finally got around to beat this one. for compliments, the atmosphere and world building are probably this game's best qualities. the first two games had this nice grunge to them that the future games slowly drifted away from, which isn't terrible, but it's sad to see. the fact that this game manages to introduce so many factions and cities that don't feel overabundant is honestly crazy for how it affects the later games.
In terms of actual gameplay, i'm atleast glad RGG managed to only go up from this. the lock on mechanics are downright awful for the most part. it's aggravating to hit anyone if they move to the side or god forbid dash behind you. worst part is, your moveset is good enough that a good lock on system would've made the game a hundred times better.
this game is probably a 5/10, but the impact this game had is enough to at least warrant a higher score. i'd love to retry the game if it had a new game plus. for what it's worth, the game makes a pretty good impression, but i'd recommend kiwami over this for anyone trying to get into the series.

Stardew Valley meets Spirited Away. A few neat ideas with some interesting gameplay with the bathhouse but somewhat lacking NPCs. Admittedly I didn't delve very deep into this game but other than the dog I didn't really care for any of the NPCs, unlike something like Stardew Valley which this game clearly took inspiration from.

I'm not sure how to describe it but something about the movement controls feels wrong too. It feels like when you stick in a basic move script when prototyping a game, but then in this case just left it at that.
I never expected I'd ever say this, but I wish the NPCs walked slower when you were following them. They move at exactly the same speed as you sprinting, which means its really difficult to keep up with them.
I'll never complain about Bethesda NPCs walking too slow again.

I do wish I could love this game because I think it definitely has potential, but in its current state I'm not going to continue playing.

Pretty fun for a fanfic sequel to the bible!

Not having any real world language is definitely a plus for a language puzzle game, and made me feel like a more active participant than Heaven's Vault. The multiple languages were also a big plus; the best puzzles are definitely when you have to translate from one to another, and thus need to remember each language's syntax, and ways of describing the same thing.

But also, the game undermines itself by pulling its punches. Vocab is validated too often, and the picture clues are too obvious. Often times I was able to guess just because I had so few available words. And there were several instances where the real definitions were wildly different from my placeholder definitions. Hard not to compare it unfavorably to the much stricter way Obra Dinn handled the issue. All that is ultimately forgivable, but I won't forgive the stealth sections. Totally unnecessary and extremely boring!

I'd like to see more emphasis on language features. One of the best moments I had was realizing that drawing a box around a noun meant a place that holds that thing, e.g. "dead" with a box around it means "cemetery". I ended up noticing a lot of great touches like that, but never needed to again.

Still, a great weekend game