2.5 DIMENSIONAL SEDUCTION: Angels on Stage! Review

One day at Manga Club, second year student Okumura is watching his favourite anime (no, it's not the Anime Club) when in walks a first year student, Ririsa, who wants to join, what's more, she also loves the same anime! Except, she doesn't want to just read manga and watch anime: she has a secret desire and hopes that Okumura can help her achieve… get photographed in cosplay and sell DVDs of them!

That's the story of 2.5 DIMENSIONAL SEDUCTION in manga, anime, and now free-to-play game form. It's difficult to classify which genre 2.5 DIMENSIONAL SEDUCTION: Angels on Stage! is, as it's split into two sections — story and photography sessions. Those require some strategy, so maybe that's the genre.

As you follow along the story of the anime, with some original stuff included, Ririsa poses for photos. This is where the gacha element comes into play, as the game quickly requires Ririsa to be a higher level, but you also start to unlock new characters to join your cosplay squad. Photo sessions pit your squad against one or several people taking their pictures. Your goal is to choose the poses that each character will pull, with the aim of filling each “enemy” photographer's emotion meter, thus incapacitating them.

There are occasional bouts where you face off against other cosplayers, and they attempt to fill your character's emotion meter while you try to do the same to them. Photographers can lower their emotion levels and cosplayers can't; however, the strategy doesn't really alter.

Each character has a set of three moves (poses that they strike), including one special. Then, you have a handful of turns to win or lose, so try not to waste your go! The choices appear at random and you can only pick as many poses as you have characters, though they can do multiple moves.

Being a gacha game, Angels on Stage! also has regular events to participate in, each with its own stories. However, you just battle the same foe over and over again as they get tougher. On the plus side, events get daily rewards and a season pass track of their own.

Speaking of, the rewards are pretty generous for free players. In only a few days, I managed to get four characters to level 50 without any grinding. You get the season pass (with a free and a paid track), daily/weekly/monthly missions, free stuff literally every minute (so long as you remember to collect it), every weekend the devs post a code for some upgrade materials…

The “Gift” — which is the name for the “free stuff every minute” stuff — is something I've not come across before. It will build up for 24 hours, but you can collect it at any point in your play session, even multiple times. You can even skip two hours each day for free to get a quick influx of materials, and do it again a couple of times in exchange for some premium currency.

The premium currency I've seen handled the same way in other games: you have both a free and paid version. The paid stuff can be used for exclusive gacha pulls, amongst other things, but I've never handed over cash for that stuff. The free one is given out for tons of things, so it’s handy to save up for the multiple character gachas.

Half of the game is cutscenes, a curious mix of stills from the anime and rendered 3D models, usually as part of the same scene. It's pretty much all voiced in Japanese, and since this is a mobile game too, it asks if you want to download the voiced or unvoiced versions of each scene, even playing via Steam. I really enjoyed the voice acting, so I always wait the extra few moments for the bigger download. While it’s visually much more family-friendly than the manga, there is a little bit of jiggle physics on show, in case you wondered.

Angels on Stage!’s 3D models do a great job of bringing the manga characters to life, which is hilarious to think about, considering the fact that many of said characters spend a lot of the story bringing manga characters to the realms of 3D. It's nothing revolutionary to look at, but it's an adaptation of the anime adaptation of the manga, what do you want?

Of course, there are other game modes to participate in, but they all boil down to “are you a high enough level to win”? You do get more rewards for playing them, but once you finish your daily login goals, how much more do you want to play per day?

2.5 DIMENSIONAL SEDUCTION: Angels on Stage! is a great adaptation of the anime (it’s less fanservice-y than the manga), but as a game, there’s not really much to it. It’s free-to-play, and decently so, so if you want to see your favourite 2D characters in 3D there’s no reason not to. But, if you’re looking for deep gameplay, this gacha game isn’t it.