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.
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.