Just about everything aside from the core gameplay was enjoyable. The characters are all fun, voice acting is surprisingly good for an indie game, the art style is gorgeous, the soundtrack... could've used a few more themes, but overall it was good. And the story... was... fine? It didn't blow me out of the water, but it wasn't like awful. The characters absolutely carry the story, they're almost all likable.
However... the core gameplay is... not great. Firstly, it's RIDDLED with bugs. Every time you round a corner, there's a missing texture, or the game softlocks, or a character that's not supposed to be with you is now suddenly back. It's one of the least-polished modern games I've ever played. The game also has serious balancing issues, everything is either WAY too easy, or ludicrously hard, but in both scenarios the same strategy is almost always the best course of action. Just use the strongest attack you have and hope your numbers are bigger that theirs. Which is a darn shame, because the game gives you a wide variety of spells that all sound like they'd be really fun to use strategically, but in every fight where you'd want to use them, you can't because they're immune to it. It frustrates me so much, because I want to have fun, but it won't let me. (Also I think there's supposed to be a New Game +, but that is also bugged, and the option only appears for half a second, meaning it's inaccessible.)
The game packs some pretty decent sidequests, they aren't just your standard "go here and kill X monster" they're pretty well thought out and fun. The problem is, there are no sidequests past the halfway point in the game, and the ones in the beginning are all missable. Now, the game does tell you WHEN you won't be able to do any more in any given area, but that's also a big fat lie, because there are SOME that you just cannot complete unless you did them way earlier, or talked to specific people in a specific order before that point. I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe this was oversight, but it almost feels deliberate. And if you don't complete every sidequest in the game, you cannot get the true ending, meaning I was locked out of it since the second area.
It all just... sucks. I've been patiently waiting for this game for so long, and it just... isn't what I wanted it to be. Despite taking so long to come out, it still needed another year or two before this was something they could truly be proud of. They put way too much of their focus into the art, and the voice acting, and the animation, and didn't stop to consider if that was what they should've been using their time with.
However... the core gameplay is... not great. Firstly, it's RIDDLED with bugs. Every time you round a corner, there's a missing texture, or the game softlocks, or a character that's not supposed to be with you is now suddenly back. It's one of the least-polished modern games I've ever played. The game also has serious balancing issues, everything is either WAY too easy, or ludicrously hard, but in both scenarios the same strategy is almost always the best course of action. Just use the strongest attack you have and hope your numbers are bigger that theirs. Which is a darn shame, because the game gives you a wide variety of spells that all sound like they'd be really fun to use strategically, but in every fight where you'd want to use them, you can't because they're immune to it. It frustrates me so much, because I want to have fun, but it won't let me. (Also I think there's supposed to be a New Game +, but that is also bugged, and the option only appears for half a second, meaning it's inaccessible.)
The game packs some pretty decent sidequests, they aren't just your standard "go here and kill X monster" they're pretty well thought out and fun. The problem is, there are no sidequests past the halfway point in the game, and the ones in the beginning are all missable. Now, the game does tell you WHEN you won't be able to do any more in any given area, but that's also a big fat lie, because there are SOME that you just cannot complete unless you did them way earlier, or talked to specific people in a specific order before that point. I really want to give them the benefit of the doubt and believe this was oversight, but it almost feels deliberate. And if you don't complete every sidequest in the game, you cannot get the true ending, meaning I was locked out of it since the second area.
It all just... sucks. I've been patiently waiting for this game for so long, and it just... isn't what I wanted it to be. Despite taking so long to come out, it still needed another year or two before this was something they could truly be proud of. They put way too much of their focus into the art, and the voice acting, and the animation, and didn't stop to consider if that was what they should've been using their time with.