Corpse Party: Blood Drive has technical issues, and some questionable character designs, but it does so much right that these faults are easy to overlook. It is a clear love letter to J-Horror.

After my ride with the Corpse Party series, I didn’t want it to be over so soon. Corpse Party: Blood Drive initially released on PS Vita in July 2014, but this would be my first time getting around to playing it. Luckily for me, the developers managed to fix known issues found in the PS Vita version for this release, which means Corpse Party fans who wants a second playthrough might see a few differences. That said, it’s necessary to play the other games in this series beforehand to be able to understand its story. I want to mention that here for possible spoilers that might get mentioned in this review. The story takes place two months after the conclusion of Corpse Party: Book of Shadows when Sachiko was defeated along with the Heavenly Host school.

Having lost three friends, Ayumi feels like it’s her fault for introducing the “Sachiko Ever After” ritual to her friends. Suffering for the loss, she ends up searching for any chance of saving her dead friends, which is when she finds out that the Books of Shadows. Sadly, it just so happens to be located at the Heavenly Host school.

Yes, it turns out that this school didn’t get destroyed. She decides to go back, but this time alone, and the nightmare begins once again.After the last entry in this series, we meet a few familiar faces in this entry. I enjoyed that I was able to learn more about these characters, despite them missing from the first Corpse Party title. During the game, the teacher gets replaced, but their actions were similar in that they both cared for their students. The story features many moments of courage when one of the characters is in danger, and the others do what they can to help.

This expanded view of the cast allowed me to learn more about them, which help with the story delivery.The gameplay in Blood Drive is similar to the previous Corpse Party, although Heavenly Host is a little different this time around. There are traps spread around the entire school, such as spiky wood, glass, tripwire, or phantoms, which can all kill you when not being careful. While you can just run around some traps or disarm others, phantoms will chase you unless you have a talisman.

It’s possible to hide in cabinets and wait until they go away, although they will not disappear and might even notice where you’re hiding. However, there’s no shortage of talismans lying around.

A returning system is how you can’t save during dialogue or cutscenes and require candles to do so at later parts of the game.Something that slightly bothered me was that direction in the game was a bit confusing. There is no map, and it’s easy not to know what you’re supposed to do next. While investigating, things you have to do to unlock the next scene weren’t always clear to me, so I had to spend a few hours walking around and double-check everything. Something new here is that you can run faster, but the character gets tired very fast.

So timing is everything during chase scenes, but it helped make the experience more nerve-racking. Once you know the mechanics of the enemy types, it’s possible to survive these events. For investigating scenes, however, it was quite annoying always having to wait for the character to recharge.There are several dead ends available in each chapter of Blood Drive. Unlocking scenes require the player to obtain the true ending of the chapter. Most bad endings happen after a wrong action, but it’s possible to reload the last save file to avoid the dead end.

I found this feature quite interesting as you don’t have to play the chapter from the beginning, but it’s enough to replay a small portion of the game.As aforementioned, the PC and Switch version runs better than the PS Vita with faster loading times, higher framerate, and prettier graphics. I found the 3D models to be simple, yet it perfectly fits with the Corpse Party theme. Something I noticed is that Blood Drive is less gory than Corpse Party, but that doesn’t mean it’s less scary or messed up. Additionally, the voice acting is very high quality, and I enjoyed being able to listen to the character’s voices once again.Although Blood Drive looks like a simple game, I enjoyed the final story of our friends while being introduced to a new cast of characters. It’s a title where you don’t want to part with any of these characters because they are so likable.

I found the developers had balanced the gameplay and storytelling portions well, and I was never overwhelmed or bored by the cutscenes. While the lack of directions caused me to become lost at times, any progress made to help the characters out was always rewarding. Tiny tanks cool math games. Overall, I am satisfied with the ending Blood Drive delivers, with all its improvements added that made for a better experience than on the Vita. Now, I’ll wait patiently for Corpse Party 2.

Corpse Party fans might be eager to try the latest game in the series titled “Blood Drive” featuring a return to the haunted Heavenly Host Elementary School. This new entry in the series features familiar faces and locations and it is also the first one that utilizes real-time 3D graphics. Corpse Party featured 16-bit sprites as it was originally developed for PC-98 version of RPG Maker while Book of Shadows was designed in the style of a Visual Novel with point-and-click gameplay.The original Corpse Party was developed as a freeware game for PC-98 version of RPG Maker, which was then later localized and ported to the PlayStation Portable. It offered an excellent and absolutely terrifying story and likable characters. Despite having simplistic 16-bit visuals, it was still a scary experience thanks in part to the excellent sound design and the creepy atmosphere. It immediately became a cult classic among the fans.Corpse Party: Blood Drive continues the story of one of the survivor of “Sachiko Ever After” incident, Ayumi Shinozaki, as she returns to the Heavenly Host Elementary hoping to resurrect his friends that became a victim of this cursed school in the previous games. If you haven’t played Corpse Party and especially its sequel titled “Book of Shadows”, we recommend to check it out before starting with Blood Drive, as the story directly picks up after the epilogue of Book of Shadows.Corpse Party: Blood Drive combines the gameplay from Book of Shadows and the original Corpse Party to provide a brand new experience.

This experience is further enhanced by the 3D graphics, which unfortunately are designed for Chibi-style characters. The character design is a negative here as the Chibi-style characters often don’t mix with the survival horror tone of the game.While this might be the first game in the series to offer 3D graphics, this feature comes with its own set of technical issues. The game was developed on the Unity Game Engine by Japanese developer Team GrisGris and as it stands, the game is plagued with long load times, multiple load screens and a choppy frame rate. Don’t let this stop you from playing the game though, as the core of the game, especially its story, is absolutely fantastic and deserves to be played to completion.As we talked about the technical issues earlier, the gameplay in itself becomes a victim of the technical issues.

Even if we open the inventory screen, we will have to sit through a loading screen just to select an item. Since the players will have to utilize items to manage the health of their characters, this can become frustrating in the long run. These loading screens are not limited to inventory access, as entering a new room or location also triggers a loading screen. The abundance of them unfortunately makes the game a bit hard to play as it requires patience to sit through all of them.The majority of the game is set in dark and empty corridors and classrooms while players are armed with a flashlight to navigate them.

The flashlight runs on a limited battery that can run out with time, fortunately their is an option to make it unlimited in the game. The flashlight perhaps has the biggest impact on the performance as it can often result in choppy frame rate, thanks in part to the lighting and shadows, that appear to be taxing for the Vita hardware.While Corpse Party: Blood Drive offers an engrossing story full of thriller and twists, it unfortunately doesn’t offer an exciting gameplay.

The core of the game revolves around exploration and solving puzzles. Most of the story is unfolded in Visual Novel style conversations that are often too long, but thanks to the interesting writing, they don’t appear to be boring at all. Infact the best part of the game is definitely the story as experienced by its various characters. This experience is further enhanced by the Sound Design, which is one of the main strength of the series and manages to shine in this latest game as well.Corpse Party: Blood Drive is a well deserved entry in the series that unfortunately falls a bit too short due to its technical shortcomings.

The game has an excellent story and it will definitely be a treat for all the Corpse Party fans, provided they can deal with the issues and don’t have them impact their experience. Blood Drive also offers a satisfying conclusion to the original Corpse Party, and nicely wraps the story of this trilogy of games until we get the next one in the series.Corpse Party: Blood Drive is available exclusively on the PS Vita.

It was developed by Team GrisGris and published and localized by XSEED Games for the West.