Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day (PS3) Review

Strange game. Good anime.

I had no idea what Short Peace: Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day was until I booted it up and actually played it. I still really don’t know what it was I played, but I’m willing to give anything a try at least once. Created by Suda51, this side scrolling platformer lasts about as long as the appeal did, so there’s that.

Ranko Tsukigime’s Longest Day is only part of the entire Short Peace package. Short Peace itself is a collection of four short anime movies, with the Suda game mixed in. Since this is all about the game, I’ll be focusing on it for this review.

The stuff nightmares are made of.

Platforms: PS3
MSRP: $39.99
Price I’d pay: $20
Multiplayer: N/A

Ranko is a regular high school girl that lives in an elaborate parking garage, likes karaoke with her friends, has a luchador as a father and also moonlights as an assassin when not in class. Yeah, it’s a strange one. She’s on the ultimate mission to kill her father. Yep.

Gotta go fast.

The game breaks down into platforming sections. Players move Ranko through nine stages, running, jumping and slashing enemies in her way. Gaining momentum will allow her to kill enemies by just running into them, and finding different paths to take in each level will change up things slightly. Knowing when to jump and when to stay on the same path is all up to the player, and there is no wrong way to go. During this time, green hands that cover the back part of the screen are chasing her. If they catch up to her, it’s game over. To combat this, she can fire a gun blast behind her, as long as she has ammo, which is represented by a meter that fills up when she kills enemies.

There are a few boss fights in the game, one within the platforming standard game, one that plays out like a bullet hell boss and finally a luchador wrestling match against Ranko’s father that plays out like an 8-bit hack n slash. None of these are really difficult at all.

If there’s one thing I have to mention, it’s the art style. Every time I killed an enemy they would explode into colorful characters and splash on the screen. These would also collide into other enemies and cause even more explosions of colors. It really popped. The art style in the anime cut scenes seemed to change every 15 minutes or so. Cut scenes occur in between some levels, and I will admit, they are well done even though the things that are happening in them are absolutely insane. I mean, the final boss fight has 8-bit sprites fighting each other in a giant wrestling ring with a fully drawn anime girl floating around and a gigantic 3D rendered Pomeranian in the background watching the match. It is insane, even for Suda.

The biggest problem is the fact that this entire game lasts all of about two hours. The anime cut scenes seemed to be longer than the levels themselves, with each level taking no longer than two minutes. There really is no replay value either other than replaying levels to find artwork or different costumes or music tracks, and there is no leader board.

Yeah, this is a Suda51 game.

Now, I do want to at least mention the movies that also come in the package. These are four short films from some pretty big talent in the anime business: Katsuhiro Otomo known for Akira, and Hajime Katoki who helped work on the Gundam series as well as Policenauts. They are all well done and I enjoyed all of them.

Lasting only around two and a half hours, Short Peace is not really much of a game. The game itself being maybe an hour and a half and the collection of movies lasting an hour, this entire thing can be seen in an evening’s time. The game is strange and slightly boring in its execution, but the movies are the highlight of the package. For $39.99, Short Peace is really only for the hardcore anime fans, but if you do pick it up, they get some quality animations. Just don’t get your hopes up for the game.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.

Good
  • Good animations
  • Simple controls
  • Nice art styles
Bad
  • A little too strange
  • Very short
  • Really only for one audience
  • Pretty high price
6
Decent
Written by
Drew is the Community Manager here at ZTGD and his accent simply woos the ladies. His rage is only surpassed by the great one himself and no one should stand between him and his Twizzlers.