One of the most unique and polished metroidvanias I’ve played. There’s the unique art design, blending pixelated retro graphics with neon colours and modern smoke, fluid and lighting effects, all coming together to give it this very surreal, very serene yet sinister atmosphere. There’s the open ended structure, full of branching paths and skips, I honestly can’t see any two players having the same first playthrough, and it goes without saying that it gives value to subsequent playthroughs. There’s the items, which take an almost Outer Wilds or Tunic kind of approach, where throughout the game you discover you have abilities and functions that you’ll realize were actually there the whole time. There’s the puzzles, some of which have more than one solution and encourage thinking outside the box. There’s all the surprises and hidden secrets, some of which really drive home the Outer Wilds/Tunic parallels. There’s the lack of tutorials or lines of text telling you what to do, its complete trust in you the player to figure it out yourself. All of this being made by just one guy. Billy Basso really had a very thorough creative vision and an exorbitant amount of passion and talent to see it through. I think he’s made something special, I feel pretty confidently that this is among the top 3 metroidvanias I’ve ever played.

Say what you will about Dunkey, but he has a damn good eye for indies and it’s endearing to see him use the platform he’s built to prop up smaller independent creatives like this. I’m excited to see what else Bigmode publishes down the line.

Like Octopath Traveller, it’s a game I can tell isn’t bad, but I personally just found it a completely tedious chore to play, not helped by my save data being lost a couple times, sending me back hours more than once. Unlike Octopath though, I was much more invested in the story and characters, enough so to actually see this one through to the end. A very strong story about coping with loss and the cycle of death and rebirth, backed up by a colourful cast and and an even more colourful villain. Made the whole experience worth it.

Narratively, this was a treat to experience for the first time over covid. Few pieces of media can keep me guessing through to the end the way this game did. It lets you know early on that it’s willing to nosedive from its lighthearted tone directly into some truly shocking, depressing places, completely change the scope of the narrative without warning, and that nothing is off the table when it comes to its world ending stakes. The characters as well are so diverse, memorable, developed and have a familial band dynamic comparable to that of The Last Airbender. The game is constant surprise after surprise and it never lets up until the credits roll. Gameplay-wise it’s great as well. Turn based games usually have to work a bit harder to win me over, but then again, this game isn’t really turn based. The active time battle system and all the different ways you can mess around with materia and summons gives you tons of freedom to customize to your whim, think outside the box and break the game in creative ways. Oh did I mention the OST? Top 3 of all time, and it ain’t #3. I whistle some of these tracks to myself at work all the time.

I do have a couple gripes. I played the Playstation Classic version, which is based on the original release, which was littered with translation errors which especially made the game’s midsection a bit tough to follow. It’s also a very minigamey game, and I found them inconsistent in quality. I’m really glad the Playstation Classic had it’s own save scumming feature because without it, grinding the Gold Saucer for the Omni Slash most definitely would’ve seen a hole punched in my TV. And for as much as it subverts a lot of my least favourite JRPG tropes, it still features some of them in full force, like random encounters.

It’s flawed, but it’s high points hit high and there’s a good reason why Square has milked this game like few others in their catalogue.