Wonderful battle systems, story, aesthetics, and music.

The game plays a bit like a more expansive Mario and Luigi superstar saga with a shot of SRPG for some positioning tactics. All of the powers are varied and interesting to use, even if some are a little bit easier to master than others, and some characters are more interesting. Some bosses are extremely tough due to their multiple phases but usually you can tough em out pretty well.

The art is mostly great, I didn’t love the human character designs totally(mainly the heads) but I’d say about 95% of the art is exquisitely done GBA friendly pixel art, with the right amount of little game people energy.

The story and writing were overall well executed and interesting, although it felt a little padded with going back and forth between places to get the next macguffin to unlock such and such door, though usually their justifications were interesting enough.

I think the dialogue also mostly shines, except it felt like some lines were a little forced to enhance the representation. I’m cool with that, a better reason to force some dialogue than others, but did happen often. Luckily a majority of the time it felt totally natural, just occasionally had a bit of artificiality to the way so and so’s sexuality was mentioned etc. the way it establishes and grows all of the characters throughout is satisfying.

Altogether it was mostly well done and unfortunately it seems to me this game has been rather slept on. It might not be so, but a lot of the circles I follow typically would be all over this and I’ve never seen any buzz around it.

You had me at "Paper Mario Combat" and everything else was just kinda bonus points. Tactical battles? Dank. Cool music? Rad. Shameless diversity? Hell yeah.

Ikenfell is a pretty solid RPG romp with a story that's not groundbreaking, but fun. The art and music are a joy, and it never felt too grindy. I could nitpick some of the design of items, upgrades, menus, and the like. Really the majority of my frustrations came with how precise the combat timing had to be in order to maximize damage delt/received. I feel like the timing window for button presses was simply too low, and with no good way to practice.

Simply one of the best strategy RPGs made in the last decade.

It offers a Paper Mario-style quick-time event system for buffing actions in combat that you can opt out of if you want due to its amazing accessibility options.

I have a lot to say about Ikenfell, but it requires more consideration than I can give it right now.

A perfectly adequate game. Leans very heavily into retro-aesthetic Earthbound-style charm, and only mostly succeeds. Combat is inventive in premise, but becomes samey and tedious pretty quickly. Timing attacks and defense is extremely swingy, with failure punishing more than success rewards. The story of the main character's relationship with her sister is intriguing, but some of the other themes are a bit heavy-handed. I am marginally curious to see new areas and uncover the story, but the gameplay just isn't gripping enough to be worth it.

Upon my initial playthrough of Ikenfell I was left less than impressed. There are very few games that change my opinion from bad to good upon a second try, and if I'm being entirely honest, nine times out of ten, it's usually the opposite. Ikenfell must have left an impression on me because after playing it I couldn't seem to forget it and every time I saw it in the Gamepass catalogue I would have a strange urge to do another playthrough. Finally seeing it go on sale for Playstation I gave in and bought Ikenfell.

After finishing my second run of the game, I was left with a completely different experience than the first in almost every way. For starters, I wasn't too keen on the characters originally and felt they were kind of stereotypical and didn't have much to offer. I also didn't care too much for Ikenfell's narrative and that I felt it was a little over the top, melodramatic, and immature. Now, I feel the opposite because I find the characters charming and endearing. Even though I don't think they were written with great depth, the game does show the characters to have their own flaws and struggles to make them feel relatable. As far as the story, I still find it somewhat exaggerated and a little silly, but I grew to like it a lot more this time around.  Ikenfell's storytelling is a little simplistic, but also has more emotion than I gave it credit for.
 
Sadly, the only the thing I really didn't change my opinion on was the battle system, though I did give it more of a chance by playing legit this time. Being honest, I did turn off the timing for the attack/defend prompts because I found it to be tedious. Since I didn't choose to skip all the battles in a rush to get to the story, I was able to go through the all the characters spells and attacks which the games give you a lot of. The spells were something that I enjoyed experimenting with and it was fun to see what magic did what. Most of the battles are not that bad and can be finished somewhat quickly, especially if you know how to utilize your attacks, but as the game goes on the more the battles seem to draw out due to a lot of the enemies calling for reinforcements. About three fourths into the game I did turn on auto-victory because I just didn't want to spend a lot of time fighting random enemies.

Overall:
 
There is a lot about Ikenfell that I came to appreciate while playing this time and I might not have if I didn't give the game another chance. The game isn't perfect, but it's still a nice little indie game filled with heart.
 
Pros:
+likable cast of characters
+decent story
+charming art design
+fun world exploration and puzzles
+in game cheats to skip battles
+nice catchy soundtrack
 
Cons:
-characters/story can be a little over dramatic at times
-battles can be boring and drawn out

Ikenfell is the gayest game you're going to find in a long time, and if you can't handle that, then you might want to try a different game. Moving past that, I'd say its an extremely polished and competent turn based game, with little secrets and optional things to do sprinkled everywhere. The accessibility options are also great, and surprised me with an option to just skip the battle if I so chose. I can understand that now however, after playing the game.

This game is a challenge the whole way through, with a difficulty so fine tuned that it nearly completely eliminated my hoarders mentality that I had developed from other games. You will NEED to use items to survive some battles. This, combined with the game's interesting and varied combat range system, makes for very good gameplay. I was repeatedly challenged throughout my playthrough despite finding many secrets.

In regards to the story, my feelings are a little more mixed. The reasons the characters have for doing things are always explained eventually, but sometimes the explanation can be a little lacking and shoehorned IMO. Despite this, the overarching story (when not getting sidetracked) is good. The ending is satisfying, and when paired with everything else the game has to offer, no one should really be complaining about the story. It does its job just fine.

Muy buen juego de combate por turnos con una historia bastante buena. En general todo en el mismo está bien, pero quería destacar unas tonterías que si no te molestan demasiado, entra de lleno. Por lo pronto gráficamente está genial, pero me hubiese gustado que los personajes tuviesen más pixeles, porque a pesar de las buenas animaciones (destacando a Gilda), muchas veces no se aprecian bien los gestos, sobre todo en un personaje (Petronella) que parece que siempre tiene la mirada ensombrecida. Lo otro que no me ha acabado de cuadrar es que los enemigos funcionan bien, aunque quizás son un pelín simples y se repiten alguno que otro recoloreado.

(SPOILERS)

Man what a disappointment this game was. Starts out interesting, but slow burns into mediocracy and ultimately left me frustrated and wanting the experience to be over.

Pros - Visuals, Music and Design

The visuals of this game are gorgeous, with beautiful, vibrant pixel art and super smooth animations. The world is interesting and environments are varied. The music is also really good (except for any tracks that had vocals, those were god-awful). Character designs are also unique and nice to look at, and it makes me very happy that the cast is diverse, with lots of LGBTQ+ representation.

Middle - Gameplay

I'm putting gameplay here because there's things I like and dislike about it. I thought that the turn-based tile system with a timing aspect was unique and fun. The timing on the attacks can be a bit wonky sometimes, with miniscule differences between getting it perfect or not, and not getting it perfect SIGNIFICANTLY slows down the fights, with even the most basic encounters taking way too long, even if you are always perfect, because of the enemy AI and there being too many tiles in an encounter. The UI doesn't help with the timing, either, you kind of just have to guess based on the icon above your character's head, but after doing it a good amount your muscle memory will take care of it. The game also has a pretty bad power creep problem. As more party members get introduced, the abilities they have are just straight up better than the starting party members, giving you no reason to use them once the new members show up. I really did like the combat at first, but as time goes on, it gets extremely repetitive, and becomes a slog.

Cons - Characters and Story

With all of that said, the characters in this game are NOT GOOD. They are either extremely one-dimensional or flat-out unlikeable. They try to give all of the party members some material to work with, but some is better than others. Even the main character I was starting to not like as the game progressed, and the ending actually made me mad. Basically, a love triangle forms between the main character and two of the other party members. But for some fucking reason, they end the game with the main character being with one of them, roll the credits, do a TIMESKIP, and the main character is with the other one. WHAT??? Any development those three characters had is completely out of the window so everyone can have it both ways. It's baffling. It doesn't really feel like any of the characters develop in any meaningful way, with a lot of the tension being the result of drama shown in flashbacks, save for Pertisia. It's pretty clear most of the love and care went into her, and the rest of the cast gets shelved.

The story is extremely contrived as well. A good chunk of it is told in flashbacks, which makes some sense given the context, but it also highlights how nonsensical a lot of the story is. Lots of things could have been avoided if the characters just told the main character the info they knew instead of withholding it. Take for example, the final boss, which is supposed to be a bit of a twist. There's a character that, for a majority of the game, is treated as a joke, with the joke being that he's "the most powerful student" at the school, but every time he tries to do something it's extremely weak. Well, the reason he's so powerful is that if he gets too emotional, he goes berserk and turns into a monster. Which EVERYONE KNOWS except the main character, but they still let him watch his boyfriend get hurt doing something extremely dangerous without even restraining him and become the monster. It's so stupid. There's a lot of moments like this in the story. It's trying to be mysterious, but just ends up being vapid and not thought out once you start thinking about it. If the characters just acted like normal people and shared the knowledge that they had with each other, there'd be almost no story.

Conclusion:

The game has a pretty exterior, that does a great job of drawing the player in, and the gameplay is good enough to keep you engaged for a bit. But, experiencing the story and characters for what they were absolutely spoils the game, and just left me angry by the end.

I really like this game. Playing the first few hours, I wanted to love it, in fact. But I don't, and I feel sad for what could have been.

It's evident that this game had a lot of heart and passion poured in it's characters, world and story. It shows a diverse cast with actually great queer representation! All characters are fleshed out, have their own quirks, their own likes and dislikes, they never feel like just combat stats, but like friends.

The art style is really cute and gameboy inspired. The music was mostly great (except one or two songs which just... weren't good).

Where the game falls flat, and where I could see the most potential, is in the combat system. It relies on timing inputs with the attack animations to deal more damage/take less damage. And in the first few hours/battles/levels, it was really awesome! Party members' movesets were varied, with clear strenghts and weaknesses, and combat felt strategic and rewarding... Until it didn't...
As the game went on, I saw the characters' stats going up, as I tried to optimize equipment, but I never felt fights were getting any faster or more strategic. It just started feeling like a 5-10 minute slog every encounter, that I just wanted to end so I could get back to the story. Bosses still remained fairly interesting, even though battles took EVEN LONGER to go through. Also, party members can unlock stronger abilities through levelling up, but they never really felt more interesting, just slightly different and stronger (and not even all of them). I felt no incentive to change the party lineup, and just went into every combat with my 2 top damage dealers + 1 healer with damage.
This all kind of ruined the game for me, really. Eventually (about 80% of the game) I just enabled the auto win accessibility option (which is a great addition, in fact, good job devs) and started using it in every random encounter (and some bosses too).

Some other negatives I encountered were that there were SO MANY ITEMS that I just never felt were worth using, the fact that the (many) secrets' rewards were mostly underwhelming, and that the ending reeeally dragged on more than I expected. The epilogue was cute though, I really dig it.

Overall, I really like this game, but I don't love it. If you are super into turn based combat, maybe you will love this. Otherwise, if you want to play a casual RPG with great story and characters, play this with combat accessibility options on, so you can make it less of a chore.