Control scheme is a little weird-feeling at first, but once you get used to it, it's fine. The game is a walking sim at its core, but the interactions at terminals with Kaizen-85 can be very interesting.

In fact, this is probably where the game both excels and fails the most -- Kaizen can either have some very fruitful conversations with you or just sound strangely obtuse when trying to talk about relevant topics.

Not a specific spoiler given the nature of the game, but I was trying to track down a particular item and inadvertently triggered a clue from Kaizen, so I went off to suss out that clue. I remembered seeing the item Kaizen mentioned at one point but not giving it much notice, so I figured I'd go back to try and see what I missed about said item. Found said item, found nothing useful about it. Went back to the specific terminal where Kaizen talked about said item and it mentioned a separate item altogether in the current location.

Went and checked around the current location and it gave me more prompts about other possible locations or options in lieu of my current search. The thing is -- there's nothing wrong with the fact that it did this and remembered the locations where it was offering this advice. The problem was that even if I'd bring up a separate topic during this search that wasn't relevant to said search (but may or may not be relevant to the story/game itself), it just ignored talking to me about said topic and focused more on what it expected me to do to progress the game in that particular instance.

This happened a few other times resulting in some really awkward conversations where I felt like I was talking to an old Interactive Fiction parser more than an "AI", and it kinda took me out of the game.

Additionally, some things did not function quite as intended -- one particular section of the game sees you dealing with an issue under a time crunch and when I made it to the door I needed to open, even though I was standing where the icon suggested the terminal was, the terminal would not activate, so I went elsewhere to try and find a different door and terminal, assuming I had made a mistake. When other possibilities failed, I went back to said door and suddenly the terminal worked properly as if it were never an issue.

The game isn't a polished work, but it's definitely worth your time to check out. Your mileage will likely vary based on your interest in engaging with Kaizen and walking simulators in general. It's definitely not worth the twenty dollar asking price, but if you got it on sale for ten bucks (I believe that's what I got it for), you probably wouldn't feel cheated.

I actually found this game pretty fun and then set it aside so I could clear some backlog and then come back to it and enjoy it some more.

Came back to find that my save file no longer existed (maybe from the most recent update?). So...now it's in limbo again.

Worth checking out, assuming that your save file doesn't randomly vanish like mine did.

EDIT: Just noting that no updates have come since June of 2021 still, so if you're seeing this review and reading it all the way through, be aware that nothing has changed and on top of that, their website that's supposed to have game details on it (accessible from the "visit the website" link on the Steam store page) takes you to a dead site that says the account for said site has been suspended. Caveat emptor, original review below.

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I know this is currently in Early Access, but just playing this for a short time, there's a lot of issues.

1. Running jumps off ledges in this game are of the kind where you're not completely sure where the game is going to assume you've gone too far and drop you off the ledge instead of letting you jump. These games always feel awkward to me because I end up falling at points where I normally would expect to be able to jump.

2. Although the art style is nice, the style gets in the way of the gameplay at times. Sometimes foreground objects completely obscure your sight to enemies, hazards, and projectiles. Some hazards aren't obvious because the game does little to make them visible -- an example of this is the wooden platforms you find early on that will have spikes rise out of them occasionally.

The spikes rise about half the height of the platform, have no sound effects on rising, and are the same color as the platform itself. You will inevitably land on one simply because you aren't noticing them.

3. Monster behavior for six of the first seven monsters I met has almost zero dependency on the player. Most of them just wander aimlessly, hopefully getting lucky by just accidentally running into you before you can get enough swings in to kill them. The slimes on the ceiling will at least fall if you're close enough, but that's the end of their interest in you. The bees are evil bastards that will shoot perfectly accurate projectiles that will seek you out and usually hit you mid-jump, knocking away most of your progress up a series of ledges that were already difficult to navigate because of the jump mechanic. Haven't reached the first boss, so I can't speculate as to whether this gets better or not.

4. You can't drop through ledges with a down-jump. This isn't a game breaker by any means, but it seems really weird when you can jump up through a ledge to reach the top of it, but have to walk off the side in order to get down to a lower level.

5. I feel like there's no real sound representation in this game. Be it music beyond some ambience, or sounds from creatures to represent their presence or their awareness of you -- it just feels really quiet and empty other than you slashing bushes and other objects.

6. Just a weird observation -- they give you the ability to equip hotkey items to use to heal or buff yourself as needed, but the game pauses while you're in the inventory menu anyway and allows you to eat those healing items there. I mention this because there's a distinct delay where you're stuck in the eating animation before you heal when in the game itself, but eating an item in the inventory menu doesn't penalize you at all, so why would you ever want to eat during actual gameplay?

-- In all, the game has some questionable design choices and it's already one month past the projected release date out of Early Access. The last update came back in June and was just a bugfix for a UI issue. I feel like either the devs might be hitting some walls or outside problems, or this could be a game that's being walked away from with whatever profits can be salvaged. I hope it's not the latter, but I guess we'll see.

If you see it on sale with a deep discount (like I did when I picked it up), check the discussions and dev activity to see whether it's still being updated before you decide on making that purchase.

It seems more interesting plot-wise than Rorona was, but man...coming into this after all the QoL improvements of Rorona DX makes this game feel especially awkward.

No fast travel, sorting is awkward, guidance is practically absent. I appreciate that hiring is free (at least, I think it is?). Wish combat gave me some idea how close I was to leveling, instead of just smashing my face into enemies and waiting for a "Level Up!" notice or going in and physically checking my status for characters.

If I had played this right after the original Rorona, I probably wouldn't have such gripes, but as it is, this just feels too unwieldy for me. From what I've read, Meruru DX is much the same, but I intend to give that a try at some point, as well.

This game finally got out of Early Access and I can safely say -- still a train wreck.

-- Music doesn't play at all (switching ON or OFF does nothing, volume is at max)

-- Sometimes your down smash just goes off without your permission while jumping and this can lead to a lot of lost progress when you're trying to carefully platform UPWARDS

-- Pits that auto-kill you in a game that encourages you to explore in multiple directions (this is easily one of the dumbest features I've ever seen in a game)

-- Some pits are pits but don't advertise themselves as such because some kinds of weird behaviors are happening right at the bottom of the screen to indicate that stuff SHOULD be down there

-- The boss that didn't do anything before when I fought her? Still doesn't do anything

-- The Dash Power-Up is in multiple locations and I'm not entirely sure if this is intended or not

-- You're not given any indication of what any power-ups do

-- If you choose a windowed resolution and hit the MAP button at any point, the resolution changes to fullscreen and does not change back

-- There's still no way to quit out other than hard-closing the program from outside

-- See an area that you need to crawl through but don't have the power up you need? Just lean into it, then try and do a down-smash and you'll fling yourself through. Beware that sometimes this results in you being stuck in a weird crawl animation and unable to jump or move in any direction but forward. Fun times!

-- My assist character and I both vanished off the screen at one point after walking to one side of the room. It seems we just left the plane of existence and there was no way back. After a few jumps, I stopped hearing sounds to indicate movement progress. Map command still worked, so I tried entering and exiting that to get back, no dice. Had to hard-quit the game (just like quitting normally!).

This game is an atrocious mess and I cannot recommend it in its "complete" state. It's unbelievable how bad the game is.
Original review follows.
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My first 30 minutes of this game summed up briefly:

-- Double jump sometimes works, sometimes doesn't and the only correlation I can find is that it sometimes fails when your companion is also jumping around

-- Companion occasionally gets stuck on things or stuck in random animations and does nothing until you progress far enough away from them to have them catch back up with you

A series of short events en masse:

-- After getting my companion, I decided to go right instead of left because I like exploration and found some neat upper paths that I used my double-jump + down-hammer to get up to.

-- Got to a boss and made short work of her. Her AI didn't really do anything other than walk into me.

-- Went right and got a power-up that let me slide under things (though it gave no indication that it did this nor bothered to explain how).

-- Tried to go back to a save room on my map and when I got to the room, didn't see anything indicating a save point and didn't remember seeing one in that room on my map when I came through the first time.

-- Figured maybe it was below the conveyor belts I jumped across, so I dropped down below them to see what was down there.

-- Surprise, it's actually a pit that instakills you and returns you back to your last save and wipes all your progression you made!

The game's still in Early Access on Steam, so maybe there will be some intuitive changes made to address some of the bad logic going on here, but we'll see. The fact that the game uses key prompts (C and X) on the menu while you're using a gamepad isn't inspiring, but worse still is that while you're on the map page, the map moves while you're trying to scroll down the sidebar options to the left of the map because it doesn't function independently of the sidebar. Whoops.

Will throw it back into the backlog, but yeah...the game is both simultaneously too easy and too poorly designed to want to play more at this point.

Was fun enough for the hours I've put into it.

Might be a solid game, but given that I've still got Disgaea 4-6 on my plate still, I feel like I have to put this down and play some iterations that probably improved upon this formula at this point.

Not sure who I'd recommend this to, as you either played the first game and are interested in checking this out, or you're someone who probably has come in on D4+ or later and I can't imagine there's much reason to suggest going back to this. If you're one of the twelve people on Earth that are interested in this game and haven't played D1 or anything after D2, congratulations -- you may as well check this game out.