Notice Me Leena – senpai! is a low-cost tower defense title that has a lot in common with Plants Vs Zombies. Since the tower types are almost identical, the main difference between Popcap’s cult hit and this EastAsiaSoft published release mostly comes from the contrasting visual style and odd narrative.
The narrative is entirely unnecessary and is simply there to provide an excuse to sequentially stage one battle after the other. Something about anime girls, who really like food and sweet treats, trying to stop demons from invading classrooms, amusement parks, and other various terrains. The cutscenes are short but well drawn. In fact, the juxtaposition between the highly detailed visual novel story segments is quite jarring in contrast to the 8-bit visual style of the gameplay.
Like previously mentioned, gameplay is exactly Plants Vs Zombies. Meaning, the player places towers from a grid on the left side of the screen to attack incoming waves of enemies from the right side of the screen. Some towers shoot long distances. Some shoot through enemies. There are melee units. Some only attack flying enemies. Some units are simply there to absorb damage. Some slow or cause status effects. Some heal. Some buff… you get the point. This is classic tower defense with a couple dozen unit types. Granted, new units will slowly be unlocked over time within the story mode, so it won’t overwhelm the player with too much too soon. Killing enemies rewards the player with gold which can be spent to place more towers or enhance them. In other words, it is classic tower defense but with 8-bit anime characters.
Everything is well and good until it isn’t. Meaning, there are some sharp difficulty spikes that prevent progress to a dead stop, forcing to rethink your entire strategy. Like most games, you need to clear levels in sequential order, which can cause frustration and rage quitting. It wasn’t until I turned down the difficulty, a welcome feature, that I was able to make progress once again. So be aware of pacing issues. Yeah, it is frustrating to play a stage for nearly 10 minutes then get blown away by that one wave with annoying aerials units or fast grunts with nothing to show for it.
Visually, the 8-bit style of the gameplay segments is fine but looks horribly out of place in comparison to the high-res visual novel artwork. The presentation is literally two types of games into one. On their own, they work, but doesn’t align when put side by side. This becomes even more noticeable when the anime girls are overlaid on the 8-bit pixel art of the gameplay in the background.
In addition to the campaign, there is an optional endless mode where the goal is to survive as many waves as possible with your highest score getting saved. This horde mode is more open ended, however. Meaning, instead of finding the right combination of preset towers, this mode allows the use of towers that have been purchased from the main menu. By playing the main campaign, players are rewarded with gems, currency that can be spent to unlock new towers for the endless mode. While a feature like this is appreciated, it takes forever and a day to unlock anything new. The steep cost to unlock a single unit means this mode won’t really be explored until the main campaign has been completed (with some grinding on the side).
If the difficulty spikes weren’t as severe, Notice me Leena – senpai! could easily be the straightforward tower defense title to hold you over until Plants Vs Zombies Replanted is re-release in late October 2025. It is by no means a bad tower defense title, far from it, I just wish some of the missions were not as brutally game-stopping as they are presented.
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
X/Twitter: @ZackGaz
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RATING
OUR SCORE - 7
7
SCORE
Taking heavy inspiration from Plants Vs Zombie, Notice Me Leena – senpai! is an entertaining tower defense title that suffers from steep difficulty spikes, a contrasting visual style, and a slow trickle of unlockables.
Editor in Chief - been writing for mygamer,com for 20+ years. Gaming enthusiast. Hater of pants. Publisher of obscure gaming content on my YT channel.
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