Every year I find your games to have beautiful art with a cool looking old school interface, and while I usually manage to get at least decently far in the games, this year I feel like I stumbled around and barely scratched the surface.
I definitely got that death in the first section is expected, but good god the rest of the game is brutal. My attacks seem to rarely hit and when they do don't do that much damage. I'm getting constantly surrounded by enemies, and even when I stun groups of enemies they still follow me around and damage me.
And I really love the verticality and variety switching from the ground to sewers and climbing on the rooftops. But I cannot keep track of where I am so I'm constantly getting lost, and I somehow seem to always drop off the rooftops to the same section I was just in. I know you mentioned in another comment there's a map available as a pickup, but I would personally be unable to find it even if you told me exactly where it is. And because I spend so long wandering, around more enemies hone in on me and I die. And since there's no way to bring back fallen party members it just got to a point where I felt like trying to progress was pointless. Even with the save system (which I really appreciate this game having) I just had to tap out.
But back to the positives, again the artwork is gorgeous! The backgrounds are all varied and very atmospheric, the characters designs are fun and feel old cartoons, and I really love the little details like being able to see in through windows when close up!
The music and sound effects were also solid for this type of game. Only exception maybe the walking sound effect, I thought it was a little too high pitched and loud, but it does at least sound authentic to the era.
Another very well made dungeon crawler, but the combination of gameplay factors just made this not a game for me I'm afraid. Good work!