\n

Of the hundreds of visual novels on the Switch and the dozens I\u2019ve played, all of them have had some form of interaction: be it investigations, minigames, or even just the occasional dialogue tree. Witch on the Holy Night is unusual in that it\u2019s taking the genre name literally – it\u2019s a 12 chapter novel with high resolution graphics, full voice acting, and no discernable gameplay beyond changing how text is displayed. It has a lot of history, inspiring fighting games and an entire multiverse including the world\u2019s leading anime gacha game, but your tolerance for the \u201cgame\u201d is going to depend heavily on your ability to just use your Switch as a book reader.<\/p>\n

The story of Witch on the Holy Night is set in an alternate Japan in which magic is legal but is kept highly secret in order to prevent its overuse or abuse. The focus is on three characters – hotheaded witch \/ high school student Aoko Aozaki (who you may recognize from Melty Blood: Type Lumina), her mysterious witch housemate Alice Kuonji, and transfer student Soujuuro Shizuki who catches the first two practicing magic in what was supposed to be an empty park. After an extended combat sequence (which takes up most of the fifth chapter) Shizuki is taken back to the home of the girls while they try to determine how exactly to deal with this person shattering the masquerade. It is an interesting story, with the main trio of characters being interesting and unpredictable compared to their first impressions. The story can feel overly long; it\u2019s on the longer end of visual novels I\u2019ve read at about 25 hours (acknowledging I\u2019m a relatively fast reader) and in its original written form had somewhere between 350 and 400 pages of Japanese text. <\/p>\n