 Let's keep the Patreon request train rolling with a request from Phil, a pretty unusual one with Tsukabon Dekka 3, only released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System. Obviously I've spent a lot of time yammering about Super Famicom stuff on this channel, so what the hell, let's look at a Famicom game. It received an English patch not too long ago, and at the very least it's an interesting opportunity to look at how friggin weird some of these games can be. First of all, Tsukabon Dekka 3 is based on a mango, which eventually was made into an anime as well as live action movies, and as far as I know, the 3 in the title doesn't mean it's the third game in the series, but rather it being based on the third TV series. Although there was a Tsukabon Dekka 2 for the Sega Master System, but again that only means it's based on the second TV series. Again, Tsukabon Dekka means female delinquent cop. You play as three crime fighting sisters, and you can switch between the three sisters at will in a top down adventure style setting, with each sister having a different weapon. But as you'll find out right away, having an English patch here isn't necessarily going to help you all that much, because uh, what the hell do I do? Where do I go? What am I doing? Thankfully, some kind of soul out there has provided a fact on GameFacts.com, so here's how everything works. You start with the three playable characters, like I said. The top one Yuka has the lowest HP and AP of the three, but she knows more spells. The second sister Yuma has the highest HP but knows the least amount of spells, and the third sister Yui, whose stats are in between the other two sisters. You learn spells by leveling up and you level up by defeating enemies, so yeah, this is kind of an action RPG. So now that we have a better sense of what this game is, now it's time to figure out what the hell to do and where to go, and that's where this game kind of hits a wall. Nothing here is intuitive in the slightest. Maybe you gotta be more familiar with the source material, maybe it's the translation, maybe it's the limitations of the Famicom, and you can only do so much, and this game is just too ambitious, but it's really tough to get a consistent sense of what you're supposed to do at any given time. Here's what I mean. You go all the way to the right and you find this sweater looking thing. It's actually a chain mail, you pick it up and then you switch to Yui and go to the nearest telephone booth. Here's your telephone card where it gives you a tip. In this case, it tells you to master the art of flight. Okay, how? And where do I fly? You go from booth to booth collecting info, some clues make sense and some don't. And like I said, maybe you have to be familiar with the source material. So how do I get to the next freaking area? All these cryptic clues aren't really helping me. It turns out you have to get to level 5 with Yuka and learn the art of flight spell so she can fly across the river. Go all the way to the left and there's your next area. Yeah, not exactly intuitive or player friendly. The next area is a 2D side scroller through a forest. And again, there's weird stuff here you have to do with specific characters in order to proceed. It isn't until the third area until you finally get some straightforward stuff without having to deal with any of that nonsense. So yeah, Sukebon Dekka 3 is a really interesting game. There's a lot of cool ideas here and it's the rare 8-bit action RPG. I like the use of items and spells. Being able to switch between three characters is cool, but the game is just too confusing and convoluted and the combat here isn't all that great to begin with. It's decent, but it's nothing all that special. Another deal breaker here is that there's no battery save, only passwords, and there's 73 characters long, no thanks. So yeah, Sukebon Dekka 3 is an interesting look back at a story-driven action RPG, but I wouldn't be able to recommend it in good conscious because it's just not very player friendly.