glass_chaim
1 review liked by glass_chaim
I wanted to like this more than I did. There’s so so so much I love in this game, the palette, the pixel art, the themes, the characters, the dialogue. On paper this game ought to be one of my favourites of all time, and I do love it, but the reality fell a little short.
The writing is very very good and the protagonists all feel real, fun and distinct. Basically the entire game is these four shooting the shit and it’s a testament to the writing style that they remain fun and engaging throughout. There’s a lot of the writing that speaks to me, a lot of the trans stuff that sounds like it’s coming from my own head, but for all the familiarity nothing really blew my mind. I did think the style of chapter 3 was just amazing, smashed it out of the park.
Mechanically, the game is super dense and complex. Initially you have a small set of abilities to choose from for equipment but this expands out as the game goes on, and I spent ages poring over my loadouts trying to get what was right. However, for all the time spent on it, I never really got a feeling of mastery, no eureka moments where it came together. A few times I felt like I was abandoning decent combos because they’d been outleveled, or muddling through.
The in-battle tactics felt much harder to perceive. Only at the very end of the game did I vaguely have separate dedicated pages for ravaging and damaging, and most of the time I just mashed through and tried to remember which page had healing. Most fights I had my eyes glued to the top right hand corner of the screen, watching health bars and cooldowns, and I got burned for that several times.
But there’s so much promise, so many clever ideas. Mulching old gear to upgrade the new stuff is genius, and the little road-story vignettes attached to all the items were a treat. The way the game moves between dialogue and combat but somehow (at least for me) you never lose the thread is amazing.
One other thing, and it’s hard to call this a positive or a negative, but I found the game to require a huge amount of focus. There was never really any point in GITCL where I could pop a podcast on and grind out some battles or sneak in 5 minutes’ play between meetings. Every moment of the game is either spent laser focused on the dialogue, or hammering buttons in the combat, or thinking hard about your loadout. The DLC is the only place that really lets you muck about.
The game is very good and was packed end to end with good ideas, they just don’t come together quite as well as I had hoped. Still a big fan and plan to play all the DLCs.
The writing is very very good and the protagonists all feel real, fun and distinct. Basically the entire game is these four shooting the shit and it’s a testament to the writing style that they remain fun and engaging throughout. There’s a lot of the writing that speaks to me, a lot of the trans stuff that sounds like it’s coming from my own head, but for all the familiarity nothing really blew my mind. I did think the style of chapter 3 was just amazing, smashed it out of the park.
Mechanically, the game is super dense and complex. Initially you have a small set of abilities to choose from for equipment but this expands out as the game goes on, and I spent ages poring over my loadouts trying to get what was right. However, for all the time spent on it, I never really got a feeling of mastery, no eureka moments where it came together. A few times I felt like I was abandoning decent combos because they’d been outleveled, or muddling through.
The in-battle tactics felt much harder to perceive. Only at the very end of the game did I vaguely have separate dedicated pages for ravaging and damaging, and most of the time I just mashed through and tried to remember which page had healing. Most fights I had my eyes glued to the top right hand corner of the screen, watching health bars and cooldowns, and I got burned for that several times.
But there’s so much promise, so many clever ideas. Mulching old gear to upgrade the new stuff is genius, and the little road-story vignettes attached to all the items were a treat. The way the game moves between dialogue and combat but somehow (at least for me) you never lose the thread is amazing.
One other thing, and it’s hard to call this a positive or a negative, but I found the game to require a huge amount of focus. There was never really any point in GITCL where I could pop a podcast on and grind out some battles or sneak in 5 minutes’ play between meetings. Every moment of the game is either spent laser focused on the dialogue, or hammering buttons in the combat, or thinking hard about your loadout. The DLC is the only place that really lets you muck about.
The game is very good and was packed end to end with good ideas, they just don’t come together quite as well as I had hoped. Still a big fan and plan to play all the DLCs.