| Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch | |||
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| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch is a touching tale of two outcasts trying to live in an isolated, unfamiliar land. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Review Overview
What is Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch?
Hikaru finds himself without luck or a place to live on an unfamiliar island. As he dodges angry senior committee members and pit vipers, he encounters a witch in a similar situation.
The two set out to live—and perhaps even prosper—on Toyotoki, the impenetrable island cut off from the outside world, steeped in mysterious and antiquated customs.
Together with a cheeky island beauty, an arrogant rich girl, a clumsy saleswoman, and a manga-loving delinquent, they find themselves on a similar quest to find a place in the world.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch features:
⚫︎ A linear story
⚫︎ Romantic comedy with elements of fantasy
⚫︎ Fully-voiced dialogue for main characters, excluding the protagonist
⚫︎ Extra media upon finishing
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
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 Switch |
 PlayStation |
 Xbox |
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| Price: | $29.99 | ||||
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Unassumingly Gripping Story Strangely Relatable Characters Self-Aware Humor |
Pretty Useless Save Feature |
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Overall Score - 86/100
Tales of Toyotoki is a story about life, companionship, tribulations, and romance, conveyed through the experiences of a group of well-developed characters, centered around a pair with unusual circumstances. It is a hilarious, romantic, and genuine tale whose simplicity in design allows the characters to shine through the narrative. But although it’s slightly expensive for a barebones visual novel, the experience of reading its magical story alone makes it well worth every cent.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Story - 10/10
A fantastical romantic comedy set in a modern province about everyday life, love, hardships, and friendships. It’s told without hurry using characters that feel real and authentic, despite only existing as artworks through a screen.
Yes, it has conflicts. Quite a non-insignificant amount of it, too, particularly at the latter half of the game. But they’re never delivered intrusively as if they had manifested out of thin air. Instead, the game’s relaxed pace develops each character until their circumstances allow conflicts to arise naturally. It’s an unassumingly beautiful tale that will worm its way into your heart.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Gameplay - 7/10
Normally, a linear visual novel would get a lower score due to the veritable lack of real "gameplay" compared to its much more creative peers. But in Tales of Toyotoki’s case, the linear storytelling could very well be an intentional design choice in order to set the main character’s traits in stone. He’s not supposed to be you, the reader, but Hikaru, the hopeless protagonist.
There are dialogue choices, don’t get me wrong. But the game employs very creative ways of telling you that they don’t actually matter. That automatically makes the entire experience vastly more enjoyable than most linear visual novels in the market.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Visuals - 8/10
Unlike many other visual novels at the same or even lower price point, Tales of Toyotoki doesn’t have many illustrations. Their background images also feel like the ones we used to get back in the very early 2000s with pictures of real life places edited slightly to make them meld underneath the character artworks. However, none of these things hurt the game’s visual experience. Instead, it actually enhances the rustic appearances of its beautiful character illustrations.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Audio - 10/10
The game features a cast of fully-voiced characters. That is, if you exclude the protagonist from that cast. While that’s sort of a shame, the vast majority of voiced visual novels follow this convention. Anyway, the voice acting is insanely good. Their tones are natural and deliver emotions exceptionally well. It’s almost as if they breathe life into the characters they are portraying. The background music is quite great as well. Though not memorable, they’re easily heard with the voice acting but never supersedes the latter in terms of presence.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Value for Money - 8/10
Without a doubt, Tales of Toyotoki’s asking price is set pretty high for a linear visual novel. That $29.99 can be used to buy two equally good or even better visual novels instead, at least if you don’t mind purchasing older ones. Heck, you can add a few dollars and get yourself a visual novel with gameplay that doesn’t just involve reading and pressing a single button. It’s also not very replayable due to its single storyline. But considering the game’s incredible content, I wouldn’t feel any regret buying it.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Review: Pure Magic
As an avid reader of visual novels since Tsukihime, I’m always on the lookout for promising reads. Fortunately, English-only visual novel enthusiasts have been eating well lately with the release of The Hungry Lamb and Hookah Haze, as well as ONE. late last year. And now, we have yet another gem on our hands.
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch is a visual novel that was initially released in August 2022. It had an awesome debut, so naturally, those who heard but couldn’t read it were eager to get it in their language. Two years later, the English version was finally released—and sure enough, I bought it immediately.
It’s quite expensive, yes. Most visual novels aside from the really big and popular ones tend to go for much cheaper. But I can assure you that, at the end of it all, I felt that the price was more than justified.
The story starts out with Hikaru Nishime’s exile (sort of) to the isolated island of Toyotoki. It had a population of less than a thousand people with virtually no tourism to speak of. Not only that, he was sent there alone, supposedly to live with his grandfather. Unfortunately, with the help of a cheeky local, he discovers that his grandfather had actually disappeared, leaving the house that he was supposed to stay in locked and abandoned.
It was during his quest for shelter that he met Lilun, a foreign-looking woman who looked like she had been abandoned by time, who was squatting on a field while eating snakes and stealing crops. That was the start of their strange relationship; one that would eventually bloom into more than just acquaintances that met each other under equally strange circumstances.
Tales of Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch is a character-centric tale about Hikaru and Lilun as they find purpose and fulfill goals in an unfamiliar, isolated land. Together, they find work, interact with various locals, and meet with individuals that would greatly affect their lives.
It’s a very simple tale. Actually, most of the story is almost predictable. But then again, that doesn’t take away from the fact that the story unfolds beautifully in ways that feel deliberately natural. There wasn’t a time when conflicts manifested out of thin air. Instead, each chapter’s pace is tempered such that it never feels rushed or overstays its welcome.
Chapters focus on a particular character, as one would expect from an episodic series. Their arcs do not lack entertainment value due to their individual quirks. Each of them have a different conflict that defines their story, leading to Hikaru and Lilun getting involved either by choice or involuntarily.
However, Tales of Toyotoki’s greatest arc is the one between the two main protagonists. Unlike the others, their story stretches from the very beginning and spans all the way until the end. In a way, you can treat the major character arcs as the development phase of Hikaru and Lilun’s story.
The experience of reading through the game’s story is greatly enhanced by the excellent voice acting behind each character. As expected from Japanese voice actors, their performances are so compelling that it’s difficult to imagine seeking alternatives unless you simply dislike reading (what are you doing here, then). But while the absence of voice acting for faceless characters can be excused, it is still odd that Hikaru, who essentially narrates the entire story, has none. Well, this is somewhat typical of these types of games, so it’s fine.
On the other hand, the visuals do have some more obvious points to talk about. For one, the character illustrations are beautiful, yes, but there’s not a lot of them. Scenes that you would expect to have special fullscreen illustrations of, such as that of Hikaru accidentally barging in while Lilun is trying to have the washing machine work on her only set of clothes, don’t have any. Instead, all you get to see is the background image, leaving you no clue as to how the characters’ faces look during the event.
And on that note, the background images feel like a throwback to ye olde times when visual novels used stock photos of various houses and rooms, edited such that they meld with the character images better. Is that a bad thing? For someone who has read visual novels for such a long time, not really. But I would imagine that it would feel kind of lazy to others.
Despite all of that, I fell in love with Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch’s story. The chemistry between Hikaru and Lilun as they develop to grow much more familiar with each other and their surroundings was immensely satisfying. On top of that, the characters that surrounded them felt genuine and real. They added their own personality into the mix and molded the atmosphere in such a way that it felt like you were there yourself, interacting with everyone.
Yes, it is kind of expensive. $29.99 is a pretty big ask for a linear visual novel with such a barebones design and a lack of illustrations. But again, the reward of reading such a story, at least I think, more than justifies the price. It’s a magical experience, both literally (in the story) and symbolically, that any visual novel fan would regret not getting.
Pros of Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch
| Things Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Got Right |
|---|
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Unassumingly Gripping Story Strangely Relatable Characters Self-Aware Humor |
Unassumingly Gripping Story
The way Tales from Toyotoki delivers its story lacks a lot of punch. It doesn’t provide much in the way of taking you by surprise with big reveals and other more impressionable techniques. Instead, it patiently sets things up so that conflicts arise naturally. This makes reading through its scenarios feel like a story set in real life where everything occurs when they have to happen.
Hikaru and Lilun’s story, in particular, is developed throughout the course of the game. Unlike the other main characters who have their own arcs, theirs stretch from beginning to end, influenced and shaped by their meetings and interactions with the other. It turned them from an awkward pair that simply helped each other out of a sense of pride or exasperation, to something much more. And the final result brings such a warmth to my heart that it’s hard to explain it in words other than positive ones.
Strangely Relatable Characters
Every main character in the game has a peculiar quirk. For example, Akari is from a filthy rich family but her allowance comes in the form of gift certificates and she has to work a part time job to afford things; Hikaru is an abandoned city boy who had to resort to squatting and trespassing in order to find shelter; and Lilun is, well, a witch. But despite their very rare (unless you’re actually a witch in real life) circumstances, they all suffer from issues that we normal (I’m assuming) people encounter in our everyday life.
After all, everybody knows how it feels to chase their dreams, seek companionship, and find a purpose. And that’s exactly why reading the story is such a joy. Knowing that these characters with incredibly unrelatable circumstances suffer from the same problems as us makes every interaction more intimate and genuine.
Self-Aware Humor
As part of the game’s writing style, it breaks the fourth wall quite often. In fact, when you encounter your very first "dialogue option," Akari, one of the game’s main characters, appears out of nowhere to give you a tutorial on it. But then, when you select an option she expressly discourages you from taking, she chides you for it, removes that option entirely, and forces you to choose again.
Is it immersion-breaking? Not at all. That’s because it only happens when the scenario can support it, which is rare by the latter half of the game. And in a way, it serves as a humorous, indirect method of telling you that the game’s story is linear in nature.
Cons of Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch
| Things That Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Can Improve |
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Pretty Useless Save Feature |
Pretty Useless Save Feature
The multiple save slots for visual novels are usually used to mark major events or points of divergence (dialogue choices, usually). Of course, this is to allow players to go back and read through these events whenever they want, or when they want to take the alternative option on a different playthrough.
However, linear visual novels don’t necessitate making a save point for every point of divergence because it has none. Your progress is also automatically saved as you read, so there’s no need to worry about losing it. Lastly, even though you could use it to mark down important scenes you might want to go back to in the future, there’s no real point to it when the game offers an index for you to browse through chapters.
Though to be fair, you can completely ignore this feature unless you’re a VN enthusiast with certain habits.
Is Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Worth It?
Worth it for the magic it brings
While it is true that $29.99 is a pretty huge ask for a linear visual novel without any major visual or gameplay gimmick, I think it’s well worth the money for the experience of reading it. The story is incredible and there’s a lot to learn at the end, especially once you unlock the extra bits after finishing. Even if the game lacks replayability, I have no doubt that anybody who enjoys character-centric visual novels would fall in love with Tales of Toyotoki.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Switch |
PlayStation |
Xbox |
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| Price: | $29.99 | ||||
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch FAQ
Are there no dialogue options in Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch?
While the game’s story is linear in nature, there are dialogue choices in the game. However, this is done to add flavor to its otherwise monotonous gameplay usually considered normal for visual novels.
How will the English version be added to the original Steam release?
Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch’s English version on Steam is a patch that will be applied to the original release that already supports Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and Korean.
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Tales from Toyotoki: Arrival of the Witch Product Information
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| Title | TALES FROM TOYOTOKI: ARRIVAL OF THE WITCH |
|---|---|
| Release Date | August 19, 2022 (Original), August 22, 2024 (English) |
| Developer | Fragaria |
| Publisher | Aksys Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Visual Novel |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | Teen |
| Official Website | Tales from Toyotoki Arrival of the Witch Social Media |
