Aside from being a total pain in the arse to type, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles is an action RPG based on the popular anime of the same name. The adaptation offers a brief introduction to the source material, before plopping you into one of the property's later story arcs. Those unfamiliar with the original work will likely be left bemused, but this is still a charming take on fantasy tropes, complete with a cast of endearing characters.

There are essentially three parts to Isekai Chronicles: visual novel dialogue scenes, side-scrolling dungeons, and town building. It's a pretty even split throughout, although for the opening few hours, you're going to be enduring a lot of exposition, to the point where you'll be hungry for more of the game's surprisingly satisfying action.

Sporting a reasonably sized roster of playable characters, each with their own fighting styles and special attacks, mowing down monsters across a range of straightforward dungeons can be great fun. Granted, it's a bit button-mashy, but there's a nice punchiness to the combat itself, as you send beasties bouncing off the borders of the screen with crazy combos. Super strong magic attacks are also an option, and an elemental weakness system lets you deal absurd damage under the right conditions. Like we say, it's satisfying.

But proceedings do get repetitive a lot sooner than we'd like. Outside of levelling up your heroes, you dungeon delve in order to gather resources, which can be used to construct new, stat-boosting buildings back in town. It's a fundamentally addictive loop, but the grind becomes very apparent very quickly, as you start repeating the same dungeons just to harvest a handful of additional materials, one run at a time.

To be fair, it's all signposted quite well, but it can be hard to muster motivation when you're greeted with yet another wave of side quest markers upon finally grinding out your current objective.

If you're looking for a decent, but not overly demanding action RPG, you could do a lot worse than That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Isekai Chronicles. It's a pleasant anime-based adventure, topped off with enjoyable action — but you'll need to endure some serious repetition along the way.