Great piece about the importance of music and art.
Edit after I 100% the game: I abhore the notion of "post-game" in almost any game. There is no post game, the game is over when you're done with it or when the credits roll. Don't give me 5 more hours of narrative after the credits that I gotta do. The gameplay loop following the conclusion is better than anything its main inspiration has done or will do.
A really fun little game! Well worth the $20 price tag or checking out on Xbox Game Pass. I worked at a record store for 2 years so themeing everything around physical media and music is already enough to peak my interest, and hey the music here is great. The variation of music is nice and I really love how they bring in vocals to the score at times to make the piece feel really more impactful.
The biggest standout for me when starting this up is how this game addresses the problems I ahve with most games that take inspiration from Pokemon. So many Not-Pokemon Pokemon have the designs of "we have pokemon at home". The designs here are great! I enjoy seeing these little critters and watching them transform. It also deviates from Pokemon with how its typing system works. Instead of just creating its own rock-paper-scissors they opted to have types affect other types. Ever wondered why Charizard doesn't melt Ice pokemon? Why doesn't Blastoise make the Ice type bigger? This adds more to think about to the combat and you can approach things differently in a way that just casually playing Pokemon doesn't really let you do (no one's using trick room strats against gym leaders) but there's not just pokemon it draws influence from. Taking cues from SMT/Persona you're also leveling up your character separate from the monsters, leading to really fun quick battles where you obliterate their starter and ALSO the person transforming into the monsters. Fusion stuff is neat too though I'm not smart enough to truly use it to my advantage.
Narrative is light but fun enough, a run-of-the-mill isekai story where you're trying to get back home. All your companions have issues they're running away from and hint at through the adventure but is made more interesting as you start to realize that people aren't just from different time periods but alternate histories in general. It's fun watching as the absurdities of this world start to unravel more as you play, You can battle against a greek philosopher its great. They're romanceable as well if you're into that. I just wish there was more to the narrative to make the ending sequence have more impact.
Funny enough like the big problem I have with the latest entry in Pokemon is that following the tutorial segments the game sets you up with an implication that it's a large open world and you're free to explore however you want. With that being proven untrue pretty quickly by gating you off with monster levels and needing specific skills from catching specific monsters to progress past certain points. Really frustrating to find a quest interesting but have to wait awhile to even touch it because you can't catch a beast you need to get past the obstacles in the way. The other major issue for me is how Not Fun the main boss fights are. I have a big problem when RPGs let me equip my guys with a bunch of skills but the skills aren't usable against bosses. This is increased by the main big bad bosses not having any typing or visual indicator or heads up as to what might be helpful against the Archangels so more often than anything I'd just get destroyed the first attempt and be annoyed and go somewhere else until I wanted to try again.
I'm hoping the planned DLC gives me more fun adventures in this world and isn't just more monsters to record. I have a punk british gf I want to watch more movies with.
Edit after I 100% the game: I abhore the notion of "post-game" in almost any game. There is no post game, the game is over when you're done with it or when the credits roll. Don't give me 5 more hours of narrative after the credits that I gotta do. The gameplay loop following the conclusion is better than anything its main inspiration has done or will do.
A really fun little game! Well worth the $20 price tag or checking out on Xbox Game Pass. I worked at a record store for 2 years so themeing everything around physical media and music is already enough to peak my interest, and hey the music here is great. The variation of music is nice and I really love how they bring in vocals to the score at times to make the piece feel really more impactful.
The biggest standout for me when starting this up is how this game addresses the problems I ahve with most games that take inspiration from Pokemon. So many Not-Pokemon Pokemon have the designs of "we have pokemon at home". The designs here are great! I enjoy seeing these little critters and watching them transform. It also deviates from Pokemon with how its typing system works. Instead of just creating its own rock-paper-scissors they opted to have types affect other types. Ever wondered why Charizard doesn't melt Ice pokemon? Why doesn't Blastoise make the Ice type bigger? This adds more to think about to the combat and you can approach things differently in a way that just casually playing Pokemon doesn't really let you do (no one's using trick room strats against gym leaders) but there's not just pokemon it draws influence from. Taking cues from SMT/Persona you're also leveling up your character separate from the monsters, leading to really fun quick battles where you obliterate their starter and ALSO the person transforming into the monsters. Fusion stuff is neat too though I'm not smart enough to truly use it to my advantage.
Narrative is light but fun enough, a run-of-the-mill isekai story where you're trying to get back home. All your companions have issues they're running away from and hint at through the adventure but is made more interesting as you start to realize that people aren't just from different time periods but alternate histories in general. It's fun watching as the absurdities of this world start to unravel more as you play, You can battle against a greek philosopher its great. They're romanceable as well if you're into that. I just wish there was more to the narrative to make the ending sequence have more impact.
Funny enough like the big problem I have with the latest entry in Pokemon is that following the tutorial segments the game sets you up with an implication that it's a large open world and you're free to explore however you want. With that being proven untrue pretty quickly by gating you off with monster levels and needing specific skills from catching specific monsters to progress past certain points. Really frustrating to find a quest interesting but have to wait awhile to even touch it because you can't catch a beast you need to get past the obstacles in the way. The other major issue for me is how Not Fun the main boss fights are. I have a big problem when RPGs let me equip my guys with a bunch of skills but the skills aren't usable against bosses. This is increased by the main big bad bosses not having any typing or visual indicator or heads up as to what might be helpful against the Archangels so more often than anything I'd just get destroyed the first attempt and be annoyed and go somewhere else until I wanted to try again.
I'm hoping the planned DLC gives me more fun adventures in this world and isn't just more monsters to record. I have a punk british gf I want to watch more movies with.