Free 100% Orange Juice clone, it's not as good but the art is fantastic.

Have you ever wanted to play a game?


Have you ever wanted to play a game where it feels like you're in the other room while a conversation about the game is being had?
This game somehow gives off less feedback than games I've played in Betas.

The driving controls are serviceable however the terrain based switching between Off-Road and On-Road vehicles matched with their completely different physics make staying in control of your car more of a challenge than it should be, not even mentioning the aspect of "boats".

It's a game that has a lot of fun elements and looks more fun than it is to play. Building your own cars and the story mode are additions that almost make up for the lacking of feedback but not enough to retain my interest personally.

This game promises to bring the frustrations of the real world into an RPG and empowers you to overcome them.

It does so with systems of inconvenience, something the developer explored better in a previous title “Decay”.

You can be randomly mailed a pipe bomb, some enemies stalk you and try to kill you after one conversation with them,

This is the strength of the gameplay but often feels like an afterthought

Speaking of afterthought let's talk about the writing.
The writing in this feels less than uninspired, This feels like less than a rough draft It feels like the outline of a story.
Moments where dialogue could be written to characterize the party are written with the most dry unimaginative prose.
The entire thing lacks any sense of drama, There is no sense of building tension or any sort of progression really.

Some things are written Maybe as jokes but are delivered as if it's a complaint about something that it doesn't feel as though it's dry humor or anything like that.
For example the warehouse (definitely not Amazon) somehow outsources its work?
This is a functional impossibility so you want to assume that it's a joke, but everything around it reads as if it's serious.

And what is the grand solution to this problem? diving into delusion of consumer media.
Engaging in RPG combat and becoming a adventurer, pretending to be Chainsawman when you fight, And as always most importantly being angry and annoyed by everything that inconveniences you ever.

The marketing title should be “KILL YOUR LANDLORD”

Even the delivery of Ramona not liking talking to her mom is done so ham-fistedly that it's just immediately telling you everything about it.
There's no drama, there's no tension, no build up.

It might as well have been a text box that pops up and says “Ramona doesn't like talking to her mother because she's transphobic to her”.

The last thing about writing is all of the conflict and the entire point of this just seems to be to complain about things.
From anime nerd culture (But I'm definitely not one of those guys trust me), to NFTs, Crappy Landlords, trans-phobic mothers, and sucky jobs.

After 10 Updates the gameplay remains largely the same.
An exploit I used to make the game more bearable (Saving before every encounter) has been patched out since it could cause a potential softlock.

If you like RPGs with combat scenarios which make you consider your party composition, careful planning and meaningful progression, then look elsewhere.
It appears, to dissuade grinding, that the normal encounters scale to your level, making them MORE difficult than boss encounters.

Whether you win an encounter or not is largely up to RNG, I assume this is to add to the systems of inconvenience, which themselves put you at a disadvantage, how does losing 50 Max HP randomly because you wanted to save before you faced a boss?
In which you need to leave the dungeon and make your way back to your apartment and then to get back to the boss, travel through the dungeon again.
You can just use your phone to call an uber to get teleported to the apartment instantly but that costs money and there are situations that make it so you cannot use your apartment regardless, such as when the gramophone blocks it as a result of not completing it’s quest making it so that you are unable to save as well as unable to make your characters “rested”
The Artificial difficulty of someone who misunderstood what made Drakengard great, making their game “bad on purpose” because that’s the “art” of it.
This is my charitable read of it.
What we end up with is a game that is tedious, the gameplay loop doesn’t properly revolve around the systems unlike Decay as I mentioned earlier. So it feels needlessly tacked onto a game that just talks at you from the developer’s mouth.

I may attempt to see the other content the game has to offer, but from what I have so far it doesn’t inspire much confidence about anything being of quality.

(Since the posting of my last review the developer had claimed the entire thing was in bad faith, posted publicly to his followers complaining about the review several times and then acted on the criticism and advice I gave, as well as adding me to the credits? the original review will be posted below.)

I recommend this game for when an update or remake/remaster fixes the engine issues it has.
Game could use a bit of polish but overall impresses for its time, showing genuinely interesting boss designs and inventive scenarios.
And man not to mention the Aesthetics, the style this game has is so unique and perfectly crafted to it's presentation.
To talk slightly about the story it's something akin to Drakengard meets Classic Zelda with the main characters being like Walter White?

Roy is a self absorbed asshole, who does asshole things "For the good of others".
And the world he lives in is filled with Fantasy world tropes that are "Just a bit fucked up"
This results in something that isn't wholly unique but is charming and interesting nonetheless.

(Fun fact: includes the FIRST appearance of Shovel Knight (Before his own game even))

2022

Better than a lot of of their past work.
It's a pretty easy resource management focused RPG.
This ends up fixing part of my issues with their game "I Hate You Please Suffer" by having the central gameplay loop revolve around paying rent proper.

However it falls short by being short, having lived through this pandemic working a similar job to not only the artist but also the character, the "despair" the game attempts to imply is weak compared to actual events in my real life that could cause the resource management aspect far more compelling.

It's a poor man's Paper's Please set instead of an authoritarian government facing war, it's an Amazon worker during the pandemic.
Instead of trying to take care of your family and attempting to do a good job to avoid real stress, you just gotta eat and use better abilities you get using your stress stat.

The artist's claims of "bad vibes" is really just them venting about their real life, and complaining about straw men, so it's not really "bad vibes" just uninteresting ones.
If you were very mad at stupid shit that happened during the pandemic maybe you can relate more?

Interested in trying the others but this one wasn't too impressive.
even though it is short it doesn't make me want to playthrough it over and over because of it force closing on death and the slow movement speed.
However as a sample it peaks interest for the following games.
The concept is strong as they are supposed to be based on real events to deliver a different kind of horror compared to most games.
As the name suggests rather than "facing the unknown" the situation is very real which, even as silly as its presentation is, does inspire a different kind of horror experience.

Disclaimer: The developer of this game has a history with me. mostly them just being hostile and aggressive towards me.

A friend bought this game for me as a joke knowing my history with said developer. So I thought, well maybe I should find out what their game is actually like and play through the entirety of it!

So let's start with the good:
Julius has an interesting game mechanic.
I like the idea of of stances that effect combat abilities and having them have a limited resource encouraging you to switch off instead of wasting a turn.
And each Gun has different effectiveness against different slimes.

So other than that Slimes is 5 hour journey of repetitive non-challenging gameplay.
I encountered a super/secret boss by accident and killed it so effortlessly that I didn't know what It's abilities actually did until I read about it in the PDF.
The biggest challenge is continuing on with it's boring droning prose that feels like a middle schooler wrote. Things are shown to you then over explained to you and then done so again just in case you didn't get it.
Everything is so trope filled and basic that exactly what you think will happen less than an hour in is what happens at hour 5.
The world building is commendable but feels as though it comes at cost for our "protagonist".

Spoilers ahead, but to call Julius our "protagonist" is a stretch.
Tai gets more story moments and more motivation and establishment as a character that when it comes to the games "rug pull" of switching control over it doesn't feel meaningful, it feels expected.
One of these characters is a character the other is a vapid strawman.

Which then clashes with the themes of the game itself.
The main theme is that "Anger is just, and hatred towards evil is good"
Thoughout the game we're shown Julius anger manifest and projected towards killing slimes.
This would seem to be because of his failure to kill a Slime-infected person who went to kill others.
The difference being that Julius expresses this anger and hatred but calls it something else.
Depth could be had here with the story but it's just dropped in favor of Tai.
Tai had instead been constantly treated poorly for being slime-infected.
And as he meanders being a willing participant to Julius' genocide, he feels regret.
This manifests in him hating Julius for his actions and how he represents everything that is preventing him from living a normal life.

So which of these is celebrated by the game?

Really neither should, a much more compelling story would focus on Julius attempting to redeem himself and become better and Tai acting as a catalyst of such change, but him still seeing "humanity" as more human than Slimes a core value of his, and the conflict raising from this.
This would really amplify the irony of him being "healed" by Tai and ultimately succumbing to the power of Slimes.

Similarly Tai's narrative should have focused on him being worn down by Julius, becoming more and more jaded. He is being corrupted by Julius to do more evil acts to go against his morals and the story barely reflects that so the ending doesn't ring as Catharsis but just... Hollow.

There's an added issue with this being a video game.
Because you control Julius throughout all of his actions of genocide instead of facing the consequences of doing this.
You get to absolve yourself of your actions because "actually he's just more evil than you."

As the game says in battle "The frustration sets in"

Except.. I'm not frustrated.. I'm not angry.. I don't feel hatred...

I feel disappointed.
I hoped as much as I've heard this developer talk up this game and their abilities as a writer that there would be something interesting here underneath all the middle school edge..

And I get nothing.. I've watched bad anime with more nuance to their plots than this and it's upsetting.
I'm looking forward to "I Hate You Please Suffer" and I hope it shows some improvement.

But outside of having fun looking at an overly edgy story about how cool the writer thinks anger is, that wears it's inspirations on it's sleeve so apparently that it's almost blinding, I cannot recommend this game.

This review contains spoilers

While I was playing through the game my thoughts were really positive.
I thought the storytelling was great, I thought the environments were solid, and the gameplay was fun.

This game takes so much from Jet Set Radio Future it feels like borderline plagiarism.
From the structure of the game itself, to its color pallete and aesthetic.
And while hey there hasn't been one of those games in 20 years, it also feels like it fails to deliver on "Innovating" on that style.

What does it do differently?
-The controls are more in line with modern control schemes.
-It has a story.

"Now why are you so sour about it hellkrai?"
The Vehicles don't have any difference besides animations and some access to hidden areas.
The game is a tutorial from beginning to end.
Every step of the way it's introducing you to the mechanic which ends up becoming a problem when:
The game never challenges you on these mechanics.
Early on (Literally the first score attack section) you're told about a multiplier that triggers when you lean into corners on rails.
If you do this for every score attack fight (which is at the end of each chapter) you WILL win, you don't have to do anything else, just lean into corners and get the multiplier as high as possible.
The AI of enemies present ZERO challenge in this regard.
So what if you fail any of these challenges? Nothing, you get to retry instantly.

So with a game that is tutorial beginning to end where do you put the skills you found into play?
Well in a few Environmental puzzles or a couple of Late game challenges with secret characters.

This issue could be easily resolved by having a VS multiplayer mode, or even a hard mode that changes how scoring works.

So I marked the spoiler tag and I haven't spoiled anything yet? Well here is you last warning because I thought the story was really weak.

While playing it I found the story to be quite engaging and fun.
The scenes in RED's Dreams easily became one of my favorite sections.
(I jokingly would say while playing that the moments where the game isn't just Jet Set Radio are the best)

Well this all crumbles when you find out that the character you were trying to save is secretly "Evil the whole time".
I love the idea of a character that gets his head cut off and the head itself being a seperate character.
And said head ends up being an egomaniac, that's perfect symbolism, it works.
But the framing of him being self isolated because of his Ego and Privilege and it being the driving force of the entire plot really falls apart when the message from the BRC is "Just have friends and don't be a loner idiot".

Faux ends up being a weak character and a disappointing "Villain", which really kind of spoils a solid story.
Which was one of the only things the game had going for it other than being a modern Jet Set Radio Future Clone.

A rather short horror experience with a solid premise.
You have Five minutes to find 15 objects that have random locations all while spooky stuff happens.

Unfortunately all the scares are in set locations/times.
And it's only one location.
Some variety so that there would be more replay value would've added a lot to the experience.
However even as is it's enjoyable.

Now that people are celebrating a re-release without microtransactions:
I'm going to specifically say that my review and low score is not about the microtransactions I didn't care that they were there because the game is just bad. Full stop.

The item system is cool and a nice evolution on Diddy Kong racing's However because of all of the item boxes being entirely random there is no strategy to it whatsoever.
The track designs are so short and wide that Even if you take the tightest racing lines you would can still get passed by somebody who has better item generation.

On top of that it has a two-lap structure making it an extremely quick game to play through, However because of the aforementioned item system and the aforementioned short tracks there is no skill involved whatsoever.
Your best strategy in order to win the race is to hang back get good items and then immediately use them so that you just go through the laps as quick as possible without doing anything.

I was excited for this game on release but it is terrible on top of that It seems to be designed for mobile platforms aiming towards the Mario kart tour audience.
Which is something I detest because that's not a game you play at all.
Chocobo GP is a disappointment, a miserable game, and everything wrong about cart racers, with or without microtransactions.

The Secrets are the only thing that really makes this game worthwhile.
The awful physics makes the random platforming challenges such a chore, but the secrets are genuinely cool and are worth a peek.
Some of the puzzles are fun but most are seemingly indiscernible with little to no direction given.

2018

Evie is very cool, looking back at one of the developers first projects gives good insight into how they approached their storytelling and environment design.
While my score is low I find it quite interesting and if you're a fan of their work it's worthwhile to look where they came from to see how impressive their newer titles are.
The story itself hits on some great ideas and has some great expression to it, but it's presentation is lack luster, and again using it as a look back shows you how much skill they've developed.

Steam says I have 4,920 hours in this game