Review Spice and Wolf VR (Switch)

Thanks to Gemdrops PR for providing us with a review code

Spice and Wolf is a light novel series, that has since been adapted into manga, anime, visual novels and now a VR game. The basic premise of the series is that Lawrence the lonely traveling merchant happens upon Holo the wisewolf who escaped from the village she’d be in. Since then Lawrence continues on with his work with Holo as a companion. You don’t even need to know that much to play it. While this game can use the VR goggles they are not actually required to play.

Spice

It’s hard to call this a game. More like a VR Experience. You simply view things from the perspective of the spot Lawrence is sitting on. Him and Holo have come to an abandoned watermill to take shelter from the rain.While you watch on from Lawrence’s spot they will make conversation. Holo will move around the room a bit so you can follow her to watch her interact with the environment. When they tell stories some figures appear to illustrate it better. You can’t interact in any capacity and have no input on the conversation.

And Wolf

After you’ve watched the twenty minutes of story, you can play in interact mode. In that you can look at a few things for Holo to comment on or pick up. In this she will actually react to you as a person. There is a checklist on the bench for things for you to find. Without the ability to actually interact in any capacity it appears you actually can’t get one of the things on the checklist to happen.

Presentation

The subtitles are in white, and when Holo comes up close to you they can be hard to read. There is no English voice acting. Unless you know Japanese, you’ll have to read.

Visually it looks okay, I feel that the models could look just a bit better considering it is all the game has to offer. The crackling fire is nice to hear, but the rain is quite a faint sound.

VR Goggles

The game looks a lot better when playing with the VR Goggles on. The subtitles will follow your head so half of my problem with it is solved. Unfortunately whenever Holo sits next to you the subtitles will then intersect with her body so you can’t read it.

In other versions of the game you could at the very least have an opportunity to pet Holo’s tail. For some reason, despite having Joy-Cons, that is not an option in the Switch version. This was already barebones enough without removing features.

Overall

It is a cute experience, that doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the series. Unfortunately it takes only twenty five minutes to finish. As such I don’t find it worth the price it’s asking. Given that you could instead pick up the source material. The first book would give you the same level of conversation from this pair.

I could only recommend this to a fan of Spice and Wolf who just wants to see Holo up close. Yet if that is the case you’d definitely be better off picking it up on another VR platform as any capacity to interact is removed in the Switch version.

Unfortunately, because of that I don’t like it.