Amazing art. Great music. Tight gameplay. Blends bullet hell and Metroidvania flawlessly.

It's quite hard, and the final boss was just a bit too much for me. But I really liked getting better at the bosses in this game.

The non-boss areas design is a lot less interesting, but this game gets massive points for everything else.

What I played

I played all 26 chapters of the game, a total of 95 hours of play time. Chapters 1-23 I completed on Hard/Classic (permadeath). Chapters 24-26 I completed on Normal/Classic. I completed a few paralogue missions and a couple skirmishes.

Summary

If you're dying for tactical combat, this could be your fix. There's a ton of video game to play, and it certainly isn't easy on Hard/Classic. Beware that it's very cheesy and difficult to actually get lots of the support conversations. Late game levels abuse frustrating game mechanics to simulate difficulty by wearing the player down mentally.

Pros

The weapon triangle is back!

Lots of great music

Characters are rendered extremely well (very nice anime style)

Hard/Classic provided an engaging tactics experience on most maps

Character support dialogues were generally interesting


Cons

Character designs are almost all completely over the top and awful

Level scaling for skirmishes is completely busted, making it impossible to level up weaker units or work on supports if you play on permdeath (unless you want your units to die)

It's just too long. 26 chapters + 15 paralogues.

The same 4-5 villains are reused for half the game, and they constantly get away from you without dying

The beginning half of the game is just a glorified trek around the world to collect a bunch of characters and is VERY anime bullshit

The maps are simply too big. The latter half of the game frequently features 25x30 combat maps with 12-14 allies, up to 5 boss units, and frequently infinite enemy reinforcements.

The story is just a bad shonen battle anime. The writing of the main story scenes is initially just super corny, and then eventually it just gets melodramatic. I hope you like death monologues, multiple deus ex machina moments, constant talk of "dragons" despite almost no dragon ever showing their dragon form, weird creepy worship of your character as a god, recurring villains who constantly "get away" rather than dying, and a lot a lot of obsession with family relationships

The Somniel is a massive time waster, like Garreg Mach in 3 Houses. it was not uncommon for me to spend 2 hours between missions early on, before i started ignoring most of it.

Revive Stones. these are abused to make bosses unreasonably tanky. bosses often have 2 revive stones, meaning they have 3 total health bars. what's worse is that overflow damage doesn't carry over, so you have to micro manage who hits in what order to do optimized damage. i feel like the idea here was that on normal this encourages you to do a very anime bullshit thing of surrounding a boss with all your favorite units and making sure each gets a turn stabbing, but on Hard this often meant i needed multiple turns of 4+ attacks to kill a boss, which really got absurd when combined with infinite reinforcements on a lot of maps. this led to more silly AI abuse where you skirt the boss's engagement range by one square and pick off their support units with ranged attacks, a strategy i don't always find super engaging. tho sometimes the AI just gets tired of your shit and comes after you anyway. it was hard to find a single answer for how bosses work here.

Build crafting. omg this game is over the top. you have like 30+ characters and 12 emblems each of which can be paired with any unit and you can teach units skills from any of them. there are so many currencies to manage in this game. you can also upgrade and engrave weapons. you can switch classes and promote units. any unit can switch to any class in the game via weapon training via emblem training. it's dizzying tbh. the few times i looked up guides on the later levels, i was always shocked to see who had what units configured how, and like, they often seemed way stronger than i thought was possible. i didnt understand how a few of these game systems worked for way too long, so i may have been spending my resources poorly. but it's hard to grind to get more resources in this game due to skirmish level scaling.

Cute art, fun tunes, but frustrating gameplay. Someone mashed up an old school adventure game with a platformer/lite Metroidvania game.


The combat is janky and annoying, though easy. The game gives you checkpoints in every room, but does not restore health if you die.

The real problem is that you have to collect items and combine them and constantly backtrack. It's exhausting and tedious. I looked up a guide for a bit but eventually got bored.

Disappointing. Probably the clunkiest and least fun Metroidvania I've played.

I backed this on Kickstarter because I love Metroidvanias, visual novels, and trashy reality TV.

Sadly, this seems to be a case where the team was probably spread too thin, and the overall design suffers.

The story is really cringey and is too busy trying to be ironic and meta. The game is consistently so dark you can't see your character or the enemies. There's a complete lack of movement abilities which makes combat very frustrating. The camera is jumpy. The attack animations feel bad.

I only beat the first chapter (66 minutes) because I was in shock. I really wish this game was better.

I really wanted to love this game. I first played a demo at Portland Retro Gaming Expo a few years back. It's by a local studio whose past work I enjoy. But this didn't do it for me.

I have to start with: OMG the pixel art is incredible, the art direction and execution is beyond gorgeous, this is one of my favorite looking games on Switch.

Unfortunately, the gameplay and pacing were too much for me.

The game takes what feels like an eternity to get going. I wonder if they were worried people wouldn't understand the game. Because they could've made the game easier to understand by putting more information in the menus. Instead, you're forced to remember what NPCs say, and go back to your house to check a bulletin board in order to remember what quests you have. Then you have to cross-reference those quests with a map, which doesn't mark the locations. So you have to read all the location names on hover to figure out where to go.

To be fair, I think these might have been optional quests? I'm still not 100% sure what the point of those are.

The main story quests were kinda similar, but at least were listed in the menu screen.

The combat is bewilderingly like Dark Souls. I expected "Harvest Moon meets Zelda" but it's more like a clunkier 2D Dark Souls. Damn near every action consumes gobs of stamina. You can run, roll, swing your sword, and block. It all feels strangely slow and lumbering for a little 2D grape. Also, if you die (surprisingly easy since you have little HP, and your potions take time to drink), you get sent back home and lose a percentage of your money, and the day advances to the next one. To make matters worse, sleeping does not refill your potions (did I mention that potions work basically exactly like estus flasks in Dark Souls? Slow and lumbering, and don't heal much).

I did the first dungeon, which is apparently randomized. It was literally completely linear, and I did it 3 times before I beat the boss. The puzzles were... fine. I can't help but wonder why they thought a game that looks like Harvest Moon + Zelda should play like Dark Souls meets roguelite.

Also, the daily bonus quests are randomized, but from a small pool. I quickly found myself doing the same bonus quests multiple times, and still not being sure what the point of doing them was besides a bit of money I didn't have much use for.

I made it to the 2nd town, which was a cute beach area. The level up system is unique, but not especially balanced. There were very obvious best picks. I'll give them credit that re-spec'ing is 100% free, unlike most games.

Ultimately, the NPCs had pages of dialog I wasn't in the mood for, and the gameplay loop was slow and uninteresting to me.

I really wanted to like this game! At least the frog and the grape are cute.

i finally beat doom (2016)! i got the game when it came out, and upgraded to a 1440p 144hz monitor. it was the first game i'd seen above 60hz, and i was enamored when i saw it at my friend's house.

idk exactly why it took me so long to finish this game. i put it down twice, despite never feeling burnt out or annoyed with it. other games just kept getting in the way.

glad that i listened to my friend and picked the game back up. it's over the top and great.

while the entire game didn't live up the absurd excitement i got from the first couple missions, it was still very fun. i even liked the ending lol.

loses half a star for the difficult map system and the clunky and unnecessary weapon upgrade mechanics.

I love the vibe of this game. Great art direction, wild music, bizarre and absurd levels.

My main gripes are the automatic camera angle is way too low for platforming (and manual is tedious), and the controls feel a bit floaty. I found myself struggling to land/walk exactly where I meant.

This game is short and sweet. At its price point, there's no reason not to pick it up for a couple hours of fun.

Tough little game. Extremely small sprites, short attack range, damage flicker, screen shake, and fast attack speed of the main character make this game feel inscrutable.

Enemies deal a lot of damage. I recommend playing on easy mode.

Level design feels kinda troll-y. Expect lots of one hit kills via spikes and pits, plus mimics and false floors.

I think I could like this if I was in the right mood, but I'm definitely not.

I preferred Momodora 2 over this game, but Reverie Under the Moonlight is the clear winner of the series.

If you're looking for more after that, play Moonlit Farewell. It's also very good.

A gorgeous mess of high production value game with buggy quests and boring combat

## Combat

I hope you like D&D 5th edition combat! Because there's a shitload of it. And unlike a tabletop game session, you have to control four entire characters. The game is fully turn based like D&D, and by Act 3 the game compensates for your power levels by throwing massive amounts of minions at you.

Take a wizard. I didn't like Gale and I didn't keep him around most of the time because of that. But damn, wizards are good. Sleep, Blind, Hold Person, Tasha's Hideous Laughter, and the completely OP Otto's Irresistible Dance are complete game changers in combat.

I played the entire game on easy, but there were still quite a few fights in late Act 2 and most of Act 3 that had many characters near death. I've played D&D many times and the combat is absolutely the worst part of it to me, so I picked up this game probably against my better judgment because I was looking to fill that Bioware-shaped hole in my heart.

## Companions

There's decent selection of them (but no monk? and nobody who's a "small" race? pft). I romanced Shadowheart because she's a goth girl after my own heart. Her arc was decently interesting though not really surprising. I ditched Lae'zel once I got Karlach, but once I did the Githyanki Creche I realized that Lae'zel is way more involved in the game story than Karlach, and I swapped them back. Wyll is dreadfully boring to me.

## Immersion

Virtually everything is voice acted and mo-capped, and the graphics are beautiful. This game is a treat to look at. The music rarely blew me away, but it enhanced the experience. The game maybe tries a little too hard to be a sandbox in an "organic" way. I was constantly running into missions where any other game would just have you click a dialogue option to unlock a door, but in this game you have to right click the door and select lockpick. Same sort of thing with getting a captive out of chains, or rescuing someone who's on the ground. Rather than going with reducing friction, the game makes you think in the sandbox context a lot more than I personally care for.

In Act 1 it felt like the game had so much promise, and Act 2 almost kept it going, but Act 3 it felt like everything about the encounter design, combat system, quest log, map, the whole game felt like it was buckling under the weight of what they were trying to do. I went from excitedly launching the game every night to "alright, let's wrap this shit up", sadly.

Also, the game is constantly throwing extremely vague warnings about "better finish up what you were doing" when you go to new areas, with no detail about what will/won't be available after you go there. Be warned that Act 3 completely cuts of all areas from Act 1 and Act 2, so you need to finish up whatever you want there before leaving.

## Story

The main story was fine. That being said, a lot of really critical information is stuck in side quests you could easily skip. The ending won't blow you away, and the final fight is insufferable.

## The Hells

Make sure you do the quest line that has you go to the hells, but be sure to keep a save before you go. A poor party configuration won't succeed even on easy there. I was lucky in that I had a scroll in my back pocket that trivialized the fight. Everything about that mission blew my mind, especially the song in the boss room. "Here come the claws" is a phrase that's been living in my head ever since. Just incredible.

## Conclusion

This game started off really strong, but Act 3 soured me on the game. I played for about 110 hours and did most side quests in the game. This was probably a mistake. I definitely had more than my fill of this game and got sick of it by the end. I certainly had a lot of fun, but the game's combat encouter design was soul crushing to me, and numerous quest bugs almost ruined my experience throughout the game. Shout out to everyone posting workarounds on Reddit.