Bofuri Review
Added 2024-07-28 03:04:00 +0000 UTCThe point of the show: Gamer girl keeps accidentally breaking the game balance of a VRMMORPG, much to the game developers' dismay.
Brandon and I have a history with MMORPGs consisting of two games: Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XIV. There have been others that we've tried, but those two have stuck with us all these years. From those gaming experiences, I can tell that the author of Bofuri "gets it." MMOs simply have that magic in which gamers love getting immersed.
From a gameplay perspective, PSO has so many secrets and unexplained mechanics that require huge lookup tables and reference charts. These are definitely artifacts of old game design decisions. In comparison, FFXIV has almost no secrets at all; modern gaming UI and tooltips explain every single mechanic. Bofuri really "clicked" for me when Maple started getting weird abilities like Atrocity and Deploy Armaments. The requirements and questlines to get those abilities were so niche that, as far as I could tell from the show, no one else in the game ever stumbled upon them. Other gamers started whispering about her weird build and abilities on the forums. My modern gaming brain says, "couldn't you just look up a guide on how to get the same build?" But that's not the point: gamers in Bofuri are dealing with new VRMMORPG mechanics--the new wild west where everyone is scrambling to figure things out. Shangri-La Frontier worked with that same concept, and Brandon and I fondly remember that from the PSO days.
Bofuri also captures the social aspect of MMOs. Brandon and I had so much fun partying up with people we'd never met IRL for dungeons and raids in FFXIV. How did we meet these people to party up? Well... we might have a random conversation in a town, help out someone do a quest or boss, meet friends of friends, join a free company, etc etc. These were all organic experiences--so organic that I actually can't remember how I met each person I've raided with. Bofuri depicts those same experiences that build the eventual "Maple Tree" guild. The fun addition is to get Maple's perspective in all of this. She really is just an average school girl. She's not a sweat, not a "gamer girl," not a beta tester, not competitive... She remains her simple feminine self and stumbles her way through the game. What's not to love about that?
My main criticism comes after the guild and main characters are established. From there, Bofuri gets stuck in this cycle: new event -> Maple and friends break the game or exploit a mechanic -> the devs rage - the devs patch the game -> next event. To be fair, this is only about the latter part of season 2, and the author keeps it fresh using characters from other guilds mix up the social dynamics. And, now the dev team has an interesting manager. Bofuri depicts corporate software development too realistically... I'm triggered.
The Verdict: The real VRMMORPG was the friends we made along the way. 6.5/10.
Comments
Yeah, Bofuri S1 was the bomb when it came out. But S2 dragged mainly due to rinse and repeat like you said. It's too bad they left out the more interesting parts like where Maple and Sally have to fight each other... heh yeah, they left that out among other scenes. But we got the drill thing attack and the slime bug thing and tentacles. They did tease the new character at the end of S2 but who knows if they make S3 anytime soon. They only covered about 7-8 volumes and it is currently on vol 17+ so there is plenty of material to do. But still, was very enjoyable watching Maple be Maple. For me S1: 9/10 S2:6/10. Overall: 7.5/10.
MaouS@T@N
2024-07-30 02:30:41 +0000 UTCRIP Rivers of Blood... -Nathan
Brandon Yeo
2024-07-29 18:30:23 +0000 UTCThe other thing BOFURI reminds me of is the way people are always doing videos on how busted something is in Elden Ring/Shadow of the Erdtree as a way of pleading for the developers to nerf it for PVP.
Paul Shuster
2024-07-29 01:21:20 +0000 UTC
