The trailer doesn't show much of the game but it was enough to peak my interest when it was on sale, and the prologue continued to do that, establishing this somber and dreamlike atmosphere that I wanted to see more of. The game starts proper and half the npcs I talk to are on the brink of going "t3h PeNgU1N oF d00m" and the rest are either mundane or say something that causes the protagonist, Violet, to interrogate them until she finally gets told they can't answer every minute question she has. In fact Violet has a lot of long exchanges with npcs instead of short one textbox blurbs you'd expect. It's jarring, and the contrast between its earlier tone and atmosphere to that is something that I feel would cause most people to drop the game a few hours after.

Areas are large, dungeons are large, and indoor buildings can be large. They're dark most of the time. Getting lost in all three of them will happen, and you'll find yourself in larger areas and dungeons that seem to sprawl into even larger ones until you reach a boss or you swear you've opened every chest on the map. There's a lot of books everywhere. Combat is something you'll be told the gist of, but will never fully wrap your head around. Stick to areas appropriate to your level, gear up, and you'll be fine until you reach the final area of the game and get hit with a massive difficulty spike. Remember to manage your town full of ghosts so your golem can mine and make money and you can use your ghost ship to sail around!

If it wasn't obvious, Wooden Ocean's a game I like and am conflicted on. The atmosphere, music, and creative usage of rpgmaker RTP is all great. When you're on the main quest and the game decides to be serious it has amazing moments. A lot of the sidequests can be funny even if the humor can be likened to mid-late 2000s "lol so randumb." Piecing together the information about world/characters from the bits you get from books, NPCs, and just exploring is fun. I love how out of left field a shift in the plot near the end of the game can be based entirely on whether or not you went out of your way to visit a specific area that characters frequently mention. But the game's massive in scope and made by one person so bugs are abound. The game can feel a bit aimless and repetitive at times when you stumble on the same books or have done a few poetries of bronze/blood and plot progression become SaGa-esque. Combat feels like a bunch of systems layered onto one another that you want to figure out sooner than later because it can be very easy to rely on certain skills or an explosive item type that can carry you to the endgame. And while the game is complete, it's still having content added to it. So you'll stumble across a few locations that look cool only to find out that they're still being worked on. Regardless, the game is very murda.

While it has its flaws, Prayer of the Faithless is a game that surprised me and overall was an interesting experience. SP acting as a defense modifier alongside being the cost for skills makes combat a balancing act where even a regular enemy encounter made me consider my options instead of just choosing attack or the highest damaging skill like in most RPGmaker games. At times the importance of SP can feel inconsistent. You can completely deplete an enemy's gauge, attack them with a skill, and the damage you do is like 10-15% of their health without them even being buffed. Meanwhile if a party member's SP is depleted and an enemy targets them say bye-bye to 50% of their health minimum. Thankfully most enemies have at least one elemental weakness that can be targeted to do a reasonable amount of damage when you make that opening.

In the last 1/3 of the game Aeyr and Mia end up with so many skills it makes the other four party members situational at best and kind of boring to use in comparison. This is more of a problem with Aeyr's party than Mia, where Luke feels situational and Trill honestly felt useless (this is likely a skill issue on my part) until she got the claws that allowed her to damage SP (which was near the end of the game) and before that the best use I found for her was throwing up the occasional buff or debuff. Rarely did I find use her miasma charge, because no matter the enemy encounter she just got pancaked the moment I used it. On Mia's side, Amelie works well as a tank despite doing barely any damage even when an enemy's SP is gone and their weakness is pierce or holy. Reyson/Serra are pretty good when you get them and still decent at the final hour or two of the game. Serra's oracle skills are effective but the chance for them to work felt too unreliable even when using her skill that increases that, so I hardly used them.

For the most part I liked the story and characters in the game. I really enjoyed how the characters developed and how the game handled its themes. I ended up on Aeyr's "route" (and was kind of upset because I liked Mia more) but the way everything wrapped up made for an open and nice ending. I wish Manna had more of a presence in the game beyond 2 party members, and one section in which you get one of those party members. One day I'll come back to this and get the other 3 endings.

tl;dr neat game, play it, aeyr looks like haze from anonymous agony