Garden Of Witches Review – A Tea Party Can Solve Anything

I believe we’ve been experiencing the golden age of roguelites in the past couple of years. Recently, popular titles such as Hades and Slay the Spire have turned into successful franchises with impressive sequels, and smaller, and even solo developers, have released memorable titles such as Balatro. The roguelite formula has evolved and established itself well enough that it has become a reliably fun gameplay experience. With the various subgenres and widely varied styles, roguelite has become one of my favorite tags to look for when searching for new games, and I rarely regret picking up a new roguelite.

That made it easy for me to try Garden of Witches. Developed and published by Team Tapas, Garden of Witches is an action roguelite with an adorable art style and aesthetics, and after an Early Access period, the game is now fully released. I really liked the idea and look of Garden of Witches; an action roguelite about anime witches seemed like a lot of fun. But my excitement slowly dwindled with each passing hour in the game.

First, I have to admire the art design of Garden of Witches. It’s what drew me into the game, and I was constantly impressed by the character designs, animations, and combat VFX. Especially with the more difficult fights, either with bosses or a lot of enemies, visual cues were always on point. I felt like the art design had set up a fantastic backdrop for the rest of the game to shine on, but some shortcomings began to show up.

The story of Garden of Witches starts great. We learn about the world, the other witches, and the nightmares that threaten to destroy our little witchy world. We have to gather everyone and throw the “tea party” to stop the nightmares from destroying everything. The writing itself is great, and it’s not what hinders the story. Rather, it’s the implementation of the story with the replayable rogulite formula that hurts the experience of the story. Garden of Witches is spread across multiple chapters, and you progress through the chapters by defeating the final boss. But as long as you are stuck on a chapter, every dialogue and interaction is the same. Which, due to the nature of the genre, it will take multiple tries to defeat the final boss of each chapter.

Now, having to skip through every piece of dialogue is one frustration. On the other hand, the new interaction and story moments being locked behind progressing through chapters is, in itself, another issue I felt with the game. A roguelite is not really suitable for a linear story, and it seems like the story and the gameplay experience of Garden of Witches, while neither is bad, are not compatible with each other. Finally, a very nitpicky issue that made the story’s presentation less appealing to me is the lack of English voice-over. The Japanese cast does a fantastic job, and the game sounds great, but it’s just another small reason why the story didn’t resonate with me.

I could overlook my issues with the story presentation if the core gameplay of Garden of Witches was great. The game feels like most action roguelites at the start, learning the mechanics and unlocking the first few abilities are fun. Combat is surprisingly challenging during boss fights, and learning the moves and winning a fight feels very rewarding. But after getting to chapter two, I started to notice a lack of variety in enemies and meaningful upgrades or combinations for weapons and abilities. Meta progressions are relatively basic upgrades, and combat upgrades are always the same based on what weapon or spell you bring to your run.

Roguelites are built around replayability, and any story, meta progression, or chance-based upgrades are meant to make every run feel unique. Garden of Witches has all of these elements; it’s just not enough. The story isn’t implemented well with the replayability of the genre. Meta progression is not exciting enough to motivate me to play more, and the chance-based upgrades are very predictable once you play for a couple of hours. A game can still be fun with one or two of these flaws, but all of them together hindered the experience too much for me.

I’m rarely disappointed by roguelites. I love the genre, and whenever I find a new game, I’m excited to try it. Maybe playing so many great roguelites in recent years has raised my expectations, but I just couldn’t continue playing Garden of Witches. If you watch a single, isolated run of the game, it looks like a lot of fun. And it actually is, if you don’t look at the larger picture of how all the elements of the game come together. If you want a fun action game about anime witches, you will have a good time with Garden of Witches. But if you are a seasoned roguelite player, you might find it lacking in what makes the genre great.

Nima reviewed Garden of Witches on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game that was available at the time of writing, and our score will not be changed.