No spoilers
First, something very important to tell you: in act 2 and later, using the same element as the enemy will heal them, and act 3 gets extremely very emotionally heavy with no warning. Okay. Very good. Proceed.
I’ve spent enough time thinking about this game to give it a proper review. This will be mostly positive! I enjoyed my 13 hour experience with the game.
The text and dialogue is awesome. The party members are written well. Their attitudes are consistent, interesting, and funny. I captured many screenshots of funny moments to send to my friends online. The story is linear, with just a few minor text choices along the way, and this isn’t a bad thing. The text from the enemies is equally consistent and interesting, and the not-so-subtle links between the cultists and real-world right-wing shitheads made me smirk at least once.
The other main part of the game is the combat, and this will definitely be polarising, as you’ll see from the other comments here (which do contain spoilers, though), but my experience with it was also extremely positive. When I first saw the combat I was extremely overwhelmed by the interface (perhaps because I hadn’t before played an RPG with multiple commandable allies in fights, but I think it was overwhelming in general). The tutorial freezing time was very much appreciated, but it was still a lot to deal with in the first part of act 1. By the time of the act 1 boss it didn’t feel as overwhelming.
[just after finishing act 1]
cadence: by the way I’m trying the lesbian car game and the combat is actually insane
cadence: it seems complex but I don’t know if it’s actually deep
k: i looked at the video and i could barely process the UI
m: watching okay this is scary
cadence: doing shit is complex, but I don’t know if it’s actually deep, if that makes any sense?
cadence: I’ll let you know how it goes, looks like I’m real early into it
At the start of act 2 after the initial shock had worn off I was doubting whether the combat would be deep enough to captivate me through to the end of the rest of the game. By the end of act 2 I was completely sold, and loving every second of it. The elements in act 2, and the ability variety in act 4 (as well as mostly dropping the elements at that point) were much more than I had hoped for.
My favourite part of the combat, by far, was how much the party members actually managed to fill their roles, which was hard to feel at first, but if one of them is defeated, you really feel their loss. If Sam [the healer] is defeated, the rest aren’t long for this world. If Valentin [tank] is down, their taunt ability ends, and the enemies start attacking the rest of you at a rate that’s too high for Sam to easily keep up with. This really makes you feel the dynamics and coherence of the party and this blew me away when it made me notice that DPS really isn’t everything, and keeping the party members active is. I LOVE THIS. GOOD JOB, CHRISTINE. THIS WAS AWESOME. I AM IMPRESSED.
[right at the end of act 2]
cadence: okay, the combat in get in the car loser is really good. I’m sold.
The music is also incredible and I am going to buy it. I took most optional battles and listened to Spirit of the Times for several hours in all. I am not even slightly tired of it. It did not start to become grating. I love this song.
I liked the diner sections. They’re just, nice, yknow?
So, now for the bad.
I found the pixelated text font a little hard to read at times, especially the “text log”. I reckon the text log could benefit from an opaque background, a smaller font, and a better layout. (A small portrait of the person’s face next to their text could be nice!)
There’s not that much enemy variety.
I’m really disappointed with the gameplay of the beach DLC. Like, the premise of the entire thing is that sword lady is really annoying and gives you really annoying challenges over and over. Everyone comments about how annoyed they are at the annoying challenges, which are annoying to play, on purpose.
Christine, here is some feedback directly for you: If a section is annoying and unfun, you can talk all day about how annoying it is, but it’s still annoying and unfun to play. You deliberately designed it this way, as evidenced by the dialogue. In the next 2 DLC chapters, please don’t make the game unfun on purpose, okay? You can do some really cool stuff, like the entire main game!
The DLC chapter took me 40 minutes to complete, and I was smiling until I reached the first of sword lady’s challenges.
The maze was not interesting. The “talk to everybody until you get keys” thing was not interesting. The random encounters section sucked. I didn’t mind the road at all because I knew when the next combat would be - adding random encounters to that area made things so much worse. Would it have killed you to add groups of enemies to the world, and to trigger combat when you step next to them, and to make them go away once you’ve defeated them? Seriously, I loved the road fights, and I hated the random encounters. Please don’t do random encounters again.
The final fight with the thief was fine. I don’t understand what causes them to heal, which was a little frustrating, but I got there in the end through the power of banishing her partner and then pressing the attack buttons. Thank you, Zantetsuken.
Christa once again bowls a perfect 300 on the soundtrack, thankfully; and hiring an outfit designer here was absolutely worth it.
CONCLUSION:
The good things about this game GREATLY outweigh the bad. The bad things I mentioned are either nitpicks or DLC-only issues.
- Should you play this for free? Yes!
- Is it good enough that you should give the authors $10 (and unlock the DLC?) Yes!
- Is it worth playing the DLC that you just paid for? Not unless you REALLY like the beach outfits, or want a sword that can send enemies to the shadow realm.
Hope this was insightful to some of you, and I’ll return with a smile when the (spirit of the) time comes to get my DLC 2 travel stamp. Peace! <3