200% Mixed Juice! Review

Being a games critic is a funny job. Sometimes, after the long flows of weird and wonderful games we're subjected to, we have to just take a minute to ask, “Where do you get these ideas?!”. 200% Mixed Juice! is by no means one of the weirdest games out there, but another in a long line of “What the hell were you smoking?” games.

Essentially, 200% Mixed Juice is a visual novel where the plot is advanced through an RPG battling system, told using pre-existing characters from a bevy of other games. In this sense, it's like a C-list version of Sm4sh or Jump Ultimate Stars with characters from games you'd never heard of – initially, I thought that I must have been living under a Dwayne Johnson, but no, the characters themselves are esoteric. The inclusion of these characters was, in the minds of the developers, a major draw (they come from the developer’s own 100% franchise, which has made as big a splash as a stone in the ocean) but they don't add anything special or interesting to proceedings.

The plot itself is a bit of an unrefined mess, but this doesn't make the game any the worse for it. You play as the creatively named Protagonist – no, really, that's your name – and you have absolutely zip for social skills, even as far as being mute, on account of the world being created anew for you by fairy godmother and game master of this trainwreck, (stop me if you think you've heard this one before...) Navi.  Your goal is to befriend people in this world to fight for you, and in doing so, you get taken on a whirlwind trip not just through the world created by Navi, but through other parallel dimensions as you endeavour to help others. Got all that? Yes, 200% Mixed Juice makes as much sense as a MLP fanfic written by a teenager delirious on LSD, but for some mad, impossible reason, it works. This story is not meant to be a well written, emotional tour-de-force. It feels like it's made up as it goes along, with characters thrown into the mix at random; this makes the game a bit of a novelty rather than a serious GOTY contender, but this level of narrative cheapness adds a trashy sort of quality to the game that makes it stand out.

However, the real meat of the game comes with the battle system, which is conversely well-executed and planned out. You begin the battle with the rolling of a standard six-sided die, which dictates the number of skill points you earn for that round. These dictate the kinds and power of attack you can do. These attacks also have a 'type' in the form of rock, paper, or scissors, and both characters and attacks will be engendered with a type. Ideally, if your opponent is the rock type, you'll want to hit them with paper, but think carefully. If you're scissors, they'll want to use a rock move – so the best course of action is to sometimes think ahead and preempt the opponent in order to win the round, even if you do less damage as a result: going first is absolutely key. As such, the battle system in 200% Mixed Juice is slick and ends up being the backbone of the whole game. If you're a serious, po-faced type who doesn't have time for such nonsense as jokes and silliness, then the solid and engrossing battle system will draw you in.

The third, perhaps less distinguished, wing of the game is the “collect-'em-all” card component. The visual novel component of the game gets you to befriend NPCs so they will fight for you: once you have their friendship, you earn their character card, which can be levelled up to your liking. In total, the game has 100 or so cards to collect, which you get either through the story, or, more likely, by purchasing them from a random machine with the in-game currency earned from battle. This adds a little extra mileage to the game, especially if you don't care about the story.

The graphics here are done half right: 200% Mixed Juice isn't visually sharp, looking distinctly like an attempt at rendering an image on a Game Boy Advance screen. Everything is done in 2D, which means badly pixelated .jpgs as background images (seriously; come on, lads) while also creating space for some well-drawn anime-style art, with the characters being rendered in super-deformity; this is perhaps the cutest part of the game. Otherwise, much like the story, the game is a bit of a blended mess in terms of visual style.

200% Mixed Juice is a mixed bag. The RPG battling is solid, and if you're not bothered by a story that does whatever it wants, you'll find humour in its plot. Really, it's a solid game, but your enjoyment of it will strictly be up to what kind of person you are and how much you can really tolerate in games. I predict this will be a Marmite title, truly divisive but those that are willing to strap themselves in for the ride will enjoy the experience.