I wanted to like this game, I REALLY did. The positives: the characters and interactions are extremely charming. You could really tell the small dev team loved making this game and it was a passion project. The battle system is kind of interesting where you could go against more enemies at once for higher XP return. Additionally, character "abilities" and bond system are fine and actually help.

The negatives: Start is really shaky - gameplay isn't engaging and story is all over the place trying to throw you into a new world. This does get alleviated after the intro and you get more gameplay introduced and the world opens up. The middle point is fun and interesting and bosses can be workaround'd with their gimmicks even when lower level.
But damn, the last third of the game STRETCHES and DRAGS like no other game I played before. it devolves into insane grinding where if you don't have maxed out character levels/talents, there's no point even trying to play the late game. All enemies go up in stats and elemental weaknesses reduce (checked bestiary) to force the player to grind to pad game time. Due to the smaller audience of the game, guides are hard to come by except for the final boss which is pretty much impossible without close to maxed out everything. I've never been frustrated this much from a game.

If this game stayed as charming and unique as it was in the midpoint, it would easily be an 8/10.