overly idyllic and hokey.... redundant and frustrating.... quite gaudy and inconsistent in the visual design of things too.... All around - just a bit of a mess. What value can we parse from a specimen like this????

Ambitious PASSION projects like this are tough to pin down. With everything being the vision of one main guy and their resources, it's hard not to still appreciate the attempt; even if not all of it quite comes together as a wholly satisfying experience. The kind of fun I get out of all this REALLY - is the feeling of perusing a sort of graveyard for an author's fucked up and unfulfilled ideas~ You get a real secret sense of HUMANITY buried in this kind of thing I find...

I saw a lot of promise shine through in the combat sometimes! The best battles were the ones where a good variety of your moves all had value, and it didn't devolve into a game of you just repeatedly spamming the most powerful nukes to get by. Doing things like using your cool hacker powers to swap the elements of your party members' standard attacks to freely strike weaknesses, setting up reflective barriers, and all the varied kinds of debuffing tomfoolery you could fiddle with. When the game allowed for those more proactive moves to be viable, it was good fun!

BAD NEWS though is that too often those more interesting setups and actions wouldn't be the right plays. You'd go into fights where SUDDENLY - the projectiles your enemies fired would just COMPLETELY PIERCE through your supposed mirror shields. Your hacker ability to swap the physical and magic defense stats of your enemies would become IMPRACTICAL, as more important targets would usually have equal numbers for those values anyway. Why bother trying to play interesting in the first place when one of your party member's magic attacks randomly deals a flat 99 for no reason? Why waste turns on things you can't consistently plan or rely on??? You're way better off just playing BORING and smacking foes with shit like the lame ass FLOWER status effect. SO easily you can make dudes unactionable sitting ducks for lengthy periods of time, and you get to safely and repetitively wail on them without response! What optimal and rewarding gameplay!!!!

UGH be it because of the engine's own flimsiness or lack of consistency in its system's logic, achieving any sense of optimal play waaaas quite boring to do in those less considerately designed moments! WHICH too often was the norm for the encounter design.... OUCH... The amount of fights where you got to meaningfully play around the enemies - their specific attacks and stats, and where your moves all actually did the things they said they would - was UNFORTUNATELY the minority of em! When Gamesoft joined the party and had access to status effect dealing curse attacks the game was effectively OVER (ALSO RIP "GAMECRAZED". I LOVE YA ANYWAY SOFTY!).

Making a consistently interesting turn based thing SURE IS HARD, it seems. I appreciate that now after playing this more than ever and have taken my notes. I'm especially miffed about it here because WHEN IT ALL CLICKED... it was damn good and unique feeling, man!!! Shame!!!!!! Think they'll ever patch and clean this one up a bit? YEAH RIGHT..............

I could go on, but what's else to say? My thoughts are SCATTERED like the design of this game... The music is pretty good and in a great amount yeahyeahyeah that's cool - IT'S ALSO VEEEEERY BUGGY; with a lot of menu's just NOT WORKING at times and forcing restarts. Sometimes your characters would end up in this weirdo state of "being afflicted with a status effect and also not actually", and you'd be fearful the chaos would crash the game. The menu-ing and party management is just a shitty version of the materia from FF7, and ends up being a total, unorganized nightmare. GODDDD, I'm so tired... DON'T MAKE ME THINK ABOUT THE "DUNGEONS" WITH THE AWFUL RESPAWNING ENEMIES or the "SIDE QUESTS" AGAIN............ (Shoutouts AT LEAST to there being meaningful enough optional bosses to engage with at the end of those awful trials)...

HOW ARE THE STORY AND CHARACTERS THO??? weLL since you asked - they are all FINE yet HOPELESSLY very "wholesome" and "sweet". You can't truly buy the cast as real deal human beings when something just feels SO SLIGHTLY OFF the whole way through. Like - the interactions are """CUTE""", but smell like they're merely shooting to check off "boxes of expected intrigue" or some shit with how predictably the sequence of interactions always seems to go from: "QUICK BANTER TO ESTABLISH FRIENDSHIP", to: "GENUINE HEARTFELT FEELS-A-THON/KIRBOPHER SELF LOATHING PROJECTION MOMENT". It gives me a Kingdom Hearts sorta vibe of an idealized desire for friendship, and is a bit tragic to read between if you overthink and connect it to some actual Chris Niosi lore, honestly... Like you WISH things could be this simple and people so empathetic in tha real world.........

It comes off a bit cringey! iiiit's messy! it's WEIRD and not wholly an engaging video game experience because of all the bugs and crap, but ahhh... EVEN SO... "I LIKE YOUR WEIRD FRIENDS"..... "HEROES DON'T ASK QUESTIONS".... "THIS GAME ISN'T FOR THE FAINT-OF-HEARTED ♫♫♫".

I see a genuine attempt - a pretty cute 'SOUL' buried within...! And can APPRECIATE the effort that went behind trying to make this a real ass RPG experience a reasonable amount; all things considered..... And hey - when a genuine feeling, friendship yearn-y moment that worked pierced through some of that more corny adventure in the online world wit your friends stuff - yeah those moments felt pretty good and are the reason I stuck around. thanks for sum of those :) especially the skype call near the endgame.

A sad LOL tho at that teaser ending... "Til the next adventure" my ASS, guys... What the hell! Battle on, you idyllic dreamers!!!