KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! (Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! ~Kono Yokubou no Ishou ni Chouai o!~) is a visual novel with resource management gameplay. Developed by MAGES and published by PQube, it brings Konosuba’s comedic style to visual novel fans for the first time in English.
For the Fans
It’s worth mentioning from the start that this is very much for existing fans of Konosuba.
KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! takes place after season two of the anime. It makes frequent references to the events up to this point and doesn’t attempt to introduce the world or characters. It’s completely aimed at existing fans, so this isn’t the place to jump in.
There are also a couple of references to events from the previous game Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! -Kono Yokubukai Game ni Shinpan o!-, which has not been released in English. Fortunately, these are minor and rare.
While knowing the anime is certainly more than enough, there are a few events that will make more sense if you’ve read the light novel too. These are mostly related to one of the subheroines, but I don’t feel it would affect the experience much.
I say that this is one for the fans for another reason too: it’s full of fanservice scenes. Cosplay is a big theme here, so seeing the characters in outfits like maid costumes and school uniforms is one of the main attractions.
Cursed Slab and Clothes Of Desire
The overarching plot of KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! is minimal. In short, Kazuma’s party finds a cursed slab that creates clothes but curses one of the party to change their personality in exchange. They get roped into using it repeatedly while trying to solve the mystery behind who is manipulating events in the background.
The main plot itself feels weak, but it does what it seems to be intended to do: it creates opportunities to see the girls essentially cosplay and act out some situations that otherwise wouldn’t happen. Whether it’s Megumin advocating that flat truly is justice or Chris acting incredibly demure, these are things that would never happen normally.
While the main plot is weak, more of the time in KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! is spent watching character scenes which are a lot of fun. There are plenty of scenes related to the clothes, ones where you run into them around town, and hidden ones for the main heroines related to jobs to unlock. Each character has at least one ending too.
Whilst most of the character scenes are standalone, the ones where you find people around town are mini-storylines. I enjoyed reading these, particularly as they allowed me to get to know Yunyun, Wiz, Chris, and Sena better. For instance, Konosuba fans will all know that Yunyun has no friends, but it was fun to read a little story about how she was trying to change that and why she was failing, over some of the standalone scenes where it just came up as a joke.
Comedic Tones
When people think of visual novels with beautiful heroines, they tend to think of romance routes. Whilst KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! does have routes, calling them romance isn’t quite accurate.
Kazuma remains as he is in the rest of the series, by which I mean the same adventurer who stole a girl’s panties and waved them above his head. There’s a reason why he’s frequently called scum by the women in town and that doesn’t lend itself well to actual romance at this point. There are some romance-esque parts, but it’s generally followed by a punchline. Even the character endings don’t escape this.
Most of the scenes feel very much like the anime, as they focus more on comedic moments. The great dynamic between the party is there, and I found it particularly hilarious how harsh Kazuma is towards Aqua at times, especially about how he can’t see her as a romantic interest.
Whilst feeling like the anime is a positive overall, some scenes feel too much like the anime. The same ideas are reused a few times, like a slime-coated Megumin offering an unwanted hug.
Overall it comes across well though, and it makes this visual novel feel like it’s just a short continuation after season two. If someone likes Konosuba, whilst it doesn’t reach the same exciting heights as some parts of the anime, I can’t imagine them not enjoying KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire!
Side Hustles and Crafting Clothes
The gameplay flow of this game seems quite basic, but only when you know what you’re doing. It’s seperated into four chapters, a character route, and a brief ending. In each of the four chapters, you’ll be set the task of creating two articles of clothing, though it’s not as simple as it sounds.
To get components to craft the clothes you need to assign Kazuma, Aqua, Megumin, and Darkness to some of the 25 side jobs via a weekly schedule, or take on one of the 10 quests. Some days pass and you’ll get items and some money to buy some of the other components needed.
While it’s a resource management game, the management gameplay is fairly simple. Most of the jobs will be locked away behind creating certain pieces of clothing and you won’t know what jobs give what items, or what components upcoming clothes will need, until you’ve done it once (or checked out our item and clothes list guide). Exploring these until you find out what is behind all the unlocks is the only real difficulty in the management aspect.
If you want to get one of the endings as well as the story-related clothes, you need to unlock four ‘optional’ outfits for that character. This does require figuring out how to get the components though, which might involve chains like unlocking a Yunyun outfit to unlock a Darkness outfit, to then unlock an Aqua outfit.
On top of this, you’ll need to find all of that character’s events and choose the correct dialogue options each time. The good and side character endings need near-perfect actions, so you may wish to check out our route and ending guide.
The gameplay elements aren’t too exciting themselves, but they work well enough as part of the story.
Quality Concerns
Whilst it’s a fairly minor note, it is worth pointing out that there are some issues with the localization’s editing. There are little typos and minor errors like the wrong word here and there, particularly letters that were uncapitalized where they should’ve been. It was enough that it distracted me at times and more than I’d expect in such a short visual novel. That said, it wasn’t too bad.
I did at a few points experience some minor technical issues too, such as slowing down for about 30 seconds on a loading screen or in one instance the voices stopping out until I restarted. This happened just a handful of times.
Anime Style
I mentioned that KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! feels similar to the anime and that extends to the look and sound of it too.
It’s fully voiced in Japanese and the voice actors from the anime are reprising their roles. The cast is great, with the legendary Rie Takahashi (Megumin) and Jun Fukushima (Kazuma) being particularly notable. The characters wouldn’t be as hilarious as they are without the voice acting, so I’m glad the developers decided to make it fully voiced.
The CGs all feel great. These feel like they could be screenshots from the anime itself.
I feel a bit more mixed about the sprites. Most of them great, but a few for secondary characters like Luna, and some expressions, did feel like they didn’t quite match the same style as in the anime. They use lip movement synchronized with speech, blinking eyes, and occasionally fun emotes like steam coming off Kazuma’s head to good effect. They do look quite lively.
Verdict
In the end, I feel like KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire! will be enjoyed by anyone who liked the anime. Whilst it’s not exactly a great main plot and the gameplay doesn’t stand out, it’s a lot of fun moments spent with a cast of characters with a brilliant dynamic and plenty of fanservice.
KONOSUBA – GOD’S BLESSING ON THIS WONDERFUL WORLD! LOVE FOR THESE CLOTHES OF DESIRE! IS RECOMMENDED
General Guide including Item and Job List: Click Here
Complete Walkthrough for all Routes and Endings: Click Here
If you are looking for more visual novels, you might want to check out our review of Destiny Star Girlfriend. We’ve also got coverage of a variety of visual novel titles that you may be interested in taking a look at.
Thank you to PQube Games for providing a Steam review code for KONOSUBA – God’s Blessing on this Wonderful World! Love For These Clothes Of Desire!
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
