Love the animation style, voice acting, beautiful but brief cutscenes, satisfying sound effects for hitting and knocking out enemies. Reminds me of Signs of Sojourner in that the gameplay ties into the narrative in a smart and evident way. For example, the teacher enemy in this game’s special ability gives +1 movement to her teammates when she passes to them.

My perception of the game changed dramatically once I died the first time. It’s a rouge-like that doesn’t meaningfully change the gameplay, enemy variety, level design in subsequent runs. For that reason replaying through the levels was torture. And the dodgeball gameplay became tedious. I still liked all the narrative bits but I was very happy to see the conclusion of this one.

Desta's a vibe; from the art to the music, it's mostly a comfy time, but it really nails when to bring up the tension at the right times.

The gameplay is basically strategy turn-based dodgeball, with rogue-lite elements. You mostly need to beat your enemies and utilize the different skills Desta obtains as well as learning how to effectively use their teammates. It appears simple for the most part, yet the variety in skills and teammates makes for an addicting experience as you try to figure out the most effective strategies in dealing with enemies. This is probably best represented in challenge mode, where you're given a set of skills and characters for each challenge, really displaying how handy each skill and teammate can be in what sort of situation. The rogue-lite aspect does feel like the weakest part of the gameplay however. Never really felt like utilizing it much until after I was done with the main story, and it does somewhat break the pace of the narrative too.

Speaking of, the game is narrative-heavy; through playing ball, the goal of Desta is to explore their memories in this dream world and face conflicts with loved ones they've left unresolved; they're talking it out with people through a game of ball. While I've not had the same experience Desta has had, I definitely related to a lot of the themes and situations they've had with their friends and family, and how the dream world prepared them to talk to them, to clear up misunderstandings and unresolved feelings. The game really emphasizes the different kind of conflicts that can arise between different relationships, and the importance of communication between people to solve these issues rather than prolong them for longer than necessary. I really enjoyed it and the characters.

My major gripe would be that I wish the main game was longer, but I'm satisfied with the story and I found the gameplay addicting enough to replay it and engage with the roguelite aspects. Art's a vibe, adore the music, and its a nice lookin game. I recommend it.

Combining ustwo games's striking visual design with dodgeball with XCOM seems like a winning strategy, and it certainly at least in part does succeed, but there are some confusing game design decisions which hinder this game from fully winning me over. The core turn-based tactics gameplay is satisfying and fun, but the roguelite elements are completely pointless. It's a purely story focused game, meaning each run will trigger the same story cutscenes and dialogue, giving no purpose to repeated runs. The attributes also aren't different enough to make different loadouts feel materially different aside from small tweaks to playstyle. To top it all off, the one time I died it just let me take a shortcut to the chapter I died in... so why even have the roguelite elements? It seems like these elements may have constrained the stage design, and that ustwo games would have been better served to focus on creating more interesting and bespoke stage-specific challenges. Additionally, the game is quite short, running at only about two and a half hours. There's a good amount to love here, but these things do hold back the game from greatness.