So I should probably start this off by saying that uhhh this game did not play particularly nice with my Switch for whatever reason. Every time I put it into sleep mode and then pulled back out, it had to find the controllers again and then sometimes it would freeze instead of just delaying getting the game going again? I genuinely don’t know if this is a weird problem that literally only happened to me or what since I haven’t seen anyone else talk about it, but it did mean I had to re-fight bosses every once in a while and that was pretty unpleasant!
That particular issue aside, I generally had a pretty good time with this game, even if I do agree with a lot of the common criticisms. While I thought all the characters were generally pretty fun, I do wish they all had more space to breathe. I think Mariette and Perty had the strongest actual arcs, and I do have to complement the writers on making teen relationship drama compelling without sending me back into my own embarrassing high school memories, but Gilda especially kind of felt like her character arc stopped the second she joined the party. Which was a shame, because I enjoyed her vibes a lot.
I didn’t manage to do all that much of the side content, so I don’t know if there was some stuck behind that… the stuff I did manage to find was just loot related, which wasn’t super exciting. I would’ve been happier with character related stuff honestly.
The story itself wasn’t super original, but I don’t think it really needed to be. It was a fun queer magic school romp with the opposite of any Baggage that some other magic school stories might have, and I will admit it did throw some surprising curve balls! And the ending and epilogue did Kinda get me, not gonna lie. Also a lot of the enemy designs were colorful and fun, and the music was pretty excellent. I also liked the world itself! While I do think the lore could take precedence over the characters it was at least neat lore.
I do have mixed feelings on the gameplay. While I think it was conceptually very neat and creative and made me really look forward to learning new moves to see how they would work, I feel like the difficulty curve was just a little too sharp at a certain point, particularly given the weird sleep mode glitches I had. Some timed hit tells from the enemies could be just a little obtuse, with one example that nearly made me quit being an enemy with an animation I could not figure out the timing for that did massive damage and inflicted poison if you got anything less than perfect timing. And then it was brought back for the final boss fight as an add… maybe I should have turned on story mode, except I forgot I could. Oh well. I also wasn’t sure if increasing speed actually did anything after a certain point, since it didn’t actually seem to make my characters’ turns come around more quickly. The game positively drowns you in stat increasing and decreasing items, but I’m not sure how actually useful the speed related ones are because of that.
Anyway, it’s definitely worth a shot! Like I said, I don’t know how much my weird problems were specific to me or not, so I don’t know if I can actually say you should get it on a different platform than the Switch, but if possible you should check it out. It’s very much worth the time. I’d definitely love to see a spiritual successor or follow up sometime that irons out the kinks a little.
That particular issue aside, I generally had a pretty good time with this game, even if I do agree with a lot of the common criticisms. While I thought all the characters were generally pretty fun, I do wish they all had more space to breathe. I think Mariette and Perty had the strongest actual arcs, and I do have to complement the writers on making teen relationship drama compelling without sending me back into my own embarrassing high school memories, but Gilda especially kind of felt like her character arc stopped the second she joined the party. Which was a shame, because I enjoyed her vibes a lot.
I didn’t manage to do all that much of the side content, so I don’t know if there was some stuck behind that… the stuff I did manage to find was just loot related, which wasn’t super exciting. I would’ve been happier with character related stuff honestly.
The story itself wasn’t super original, but I don’t think it really needed to be. It was a fun queer magic school romp with the opposite of any Baggage that some other magic school stories might have, and I will admit it did throw some surprising curve balls! And the ending and epilogue did Kinda get me, not gonna lie. Also a lot of the enemy designs were colorful and fun, and the music was pretty excellent. I also liked the world itself! While I do think the lore could take precedence over the characters it was at least neat lore.
I do have mixed feelings on the gameplay. While I think it was conceptually very neat and creative and made me really look forward to learning new moves to see how they would work, I feel like the difficulty curve was just a little too sharp at a certain point, particularly given the weird sleep mode glitches I had. Some timed hit tells from the enemies could be just a little obtuse, with one example that nearly made me quit being an enemy with an animation I could not figure out the timing for that did massive damage and inflicted poison if you got anything less than perfect timing. And then it was brought back for the final boss fight as an add… maybe I should have turned on story mode, except I forgot I could. Oh well. I also wasn’t sure if increasing speed actually did anything after a certain point, since it didn’t actually seem to make my characters’ turns come around more quickly. The game positively drowns you in stat increasing and decreasing items, but I’m not sure how actually useful the speed related ones are because of that.
Anyway, it’s definitely worth a shot! Like I said, I don’t know how much my weird problems were specific to me or not, so I don’t know if I can actually say you should get it on a different platform than the Switch, but if possible you should check it out. It’s very much worth the time. I’d definitely love to see a spiritual successor or follow up sometime that irons out the kinks a little.