Loop8 is a lot like YIIK, in that they're both filled to the brim with such great and fantastic ideas, and yet not a single one is implemented well. The only truly good thing about it are the graphics, which are actually so incredibly pretty. So why am I giving it a good score? Because it's PEAK KUSOGE. Here's a few things worth pointing out:

The combat is slow. Characters move independently of you and love buffing to the point where they almost rarely actually attack. You only fight this one generic orb as a generic enemy and there are no other enemies (aside from bosses). Combat scales depending on how many characters you have with you which means it's actually easier to fight everything alone than taking any party members who'll just waste time buffing everyone. There is no resource management, because you heal to full right as you get to the boss anyway. No items either. An interesting design choice is that bosses will be easier if the person being possessed likes you, but then they make it legitimately impossible if they hate you, meaning you have to loop (more on that later). "Thankfully" only like 2% of your total time is spent actually in combat.

The walking is slow (saving grace being a fast travel system that doesn't work in the mirror world). Every second irl is a minute ingame so time flies by mad fast, making the slow walking even more arduous.

There's barely any story. The game lore dumps at you at the start and then the rest of the game is pure vagueposts.

The characters have such, suuuch potential to be good, which makes it a shame that the game doesn't even bother showing it to you for whatever reason? Like the character will say something super important to their character arc and then it gets swept under the rug and it's never mentioned again. If there's a character growth, that happens off-screen... Most of your time is spent talking to them, skipping their one line, selecting the one suggestion you want to pick, skipping their one line again, get affection, repeat ad infinitum. Not very engaging.

The loop mechanic, while sounding cool, is implemented like butt. You reset the timeline, make everyone you failed to save alive again, except nobody remembers it, INCLUDING your character. Your stats and relationships get reset but you get them back twice as fast, so oh joy, more grinding and repeating dialogue. Speaking of repeating dialogue, EVERY line resets. That one time a character threw a wall of text at you? Gotta fast foward that again, and trust me, that shit PILES ON. Your blessings carry over though, so you don't need to grind as much.

BUT the reason I find it so fun is how accidentally ridiculous it is. Like why does my guy so desperately want to pork his cousin? Why can I date grandma? Why is there an epilogue if you ended up romancing your cousin, that is just her talking for a good 10 minutes with a still image? Why is there a character that will actually give you a game over if you talk to them while they're happy? What the FUCK is Demon Sight???

All in all 8/10 recommended for kusoge enjoyers.

Review on Reddit with images

KEY NOTES:

- Turn-based combat
- JP/ENG voiced audio options
- Multiple Endings
- No Random Battles
- Heavy focus on Relationship building

Loop8 was developed by Sieg Games which has been around since 2014, but doesn't have a large track record of developed games. The games prior to Loop8 were limited to the mobile games, Bound Boyfriend and Mashiro Witch. Despite their brief development history, Sieg Games does have a few veterans on its team including producer Yoichi Miyaji who was one of Game Arts founders and was a producer of the Grandia and Lunar games.

On the outset, Loop8 appears to be an ambitious game from art direction to its sim relationship gameplay, but unfortunately, the game as a whole doesn't quite live up to its potential.

STORY

In a world devastated by demonic entities called Kegai, the main character Nini returns from space to spend his summer with his relative in one of the few remaining sanctuaries on Earth, the town of Ashihara.

The town had been safe from Kegai attacks for many years due to its barrier keeping the Kegai out, but as luck would have it, the barriers weakened upon Nini's return. From there, the Kegai would sneak into town and possess one of their own before retreating to the world between the underworld and Ashihara. Nini is blessed with the Demon Sight and along with a few allies, attempt to defeat the Kegai, but is ultimately defeated themselves. Instead of breathing his final breath, Nini's connection with the gods had allowed him to reset the world to when he first came to Ashihara at the beginning of the month. From there, he tries to avoid a repeat of what happened in the prior loop.

Loop8 has an interesting post apocalyptic setting where a large part of mankind had escaped to space and created livable stations there. Many Japanese Shinto gods exists and influence the world in various ways including creating connections with the Ashihara townspeople. The story gets to a strong start with the quick world annihilation by the Kegai and Nini gets looped back to a prior day setting up for an intriguing different outcome. Yet, despite the interesting background story and initial build up, Loop8's remaining story isn't very compelling.

The story is very formulaic without much variance in story development. Each segment starts with a Kegai sneaking pass the barrier. Once you identify the Kegai, they will retreat to the Mirror underworld where they will wait. Nini and his allies will have a few days to defeat that Kegai or the world will be annihilated. If you are able to defeat the Kegai, then the world is saved for a few more days. A new Kegai then sneaks pass the barrier thus starting the formulaic story loop over again. This process will repeat for nearly the entire game.

Once you experienced one Kegai story and battle event, the remaining ones start to feel just about the same. Other than these events, there really isn't any other set story events in the game to experience until the end. This is in contrast with something like Persona where you have a lot of free time to do whatever you want during a month, but there are set story events that occur on specific days. Loop8 doesn't have any such events. The formulaic story loop gets stale quickly as a result.

It's a shame considering that there's a lot of interesting background information found in the manual, but Loop8 doesn't take advantage of it and develop the story into an interesting direction.

CHARACTERS

There are 12 total characters in the game (13 if you count the squirrel mascot) and most of them are playable characters that can join you in the fight against the Kegai. Only a few of them are directly connected to the main story however.

Nini is mostly a silent protagonist and you get to select the dialogue options for him. In a few very limited instances, you can hear his thoughts and feelings during his monologues, but other than that, he doesn't speak at all. Due to his mostly silent nature, Nini does come off as a bland character which is a shame since his monologue early in the game does give you a glimpse of a more established character.

The remaining main characters come off as very anime tropey at the outset. They do have some depth to them with some interesting backstories so they aren't completely one note characters, but most of their development isn't that amazing and are somewhat predictable.

My other issue with them is that their development isn't really tied to the story. You mostly learn about them by simply talking to them and watching special character events after reaching a certain friendship level. All of these are optional and can actually be missed if you choose to simply ignore them.

The bond between Nini and the other main characters aren't the only focus since there are other friendship levels between the other characters themselves. They have varying friendship, affection and hate levels depending on the person and can be adjusted.

With a mechanic such as this, I would assume the character interactions outside of Nini would be great, but that's not really the case. You might see Character A standing with Character B at times, but you will never see Character A and B actually talk to each other or do things together in a cutscene. Character A might reference Character B if you speak to Character A, but that's the extent of the connections you will get. Even after each Kegai event, a character might mention it once afterwards, but otherwise, nothing changes for them or the town. This creates a jarring experience where the character relationships between each other just feels hollow.

The characters are probably supposed to be a highlight of the game, but the game's handling of them aren't particularly great and just bad at times regarding the non-Nini relationships. Getting to learn more about a specific character can be interesting at times, but they aren't nearly as compelling when compared to something like the Sakura Wars games which also had a strong focus on characters and character relationships.

MUSIC

Other than the opening theme, Noriyuki Iwadare composed the entire soundtrack. Many of the songs have a traditional Japanese flair to them especially the battle tracks. Pianos make up many of the melancholy and emotional songs. These all sound great, but the regular town themes and character events songs sound unremarkable and generic. With that said, the soundtrack still remained a highlight of the game for me.

GRAPHICS AND ART DIRECTION

At the outset, Loop8's art direction is what help made it stood out. It was as if the developers were attempting to make an anime in motion. The game is colorful and and some of the battle skill animations look pretty good. They make a lot of use of dynamic camera movements and angles for the skills so it feels like a good portion of the budget went into those. Most character designs are fairly generic however as are the environments. While disappointing, they didn't bother me too much.

What did bothered me was the low frame rate when characters walk and run. It just looks very jarring to see it in action and it's very noticeable once you get control of Nini at the beginning of the game. Fortunately, it was something I got used to after a while.

SETTING

Loop8 takes place entirely on a rural island. It's a place that feels cozy, but there's just not much variety for scenery and only has a few locations on the island that are accessible. You can visit and explore nearly every location in the game on the first day. Each area is also small in size so it actually doesn't take very long going from the farthest point to the farthest one on the other end. The Mirror World that acts as the "dungeon" of the game is merely a darker distorted version of the town so it doesn't help in providing more diverse locations to see and explore.

To make matters worse, the island just feels hollow and dead. The only characters you see around town are the 11 other main characters. I assumed that there are other people in the town as well, but you don't meet any such people. You don't see any NPCs walking around and of the few eateries you can enter like a cafe or restaurant, you don't ever see anybody running those places.

GAMEPLAY

Loop8's gameplay consists of two main parts, but you spend significant more time on one part over the other. The sim part of the game has more focus, but most of its relevance is done for the sake of improving the characters for combat.

COMBAT AND CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION

There is very little character customization in the game. There aren't any equipment to buy, find or equip. Characters don't even have levels or experience in the general sense. They do have some commonly found stats though.

For Nini, he can increase these stats by engaging in various activities across the town such as doing pull ups on the bars found in the school courtyard.

After reaching a certain friendship level with another character, you can spend time working out together so that both characters will increase their strength stat. Finding Blessings in objects around town will also increase Nini or another character's stats.

Skills can be learned at various stat thresholds. The status screen will reference a new skill and the stats required to learn them so it gives you an idea of what to prioritize at times.

Combat utilizes a turn-based system, but at a very basic level. There's no visible turn orders that are somewhat common these days. The max battle party size is 3 and the only controllable one is Nini himself. The rest runs on auto pilot.

Other than his offensive skills, Nini's other actions include shielding another party member, expending EN (Energy) to recover STM (Stamina), and recover EN. Every action in the game uses EN except for the skill that recovers EN itself. The other party members have similar skillsets which includes buffs, but noticeably don't have the self STM recovery skill which makes drawn out fights dangerous. There isn't a whole lot of strategy to the combat since it usually involves continuous attacking until EN is low. Use a turn to recover EN and repeat. If STM drops to critical levels, use EN to recover it. There is an additional layer of strategy due to the cover system though. You can tell which party member is going to be targeted on that turn so having Nini cover that member is an option.

Overall, the complete lack of control over the other party members make the battles more burdensome then necessary. There isn't any A.I. tactic options like in the original Persona 3 so there's no way to influence party member actions.

Loop8 also lacks enemy variety to an extreme degree. You can fight the mob enemies roaming around the mirror world by manually initiating the fight yourself. They all share the same design except for recolors. Bosses all look different and unique in comparison though, but there aren't many in general.

It's important to note that if a party member dies in battle, they are permanently dead in the story and you won't be able to use them again for the duration of the current loop.

There's just isn't a lot of positives for the combat system which fortunately, makes up only a very small portion of the game. Since you don't get EXP, items or money in the game, there's very little reason to fight the regular mob enemies other than to get a chance at a Blessing, but there's a limit on how much you can get from it.

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING AND BONDS

When you're not dealing with the battles, you're going to be moving around town and talking to the characters. Time constantly ticks away and quite fast in general. Some actions will move time forward a few hours like the stat boosting activities.

When talking to the other characters, you get various "dialogue" options. There's only a few at first, but more options will open up once their relationship further improves with you. Such options include working/hanging out to mutually increase stats and to view special bonding romance events.

Certain dialogue options will improve their relationship, but all of them have a chance to fail. You get an idea on the chances so it's not complete guesswork. If you fail, the relationship slightly sours. You can repeatedly spam the same dialogue option back to back to increase the relationship, but the success chance decreases each time until the next day. It's also worth noting that each dialogue choice uses up STM and EN so that also limits how much you can spam the choices too.

The special events are decent to view and comes with new dialogue compared to the repeated generic ones you get from the other dialogue options. In addition to these special events, you can initiate special cutscenes from talking to them after getting the friendship level high enough. These cutscenes often reveal important character information.

Overall, this Relationship building element is one of the better parts of the game, but it's far from amazing or satisfying. The special events are good, but grinding enough friendship points to unlock them isn't particularly fun especially when you're getting the same reaction dialogue repeatedly. It also doesn't really help that Nini is a silent character and doesn't have proper dialogue for these scenes. It's like a character is having a one-sided conversation.

GAMEPLAY LOOP

The main obstacle for most of the game are the special Kegai bosses that appear every few days. Their appearance order is random each time, but each subsequent ones that appear get stronger than the one before. To be sufficiently prepared for these fights, you will need to engage in stat training so a daily schedule involves doing the stat boosting activities and finding Blessings. You have to do stat boosting activities together with your party members as well.

With just a few days allowed to defeat each Kegai, the key is to balance getting consistent stat boosts while improving the bonds with other characters. You have free rein to do whatever you want since there's no fixed daily activity in the game other than the morning study session at the school (which is optional).

TIME LOOP

A key element of the game is the Time Loop. There are two ways to go back in time to the first day. The first is if you get defeated in battle by the Kegai boss. The second is forcing the time loop by talking to a specific character.

If you do revert back, almost everything resets back to the original such as stats and friendship levels. The big exception is that all of the stats gained from Blessings are permanent and are retained on subsequent loops. You also gain a bonus to stat gains until you hit the amount you had in the prior loop. This applies to friendship levels too so the subsequent loop will be easier to deal with. You might have to Loop back several times to reach the final boss whether by falling in battle or by intentionally reverting back to recover a prior dead party member.

CLOSING REMARKS

Loop8 had some interesting concepts from its art direction to its focus on relationship building, but ultimately, the game as a whole feels unpolished that fails to live up to its potential.

The story doesn't have interesting developments or much of development in general. The ending itself doesn't get the proper buildup for what it was going for.

The town setting is sort of bland and feels empty. Characters move from places to places without any real purpose for being at specific locations. The characters themselves don't really connect with the story and feels like they are just there for the ride.

The relationship building element is decent and there is some entertainment in learning more about the characters, but the one sided dialogue leaves a lot to be desired.

Combat and character customization are too basic in general and the uncontrollable party members make the battles even more of a drag.

Outside of engaging in the social sim conversations, there isn't much to do despite getting so much free reign in the game.

Fortunately, the game isn't too long. One full playthrough without any major time loop reversion is about 10-15 hours. There are multiple endings including character endings in the game which does provide additional replay value.

Really feels like one of the most undercooked games I've ever played. But unlike most other games that I'd describe by the same word, Loop8 really feels flawed on it's very core concept and design that I don't think giving it more budget or time would've fixed most of it's issues.

That said, I still enjoyed my time with it and even played on sessions longer than I usually do when gaming for reasons I can't really point out myself. It might be because of the extremely basic and straightforward gameplay loop which mostly consists of running around and talking to characters, which the game has quite an interesting cast of that I did enjoy spending my time with (Machina best girl). The OST as well as the setting also really blend together to make the entire experience really chill which I liked. The story itself is pretty okay and I honestly didn't even understand most of it but I did really like all the character endings and especially the epilogues which were extremely heartwarming and kind of did make me feel like the entire 20 hour run was pretty worth it.

It's extremely flawed for sure but I can't really bring myself to hate it for whatever reason despite all the disappointments I had for it when I didn't even have any expectations to begin with. I wouldn't recommend it for sure but not something I'd say I regret either. It definitely makes me more excited to eventually run through the other Shibamura games in the future too.

Oh boy did game reviewers put a hit on this one. Buckle up, this is gonna be a long one.

The game is a roguelite visual novel with light RPG elements and a time loop mechanic. Emphasis should be put in the fact that it's a roguelite visual novel, as it comprises about 90% of the gameplay.

The premise is that Kegai, spirits which rise from the underworld and possess people, invade the realm of mortals and cause mayhem. The situation is so bad that people grew desensitized to hearing that an entire country has fallen to them in the news. In order to escape them, humanity launches a space station that seems to be able to escape from the Kagai at first, until it too gets destroyed and seemingly only Nini aka Novus Nemo aka Taichiro Oyama (a nickname, a western and a Japanese name respectively), the protagonist manages to get out alive. Afterwards, he trains for about a year in order to get acclimated to Earth's gravity and goes on to live with a distant cousin on a remote Japanese town that has thus far been spared from the Kegai. I emphasized the three names the protagonist goes by because not only do some characters refer to him by only one of them, some others have nicknames for him, so all this information starts to saturate the cerebral cortex.
Shortly after Nini arrives, the Kegai manage to invade the town and start possessing people, one at a time. It's Nini's job to defeat them and save the world.

Gameplay wise, you have to live Nini's day to day life, build relationships with the people in town, determine who the Kegai have possessed, fight them and, depending on your relationship with them, possibly save them.
If you fail to root out the possessed or if you fall in battle, the titular mechanic of the game enters play and you get sent back to when Nini first arrived in town, your relationships and stats get reset back to their initial state and you must begin the loop anew. The possessed characters get somewhat randomized, so there is some variety in the order you face the bosses.
HOWEVER, this being a roguelite, you can earn blessings from the gods, which act as stat and relationship boosts. You obtain these by exploring and interacting with other characters. They are permanent upgrades and persist between loops. Other characters can gain them as well. Plus, your stats and relationships grow faster until they reach the value they attained in the previous loop. These mechanics alleviate the penalty from failing and starting the loop anew.

You can take up to two party members from among the town residents to fight the Kegai. To do so, once the culprit has been determined, a portal to a mirror dimension opens up. At this point, you go talk to the characters you want to fight with, go to the portal and begin the RPG part of the game. Normal battles are very generic, you basically face the same kind of enemy over and over and they are all palette swaps of each other, depending on who got possessed. Once you complete a few trials, you can unlock the boss (both your hp and mp fully restore when you do this) and fight them. The relationship you have with the character that got possessed, as well as the relationship with your party members AND the relationship of all characters in the battle with one another will determine how effective you are in combat. You cannot control your party members directly, but you can glean what they and the boss intend to do. This is useful, as this will help you determine when the best time to attack, buff or defend is.
If you kill the boss instead of saving them or if one of your party members dies in battle, they are gone for the rest of the loop. However, you can restart the loop pretty much at any time as long as you are not in the mirror dimension, should you wish to do so.

Now, you might be wondering: if the possessions are random, wouldn't it be frustrating if one of the party members you've been working with got possessed? This was a concern of mine, however, it becomes clear early on that there is a very clear distinction between the potential victims and the characters that can join your party so the random aspect of the game doesn't become unfair and punishing. In fact, I would recommend choosing a couple of characters at the start of each loop and sticking with them for the duration of it.

For reference it took me three loops to beat the game, though I wasn't able to save all the characters. At the end I was presented with a choice that impacted the ending. I do not know if saving or killing everyone further alters the ending, though I have a feeling this might be the case. Regardless, the game has a New Game+ option which basically acts as another loop, should the need for testing these hypotheses arises.

In my experience, the first couple of loops felt like I was getting used to the mechanics, while in the third I was able to exploit them and come out on top. One fault this game has is that the mechanics feel obtuse and poorly explained. Even after beating the game, I feel like I do not fully understand them. It feels like trial and error is needed in order to grasp them. More clarity would have been appreciated.

I would now like to address some of the complaints I came across in the reviews:

One reviewer mentioned that regular battles don't give any rewards and so they skipped them all. This is incorrect, as regular battles reward blessings (which are the permanent upgrades) upon completion, up to a point since there are only a finite number of them per character and they become harder to get as you get more and more.

Another mentioned having a hard time figuring out who the victims where and being stuck and unable to progress past a certain point, even after emailing the publisher XSEED about this. I find this one difficult to believe, since the game gives you more than enough clues to figure out who and where the possessed are, and even though the order they appear in is randomized, the events leading up to the possession of a certain character are always the same, meaning once you see one of them and figure out the victim, you will be able to use this information in every subsequent loop and find the same victim in the same place again.
I can only think of two instances where maybe the player could be unsure as to where to go in order to proceed, however, 3 minutes of basic exploration should be enough to be able to progress.

IN CONCLUSSION: I feel like this game was largely reviewed unfairly. Like I said at the beginning of the review, this game is a roguelite visual novel RPG with a time loop mechanic. If the concept sounds interesting to you, I highly recommend you check this game out, ESPECIALLY if you find it on sale. Otherwise, I doubt it will get you into any of those genres.
Being a roguelite with a time loop should inform the player that they'll be playing the same events over and over again, so some repetition should be expected and complaining about it is absurd.
Games should be enjoyed for what they are, not for what you or someone else expected them to be.

That said, Nanachi is a piece of shit and Machina is best girl.

Peace!