I can always appreciate a game that lets you lose and face the consequences every once in awhile, hell it might happen pretty often in this game. This game is fun because there are genuine stakes in your encounters, and forces the player to carry on. As you play the game and improve at commanding your party, you learn that the stakes aren't as high as you first thought, and your challenges are not as insurmountable as they first seem, this for myself felt like genuine character progression that happened to me personally with the game instead of being something that happened to my character in the game which was a really fulfilling experience.

The game's aesthetics are also top-notch, the art is appropriately dark and gritty, the fairly rudimentary animations feel heavy and striking with the different effects, camera angles, and sound effects applied. The announcer adds a lot to the experience, acting like a narrator for your dark adventure and sets the tone very well, with enough lines to keep from getting stale for a really long playthrough.

Overall this game is one of the best that I've played with very little bad to say about it, the game can be wonderfully frustrating at times but I think that's part of its charm sometimes you just lose and that's part of the game, it feels bad but not actually too much of a setback and when you win it feels amazing, when you win when your plan all comes together and the whole dungeon run is a breeze it feels earned and is a lot less boring than when you cruise through the content in other games. Despite its dark aesthetics, its a game all about never giving up, about falling down and getting back up, learning from your mistakes on the way, and it tells that from it's mechanics and gameplay which really sets it apart from other games and I think demonstrates how games as a medium can be different to other mediums of art like literature and cinema.

As much as I like this game, I really cannot give it a high score just for the fact that i feels incomplete, the story feels like it just ends right when it starts to pick up and that is honestly quite unforgivable for me, if I want to take video games more seriously I really cannot give this a good rating until they go and actually finish the game cause it really does feel half-baked. The gameplay is fluid and feels great, the levels are unique and engaging and really give the player a hard time and are just great in general. It's really hard to give this game a fair shot cause the game's length itself is actually fine, but the story gives me the impression that they just did not want to finish it, and considering how long its been since the game's come out I think its fair to say we'll never see how John Katana Zero ends his story.