Tales of the Orient: The Rising Sun

one of green sauce's early m3s from 2015, with a rotatable board not seen in many of their other games ([b]dreams of a geisha[/b], their first game might be the only one, plus the [b]season match[/b] series by another dev). it also offers swap, pop and chain options, another thing that got forgotten about (it's in their other early game, [b]joan of arc[/b]), these days they just reskin the same simplified m3 thing over and over. or re-release their older titles without a word about the original on the store page (e.g. geisha again). 100 levels, then 'free play' that just means a level select screen not available until then. limited/unlimited moves, pop/swap/chain can be chosen before each level but chains only work in cardinal directions, can't do diagonals. matches create unsatisfying bombs (click to trigger, can be swapped), a village to build for bonuses (mostly moves, irrelevant for unlimited play), the works. board rotation isn't limited, nor does it need to be charged. shuffle has a long cooldown and unlocked destructive power-ups need matches of certain tiles to build up. the expected decent presentation with pretty good music, separate volumes (sfx is bugged, clicking buttons still makes a sound if muted), languages, resizable windowed mode, custom cursor, help and hint toggles. unfortunately, the end-of-level score counter can't be skipped or sped up, the continue button only appears after. buildings take unnecessarily long to build as well, gotta look at the same 3-frame animation for a while. it's good enough for what it is if you catch it on sale, but even with all the options for gameplay, it's not as fun as I expected. rotation only does something if there are empty cells, lots of waiting around for shuffle to charge when there are no moves left, so I stuck to swapping. and even after a supposed fix, no achievements unlocked for me but I don't care about that.