Vanillaware games just resonate with me every time but now I'm a little sad there's no Odin Sphere-likes in the world. It's a fantasy RPG where every character has wildly different combos and gameplay like picking an FGC. They all feel great mostly (I have problems with Cornelious) while having unique movement options some of the times and others more arbitrarily difficult levelling difficulty (HP Scaling with food or Levels on certain characters felt punishing.) The story has a similar sort of progression to 13 Sentinels but is entirely linear - until the Book of Armageddon (pick any character any order final scenario.) The writing here isn't fantastic it has a lot of romance that feels right for the themes of mythology and gods and so on. You feel the weakness of the stories structure most when you face a boss after a sequence of events you've seen or heard of from another characters POV - you want to know where everyone fits in but this game, unlike 13 Sentinels, can't and won't provide that context, also everyone having access to the Pooka Village feels wrong but it is funny. This is the most gameplay heavy Vanillaware experience I've played so I understand other aspects like stories syncing up, like in 13S, can't be done at least not back in 2007 but then this game feels ambitious enough already with the complexity of the character roster and the systems and art etc. With certain boss fights and scenarios feeling like a fantasy Metal Slug game using various skills and combos in a 2D setting, Devil May Cry combo chains to keep a good score and grade it keeps hitting the right balance. This is an amazing game to play if I had any criticism it would be that character progression breaks take up too much time and the boss roster is great but a little thin. Eating food, growing food, and phozons are all good but more ways to speed up this stuff would've been very welcome and while the menuing isn't bad sometimes it feels a little awkward.