I just finished the main questline (I believe - there's so much content!) and I absolutely love it!  It's so much fun seeing these Antiford characters come to life!  Longtime fan of these guys but all their written content, however wonderful on the Antiford website, can get confusing as far as where things are, how races appear, etc.  I'm more of a visual learner but I didn't want to keep their maps out for reference whenever I'm trying to read their stories!  Not only did I feel immersed and like I was part of their adventures, I was able to understand a lot of what my visual brain couldn't connect with just words alone, and it really brought things to life.

It's easy to think of a great game having some initial heroic protagonist that can magically do anything and everything so long as you know where to direct them as the player.  But what I love about this is that, as the main protagonist in the game, you are brought into the Antiford world as a humble zoo worker.  I, driven by my love of animals, was excited by this prospect.  But it's so much more than the drive to catch them all - you find yourself smack dab in the middle of investigations, thug confrontations in turn-based combat, and shady government workings.  The adventure finds you, and you're along for the ride!  With the variety of companions you can team up with, it also allows you to broaden your play style especially in combat.

I was able to recently download the espresso update and it really helped with the quest I was on.  There are only a couple of critiques I can give but, seeing as a HUGE amount of work, detail, and love that has been put into every nook and cranny, I see them as very minute.  Some spelling in the dialogue is off in certain places, and I remember being stuck and having to restart the game right around the eavesdropping bit when you first team up with Phinneus but I did learn that in my case it froze up if you didn't move with them right away (this may have been fixed already as I can't recall the timeline of events in the game exactly, or perhaps it was a processing issue with my PC) and from there for me it was an easy fix.  Other than that, I think I only noticed some minor audio inconsistencies in certain parts of the game, but it didn't bother me.  I was too busy being off on a grand adventure! (I will say as an animal lover I would love the opportunity to pet the animals - but that's just a preference!)

Nostalgia hits hard with this game for me in addition to it being based on the stories and characters created by the folks at Citizens of Antiford.  To me, this game is a combination between Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and Stardew Valley.  Just a gathering of a bunch of timeless, classic game mechanics that never seem to get old.  Did I escape/skip a LOT of encounters, sighing impatiently as I tried to bring a new creature to the zoo?  Of course I did!  But the way I see it, especially if you're a FF fan, that's part of the experience - no?

All in all I am fangirling over this video game.  The characters, the details, the plot, the intrigue, the animals!  Fantastic job - and I still have some tasks to do in-game!