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(1 edit) (+2)

There's a lot going on with this.

I'll start by saying the presentation is generally quite good and there's a lot of polish in some areas, though some things are comparatively wonky (like the Transfer events in the driving section that can be skipped, allowing the player to drive infinitely off-screen with a control scheme that is extremely difficult to guide when you can't see what direction the actor is facing).

From a technical perspective there's obviously a very strong command of the engine. It's from a design perspective where I am less sold as there are some good decisions alongside some questionable ones.

Sound design in terms of SE, ME, etc. is solid. But the music choices I did not like whatsoever as they both sounded bad (to me) in a vacuum and also undercut the generally cute vibe of the graphics. Not sure if it's older RM compression or all the music tracks selected had an odd "tinny" sound to them, but it wasn't pleasant.

Visually it's kind of cozy, and Harold is the familiar lovable buffoon with a sort of innocence to him, but the narrator and Marsha have potty mouth issues. The narrative and stylistic clashes may be intentional, but I don't think they particularly land. That said, the art is pretty amazing.

I don't know if there's any way to stop this from happening in 2k2/3 but if you press right during actor battle command input it skips that actor's turn, which is unfortunate because I first thought that it might be some sort of free turn battle only to find it's just a waste of an action. Marsha's skill list is interesting but I'm not sold on her action economy - taking a lot of turns off to forage would make sense if her skills were a bit more impactful. But I guess she's also more flexible, so it's still reasonably balanced in that sense.

I won't harp too much on having random battles in the middle of a puzzle section as it's been covered in other discussions. Being able to run with (that I can tell) 100% success is a semi-mitigating factor, but it's not perfect. The sign puzzle itself is pretty clever and a good use of having a nonverbal visual media direct the player. Same with the wind puzzle and audio cues. The stone puzzle felt like an easier version of the sign puzzle, but it was "fine".

The mansion goes on for quite a while too long and combat doesn't feel great with the overzealous level scaling and slow trickle of new skills not quite offsetting an otherwise perfunctory battle system. Losing occasional turns to the battle command issue is also a drain on patience. Yeah, the entire second floor was unnecessary now that I'm through it. It's super repetitive and doesn't add much of anything. Fights aren't tricky, they're just kind of slow and drain resources. And the only things you get besides new skills are the ability to buy more granola potions - er, bars. It's kind of funny that the characters complained about that episode being a chore, because it sort of was. So I have to award a partial point back for the double meaning, intentional or not.

The final battle was pretty decent and encouraged using a variety of skills. Skills that kept the boss locked down or debuffed had priority, but there was a sense of strategy I didn't really get from most of the other combat. I think fewer, more interesting battles would have been preferred overall. On the plus side, the best fight in the game was the last one, so that ended on a higher note.

The sprite work in the end scene was fantastic.

I can't say the humor did much for me, like some things were amusing but I have a feeling I missed a lot of references and some of the stuff was just weird. Speaking of references, the skill names were a nice touch and many of them seemed on point in terms of what they did.

The best part to me was the story, and largely in the sense that it's an adventure of self-discovery. I liked Harold's personality and dialogue much moreso than Marsha or Alex's as hinted at above, but even with that I think the writing was generally solid for what you were trying to do. I guess I have a slight hang-up about whether or not the entire sequence was just imaginary or real and in the latter case whether Alex used some reality bending powers to wrangle someone into an adventure without their consent. Apart from that, I think it's a clever way to set up Harold's character arc, and I think will resonate with a lot of audiences that have potentially been forced to face uncomfortable questions about self-identity.