Thank you NIS America, Inc. for providing us with a review code!

Poison Control, developed by Nippon Ichi Software is a very strange title. Well, I guess NIS in general likes to make strange titles in the first place. In their ever-expanding pile of games, they decided to recently create a shooter. It’s always an interesting time when Japanese developers take on the usually European/American-dominated shooter genre. This one, in particular, is of the third-person shooter variety.

As the Protagonist dies, seeing red, he or she finds themselves in Hell. Uh oh, did our Protagonist start off on the wrong foot already? Confused as to what even happened, they suddenly find themselves face-to-face with a Klesha, a strange demon-looking enemy. As this Klesha attacks, it mysteriously transforms into a cute girl! Supposedly, the Klesha’s goal was to take over the body of the recently deceased human, and it worked! However, whenever she is in the driver’s seat, the Protagonist is left as a spooky, scary, skeleton. In the rules of Hell, whenever a Klesha and human bond, they become Soul Mates. Two beings inhabit the same body. Soul Mates are now tasked with entering Belles’ Hells (BH), areas created when a fair maiden is overwhelmed by despair. The Soul Mates must purge the Belles’ Hells to prevent Hell and the Mortal Realm from being overwhelmed by wild Kleshas.

Our lovely Protagonist, and their new companion who goes by Poisonette, purge these Hells in hopes of gaining stickers. If they gain five stickers, they can exchange them to go to Heaven/Heavenly Realm. Each level is designed similar to a maze or a grid-like layout, similar to classic (J)RPGs or dungeon crawlers, but in a 3D setting. You either control the Protagonist or Poisonette at a time. The Protagonist is in charge of aiming, shooting, and interacting with treasure chests scattered throughout the world. When Poisonette is in control, she has a limited amount of time on the screen, and the protagonist becomes immobile but intangible to bullets. Her job is to purify the lands by walking on over the poison mires. Poisonette is immune to poison, but does not have any means of defense outside of purifying a mire when a Klesha is on it.

Shooting at first can feel a bit awkward as horizontal aiming is a bit too stiff, and vertical aiming is a bit too loose. In most cases, you’ll be overshooting your aim in the beginning. There are no options to increase/decrease sensitivity, although there is an option to adjust aim assist. The Protagonist also aims to his or her left as their gun gauntlet is on their left hand, so it is possible to miss some enemies even if you are directly aiming at them. Before shooting, one must hold ZL before he or she is able to shoot with ZR. Poisonette herself is activated by holding the L button. The other buttons include X to use a Soulshock (a large area of effect attack), B to roll, A to interact, Y to lock on to enemies, and R to swap between your poison shots. In the main hub world, the Protagonist has access to multiple shot types, unlocked by collecting three badges in each of the Belle’s Hells. There’s a lot of variety in the weapons such as a three burst shot, a rapid fire machine gun, shotgun spread, the standard semi-auto one burst shot, and so on. Up to four different poisons can be equipped at one time, three being from the Belle’s Hells, and one being a special ammo type dropped from Kleshas.

The general gameplay loop is the Protagonist shooting Kleshas and Poisonette purifying the mires. To keep things from feeling too repetitive, each Belle’s Hell has different objectives. In one BH, you might simply be purifying the mires and in another, you’ll be cutting down trees—because the lady who created the BH is allergic to trees. In typical Nippon Ichi Software fashion, there’s a sense of humor mixed in with all the dark undertones that lie beneath. These area’s tones can vary greatly. You’ll have humorous levels based on a lady absolutely obsessed with an amusement park mascot that looks suspiciously like a Prinny. (I wonder why that is?—I said with obvious sarcasm.) You’ll experience generally sad levels such as a person suffering from self-imposed Dissociative identity disorder due to self-loathing. And then some levels are downright diabolical, such as a girl who loves the color red so much, that she’s willing to paint the town in it.

At the end of most of the levels, there are heart-to-hearts with Poisonette, which give you a choice of three dialogue boxes that have the side effect of greatly increasing specific stats. A stat that doesn't increase anything is the Trust stat. Poisonette's not-so-subtle goal has to do with wanting the Protagonist's body for herself. Raising the Trust stat enough might just be key to avoiding a bad end. The interactions with Poisonette are adorable and you get to see her cute and caring side shine through dialogue with raising her Trust levels. There's a sense of irony in seeing a character who's effectively a demon get flustered over the many risqué moments and expressing empathy for the gruesome scenes.

Poison Control’s artstyle is pretty pleasant to look at in general. The 3D environments can lean towards a generic side, and in the levels there is an overuse of the background fog, making many levels look very similar to each other. The 2D art, on the other hand, is nice and clean with expressive portraits. Poisonette has an interesting design, seemly one picked from many other existing characters. She has these side bangs that hang from her head that look very similar to an Inkling’s “squid bangs” or whatever Splatoon calls them. She sports these horns that look like cat ears, headphones, and devil horns all at once. The Kleshas have exaggerated features such as massive heads with a swirly mouth. The Protagonist themself is dressed for business, wearing a black suit with a strange pink scarf.

Despite its low storage size and contained areas, I’ve experienced performance issues when playing on the Switch version. Loading times for levels can average around 20-30 seconds. I assume it is because it loads the entire level at once. When enemies start appearing in large numbers, the frame rate tends to take a dip. There’s this one mermaid-looking Klesha that severely kills the frame rate. In the later levels, they can even drop it down to the single digits. The last levels are probably when the performance is at its worse, with the game at times even freezing up for a second or two. In a somewhat ironic sense, I’ve experienced better performance in handheld mode than in docked mode. The reason, most likely being that handheld mode runs it at a lower resolution. There was also one softlock moment where an invisible wall went up before I was able to enter the area, forcing me to restart the level from the beginning.

Considering the subject matter of Poison Control, it’s bound to have many moral warnings at hand. The most notable aspect is the supernatural setting, given that the entire plot takes place in Hell after all. However, the Hell in Poison Control is based on Buddhism’s depiction of Hell and not Christianity’s. Because of this, some characters do happen to be morally lacking. Many of these Belles’ Hells are driven by greed, lust, compulsive lying, (accidental) suicide, revenge/vengeance, and child trafficking just to name a few. On a positive note, the main antagonist tries to utilize the poison for her nefarious schemes, but ends up not working in her favor in the slightest.

The sexual content is probably the next most notable aspect. Besides potentially the Protagonist, all other seen characters are female. There are bound to be designs that are “pleasing to the eyes.” Poisonette’s attire is pretty sexually charged with her showing cleavage, and wearing some form of leggings that expose part of her butt. Poisonette is at times subjected to unwanted groping by a couple of characters. Then, there is Black Poisonette that shows even more cleavage! And then, there is Dorami Mitogawa, an Oni that shows all of the cleavage!! The Kleshas themselves also have quite the curves as their breasts and hips are noticeable. In one BH, the entire plot revolves around a student coming across an eromanga in the street and then making her manga based on it, which becomes very popular in her school. There are also pictures of her in revealing poses scattered in her level such as her in a latex catsuit. The dialogue is up there too, with quotes such as “What's with this humongous rack? Have I always been this stacked?”, “Everyone’s been using this manga to get some relief.” and "Unf... The sweet scent of a sweaty knee brace straight outta volleyball club... Finally, someone GETS it!!" (I'll admit this one made me laugh because I didn't expect it at all.) Another BH has to do with this rumor caused by the death of a girl that if you eat candy at a specific time inside a closet, you can get into some hanky-panky with your lover. Nearly half the dead girl’s school takes part in this superstition.

Violence for the most part is cartoon-like with enemies simply disappearing in a fantastical explosion when defeated. In a few cases, there is a graphic scene where the Protagonist and Poisonette come across a severed Klesha, with pink blood sprawled out. One BH does have a big bloodstain on the floor. There are forms of mild language such as “bimbo” “broad”, “pissed”, “d*mn”, and various usages of “a*s” (rancid-a*s, dumba*s”). Harsher language such as “b*st*rd”, “shi*t” is used, as well as one self-censored usage of “f**king” played for laughs. There’s a prelude to all of the levels called Higan Radio, where the hosts of the segments almost always end it with the statement “d*mn us all to Hell.”

Poison Control is one of those low-budget niche Japanese games that appeal to a small demographic. It won’t appeal to the mainstream gamer due to its strange (and sometimes awkward) mechanics and heavy Japanese influence. Despite its rough edges, I found it to be quite the competent little shooter. The cast of characters are cute, finding out the mysteries behind the Belles’ Hells is intriguing, and it holds a decent challenge for the majority of the time. Enemies may move slow, but they hit very hard (on average doing a third to half your health in one hit), keeping you on your toes. It took me around 14 hours or so to get through its 26 levels, plus one secret level, although there isn’t much to come back to besides acquiring all three endings. I’m positive NIS fans and fans of quirky Japanese games will get some mileage outta this one. People with better morals than mine will probably want to sit this one out, though.