I was pretty excited for this one- Stardust Crusaders is one of my favourites to come out of MGGJ and Elemental Guardians was pretty good too. In some ways, it was exactly what I expected, in other ways it broke from those expectations, in some good ways and some bad ways.
The RTP graphics, with a few edits by the looks of it, are what they are. They're used well here, with a good variety of characters and environments, and the game as a whole is mostly visually pleasing and visually consistent.
The full screen effects (haze and brightness) were used well in some places (near water, underground) but felt overused since almost every screen seemed to have them, sometimes for no clear reason.
The path I took was Blind Man's Bluff. Having three games in one is kind of a neat idea, but I honestly feel it would have been better to focus on one. If I have time, I might go back and play the other paths. But I'm not sure if I want to, for reasons I'll get into in a bit.
There really should have been a save point before choosing the path. You can't back out at that point, meaning if you if you want to choose a different path you have to start the game over from the beginning again. In fact, I don't think the game has any autosaves at all, and that's something that's sorely missing.
There's a ton of interactivity in this game, with some genuinely funny interactions. However, the flipside of that is that the things you actually need to interact with get lost in the noise. Sometimes characters will give you hints, but they're often inadequate, and at least one seemed to only be given when you need it, which makes them a lot less useful since I have to think to go talk to an NPC I've already talked to before.
The fetch quest for getting the ingredients to the pie in particular really needs to be signposted better; it was tedious and frustrating and generally un-fun. I also got stuck in the caves for a while because I didn't realize the pools acted as teleporters (which might have been exacerbated by a glitch where one square of the first pool can't be interacted with).
The large map is another two-edged sword. It gives lots of space for exploration, but also drags things out with lots of walking. Having to go back and forth between the town and the western woods repeatedly was infuriating.
I expected a certain brand of humour from Nova Kane, and it was delivered in spades. However, the story in general was a bit of a mixed bag. It started off pretty strong, with a story that was a bit generic but carried well by the characters and dialogue, but started to feel pretty generic by the middle. The ending felt incredibly rushed, with Hoder's sight being restored for some reason I don't understand and then everyone forgave each other. That the constant backtracking and fetch quests really killed the pacing didn't help the story, either.
I don't know if the other paths are better. I didn't play them.
There was no combat, at least on the path I took. While I'm happy I didn't have to slog through random encounters, I feel a fight or two would have been nice to shake things up a bit.
I mentioned that I wish the game had autosaves, and that's mostly because it was really buggy for me. The game locked up several times- it seemed to be responding to input but the screen wasn't changing, like the graphics had stopped working. This was on the desktop build. I had to replay significant portions of the game because of this.
I really wanted to like this one, but it's kind of a swing and a miss. There's lots of great humour, some neat ideas, and lots of potential in the story. I think the game is really way longer than it should be, though, and it drags on in a way that feels like it doesn't respect my time. I think it would work better if it was paced faster, signposted better, and polished up a bit, even if that meant less content in total. I'd be a lot more inclined to run through all three stories, too, if they were shorter.