Genuinely the best cast from one of these games. They do manage to be more than one note for most of it and the game doesn't repeat itself as much as explorers. Partner is also a complete and true bro tbh

Now the actual dungeon design and gameplay is a mess when you have guest party members constantly outlevelling any of your own. Even though most locations have two times less the floors of explorers and rescue team, it still feels the same length due to how so much of GTI is narrow corridors in dead ends.

I wish I knew what made it tick with people. I do know what made it work at points, but then why does the game bury it under the fetid mud that is the "Game game" story. The banter is amazing but is it really good to have so much time spent in solitary dungeons with hundreds of reflex puzzles rather than doing stuff with your buds in any other context? Most of the humor from nameless npcs are also misses, the concept just doesn't have enough meat.

Chapter 7 is the true look into what this game could have been and I weep, it's so many missed opportunities that it baffles me when looking at the rest of the game and how it even taunts you. "Oh the actual ending of this game is due later as an expac" Then Crosscode does actually have a true ending DLC...uggggh

Such a beautiful game that's let down by a budget, fairly clearly rushed bits, and some bad nu metroidvania ideas.

The art, music, and everything with the presentation (minus one thing) is amazing. There was a clear love and time taken with these aspects to the point that I won't bother bringing them up from now on.

Now onto a big issue is that the game really did not need a lot of its fluff. Nothing about them adds anything, the sidequests are tonally interesting but it feels like a good number of them could have been included in some other way that weren't the most basic of fetch quests without good directions. One other specific gripe is that you can just see the entire map and area names from the start, it's just so odd to have that in a game about discovery.

Anyways the true damning issue of this game is how after a certain point things aren't flowing well. The emotional climax happens and the rest of the game goes by, including plenty of cuts and sudden things happening for an ultimately pretty subpar ending.

However, I still do think people should play it, just know that after the honeymoon things will just lose steam.

Probably my tied game of the year of 2023. There's some slight jank, but it's exhilarating to cut loose through its world. The writing isn't a main selling point but I think the banter is charming, there's a clear amount of effort to portray the fae which is cool since gaming doesn't tend to feature em much as a direct focus

Aside from that the main meat is movement. All of it feels snappy and just how you'd expect. The grapple is used in enough ways that it never wears out its welcome with more ways to use it always becoming apparent.

Overall it's just a fun as hell game with very little buts about it (plus it's gonna get more content soon to the time of making so that's kinda cool)