You can see a lot of the DNA of their previous game, Gunpoint in here, but with a focus more on player expression. The game is designed to make you work with whatever wacky tools you have to try and clown your way through the map you are on to get to your objective, and early on especially, it succeeds at this. Problems arise, at least for me, when after you have played for a while, dominant strategies start to emerge, for example a slipstream and a stealth shield can get you through just about anything the game throws at you until you start dealing with the newer tech the game added to thwart it. Which sounds like a solved problem, but things like doors that disable tech and jammers tend to just shrink possibility space and encourage efficient play rather than expressive play. What I think might have served the game's purposes better would have been introducing elements more suited for other tools rather than turning the good ones off occasionally, but despite this criticism, I had a great lot of fun with this one and still occasionally come back to it when I want that particular kind of fun

A story the author has clearly spent a lot of time thinking about, with a lot of details and history you see bits and pieces of that you get the impression has depth you are just not privy to. Best played after Escaped Chasm, the previous work by the author which has some connections to this story. Biggest complaint would be that while there is clearly a lot of world-building being done, we are kept at arms length from everything, to the point where I keep thinking 'oh, that is interesting' but never anything beyond that.

For (what I understand to be) her first game with real-time mechanics rather than a visual novel, Christine Love does a really admirable job. When the combat clicks, its fun, fast-paced, and rewarding. Sometimes however, the mechanics can be really opaque. The tutorial could use some work, as it took me quite a few battles to really wrap my head around the combat system.

The pacing was also a big issue, at a certain point I just was not interested in doing the same fight I had done over a dozen times before, acts needed to either have more variety in them or be shorter. Having only 1 song for normal combat was also quite grating, which is saying something because the track in question is REALLY GOOD, but any song played that frequently will grate over time.

Writing is what you have come to expect from Love Conquers All, walks the impossible tightrope of delightfully indulgent and crushingly sincere, the metaphor of the Devil Machine cultists and the Divine Hierarchy are very on the nose but sometimes you fucking have to be, and I do think this is one of those times.

Had a blast overall, very excited to see future releases from this dev.

Very solid tactical RPG, with great music, and charming visuals.

Held back by some pacing issues, the big cast needed a bit more room to breathe for the emotional beats to land more solidly, could have done with either setting some lore aside to let characters come to the fore a bit more or maybe cut down the cast a bit.

Some minor issues with the gameplay, can be unclear what the timing is for the timed hit system, sometimes the isometric perspective blocks key visual information, just a little bit too much time spent in random battles.

Loved the very queer cast, and variety of levels and enemies, great length for the price.

Unlike a lot of folks, I felt the difficulty is right where it needed to be for a Megaman Battle Network vet, though it could use some accessibility features for folks who are struggling. One of my main complaints is that you will end up not taking most of the cards offered if you know what you are doing, and that can feel deeply un-intuitive to folks who are not as familiar with a deck-builder, especially one like this where efficiency is key. Style is lovely and increasing the board space to 4x4 per side was a very smart move.