effects:
- Poison inflicts damage over time and makes the player unable to swap characters.
- Paralysis locks movement and attacks for a while, which can be very dangerous. Gash can inflict this on enemies by casting Jikerudo.
- Heavyness slows down the player character.
- Confusion makes the player attack in random directions. One of Kanchome's super moves also has this effect on enemies.
- Doom disables spells.
- Suspicious Videogame Generosity: The entrance to a boss room is often marked by an enemy dropping a large orange that fully restores both health and heart power.
- This Is a Drill: One of Souma's spells lets him fire bone drills from a bone cannon. They're always shot left or right, but never up or down.
- Turns Red: The horned eyeball enemies that charge at the heroes change color and become agressive at low health.
- The Unfought: Biburio is never fought because Souma burns his book in a cutscene near the end of the story.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Souma's first two forms require damaging him with at least two different characters, making it impossible to beat if you get there with a strong character and two very underleveled ones.
- Unknown Item Identification: Bookmarks acquired for the first time must be taken to Kokomelo for identification. One usable bookmark also allows this to be done without him, mid-level.
