Kanon Defence Force (PC)

A while ago, I reviewed Gensokyo Pro Wrestling Muscle Tag Match, a game which dared to ask the question "what if Touhou characters were in Kinnikuman Muscle tag Match?", and in that review, I mentioned that putting Touhou characters in things was the more modern version of putting characters from visual novels in things. So here we have Kanon Defence Force, a game that puts characters from the visual novel Kanon into an Earth Defence Force game. Or rather, an isometric 2D approximation of an Earth Defence Force game.

 

I don't know anything about Kanon, because I have no interest in visual novels generally. But from an oursiders perspective, I think it might be about sad little girls dying of tuberculosis or something? Anyway, this game has you playing as a selection of those little girls, and you go around shooting what appears to be a huge army of people in frog mascot costumes. Interestingly, these frogpeople do parallel the bug monsters from the EDF series. They start with regular frogs who shoot yellow stuff at you (like EDF's ants), then there's ninja frogs who jump around throwing webs (like EDF's spiders), and though I haven't been able to get more than about eight stages in, I really hope there are kaiju frogmen and centipede frogmen later in the game. I guess there's an incentive for me to keep playing, right there!

 

There's not much more to it! Rather than the item-based progression system in EDF, it's got a more traditional levelling up system, whereby you get a bunch of experience points at the end of each stage, gradually getting more HP and MP, and sometimes unlocking more weapons. Structurally it's just like EDF, though, with you picking a difficulty level and a stage, then returning to the menus after you complete the stage (or fail to). Best of all, just like in EDF, most of the scenery is destructible!

 

Regarding the scenery, as mentioned, I have no knowledge of Kanon's canon. So, for those of you who do have that familiarity, I have a question: is it explained in there why all of the stages in this game are covered in snow? And why some of the stages take place in Egypt, also covered in snow? Or is it just yet another case of an otaku game developer inserting into their work stuff they thought was cool that they'd seen in Mu magazine?

 

Kanon Defence Force is an incredibly okay game. For this review I've played a couple of sessions, each more than an hour in length, which is absolutely not the best way to play it. I'm sure it's a lot more enjoyable playing a stage or two now and then in isolation over a long period of time, but plaiyng it like I did, it's really worn on me. But if you were to play it, I'm sure you wouldn't be doing so after days of failing to find a suitable subject for review on your wekkly-updated blog. Even so, if you do intend to play it, I'd say get it from the Internet Archive, rather than hunting down a physical copy. (On the subject of physical copies of doujin games, I found out the other day that copies of Platine Dispositif's Comiket 87 STG sell for significantly more than what I paid eight years ago. But I'm too stubborn to sell.)