1 week before release i played the demo, it was a 20 minutes demo that was very underwhelming, but i still thought i should give the game a chance to see if it gets better later on.

It doesn't.

So the first thing i read about this game in the embed of the steam link was "a fresh take on the jrpg genre", and its probably the biggest problem of the game. It is really the most basic, mediocre turn base combat you can find.

Turn base combat, rock paper scissor elemental types plus physical, materia base skills with few spots (i had only 4 skills activated), no gear, no party. Does that sound like a fresh take to you?

So if the gameplay is so barebones it means is at least hard right? Well no, it is basic and easy. The start is easy, in the mid part they blow up the HP of enemies so you understand you should buy new skills, and once you do it the game is easy again. Mob enemies are generally harder than bosses because you are 1vs3 most of the time, while in bosses you can just debuff it and make it slow, while you have 2 turns to spam healings and hitting. There also some questionable decisions on the minor mechanics of the combat system but i don't think they matter (see some paragraphs below)

Now here is what is really the "fresh take": the setting being cyberpunk. Everything is written with tech terminology. The mana is called data, block and delay turn is called cache, melee combat is called hack? some of the terms don't even make sense of what they actually do. Also because we obviously live in a technological society we have people called "V-sync" or "Nullpointer", expresions like "Digits!" or "Oh my grind!", you know, normal behaviour if you ask me.

The story is pretty standard for a futuristic setting, it wasn't bad but also it wasn't good, pretty normal.

The artstyle is cool, the music is generally cool, which i think its why most people would don't mind the boring gameplay and will just play for the story, which is also present in the game itself because you have options to either skip every random encounter (yeah we have those here) or to insta win every battle when you want it.

So if you want to try this game because of the "fresh take in the jrpg genre" you will be disappointed, if you have played jrpgs before there is nothing new in this game, you have already played it before.

This is just a very well-done JRPG style indie game with some cool pixel art animations and gameplay that is decent enough to keep you going for its short runtime.

My BIGGEST problem with this game is that the final boss is such an insane difficulty spike compared to even the previous boss fight that you're more than likely gonna be caught off guard. I never Game Overed until this fight, and it left me with two options to win: Grind or completely change my loadout (which had carried me throughout the entire game). What's worse is that it feels like a slog, and is designed to be extremely difficult at the beginning, but get easier as you go along. The worst feeling in any JRPG is when you're stuck in the loop of healing and blocking while barely getting any hits in, and that's what the entire fight felt like. This is probably a core issue that comes in having a turn-based RPG where you only have one character to control.

If they do a sequel, I hope they consider what I just wrote, because this was a fun game otherwise.

A Good, Bite-Size RPG

The presentation is spot on. Excellent visuals (with impressive lighting) and quality music make this an indie attraction. Really the only blemish is repeated NPC and enemies but it's a small nitpick.

The combat is decent, only challenging when enemies have high hp or hit hard, but overall it's nothing to shout about. The final battle is a bit of a slog and somewhat anti-climatic.

Also, the game is very short, clocking in about 12 hours. That includes the (few) sidequests. Your mileage may vary on if this is a good thing or bad thing.

The characters are more than one-dimensional. It's amazing how much you learn about the main characters without there being a long arc or over-dramatic cutscenes and the NPC's are also amusing. Jack Move actually encourages you to talk to NPCs not just for questing but for funny banter. Noa is a very good lead, balancing sassyness with enough vulnerabilities to make her enduring.

Despite the issues, I would say this is worth a playthrough. There is no new game+ nor any difficulty options so replayability is low. But there is potential for a sequel and the developers clearly have talent.

Rating: 7/10

Ngl this game is carried heavily by its aesthetics and soundtrack for me. The characters and story are enjoyable, but they are fairly simple.

Combat is similarly enjoyable-but-too-simple. Though the final boss of the game is great and I wish the game was more like that the entire run through.

The game looks great, I love the pixel art and animations in this game. Though there are a few rooms where the perspective is fucky due to changes in elevation being hard to tell apart.

I also love the soundtrack, though I wish the final boss had a more banging track. It's a very lowkey ambient type of thing.

Nonetheless, short and sweet RPG. I enjoyed my time with it. The credits are the most soulful credit sequence I've seen since Dead Rising 2: Off the Record, as it blatantly references classic PS1-era cracktros.

My biggest gripes are actually two bugs I encountered.

One is that you can softlock yourself in combat by pressing the start button in the Install screen.

The second is that the final boss' boss rush phase is completely skipped if you kill the boss via poison damage, which I did because its insane health meant poison was extremely effective. The boss rush looks lame tho!

The game is a solid turn-based RPG, I really enjoyed the mechanic of being able to swap your 'Software" (this game's versions of spells) on the fly mid-battle.

The sprite animations are amazing, that's what drew me towards the game in the first place and yeah they stay amazing throughout the entire game.

The story is simple, not the deepest or most well-written plot in the world, but it's not bad at all.
I think the game's biggest flaw is how short it is. There are 4 major bosses, one of which comes only minutes before the final boss and each "dungeon" is only a few rooms long. The battle system is enjoyable without a doubt, but the game is so short that it feels like you're missing out on all that could've been done with it.

Wife’s Reaction:
“Are you for real asking mefor a comment? You know I didn’t watch it.”

Cyberpunk Final Fantasy 7:
It’s fun to go blind into a game you get from a Humble bundle. It’s also nice to have an RPG that isn’t 35+ hours. In 7 hours I got to experience some great pixel animation and rad music, an okay story with nice characters, and decent gameplay that didn’t evolve much until a difficulty spike with the final boss.

This whole game felt like a demo, the locations are just a few, if I remember correctly, there where only 3 main towns, and around 5 dungeons (and a lot of them are around 10-15 minutes to beat), and the gameplay loop itself got repetitive easily, being based on a rock-paper-scissors kind of RPG, there's not too many redeeming qualities when there's a lot of better and cheaper RPGs out there. The pixel art is really good, and the game wanted to make every NPC feel unique with their dialogue evolving as you kept playing, but around 80% of the cast still felt generic, with no real information given.

Damn, I really wished that I liked Jack Move. I bought it for a small discount, mostly because I'm prone to try new little JRPGs and I found the battle screenshots to be very appealing.

This is the kind of indie JRPG that is betrayed by its short length. Take a good look at the characters at the cover of the game: these are all the characters that you're going to see for the whole of the story. You have one friend, one mentor, a missing dad, and a couple of villains. All the characters are tropey and one-dimensional, and plot-wise, the story can't do much, because we don't have a lot of pieces to work with. (I'm thinking about red herrings, plot twists, you can't do this plot embellishment stuff without some extra characters to create distractions.)

The dungeon design is very basic, but I liked it. The upgrade system feels as undercooked as the quantity of relevant characters: you can buy everything the game has to offer in a couple of hours, and then just spam your best moves until the end of the game, a couple of hours later.

The combat makes a good first impression, but it is just a basic "triangle strategy" kind of deal. You have three different types of moves, and three different types of enemies (color-coded). You look at the color of the enemy and choose the skill that does the most damage to that one color. Worse, still: they use the color-code thing to reutilize enemy types, and the game does it too fast.

It's pretty basic stuff and the game does feel like a demo. I don't know, it's not like the game doesn't have any qualities. The art is great to look at (although it doesn't convey verticality well enough, making some traversal segments unnecessarily confusing). There is some cool music. But, all in all, it feels lacking and too expensive for what it is.

It’s not groundbreaking in terms of story and combat but still interesting nonetheless. From what i could see, the dev really put lots of love and attention into making this game.

What stands out for me:
- the battle music is really well used. I felt the weight and force when attacking the enemies!
- the general aesthetics is simply brilliant. Arts are sooooooo beautiful to look at.
- QoL and accessibility in this game is perfect for me. As for bugs and errors, I didn’t encounter any, meaning the game is really well polished.

Conclusion: if you want a short jrpg game around 8 hrs or less and a chilling experience, i guess this is the one.

Ace art team - beautiful pixel art with silky smooth animation with plenty of flare that makes scenes come alive. Music is also really good, I liked the victory fanfare it's always fun to finish a fight and let it hit. Good stuff.

Story is basic and the writing is fairly annoying - the characters are using fake computing and hacking lingo as part of daily speech to the point that the entire game reads like a parody.

On the same note every single basic game mechanic term gets a cyberpunk skin, it only makes basic functions confusing.

Combat is very dull and why I dropped it despite being short. This is the bread and butter of RPGs but there is nothing there to hold onto.