izigame.me

The moment I saw this game’s art, gameplay, and music I knew I was down.
Being a big fan of Suda51 and seeing its influence def got me as well

8/10 on the art direction. Beautifully painted portraits throughout the whole game, I adored them. I can't count how many times I'd pause and stare at all of portraits and illustrations on the walls. I draw myself, so really loved appreciated all the work. I also enjoyed the older PlayStation style during gameplay, they worked for most scenes, but some character designs were a little lacking at times. I just felt that in comparison to the immaculate portraits and paintings I’d see of them, I thought some of the character was lost on the in-game models. This problem did not apply to the main cast, but on some of the side characters and some of the main enemies. Still very much loved the visual direction of this whole project.

9/10 music all the way through. I immediately recognized the artists from my play through of NMH3 and I was so excited to hear them again in this game. The other atmospheric songs were great too. And I really enjoyed the sound design, again reminding me a little of killer 7 sometimes. I will listen to this whole soundtrack separately in my free time.

Gameplay: speaking of killer 7 this is where I see the influence shine the brightest. Since I had played K7 before I immediately was used to the exploration and combat loop of this game. In some ways I actually think it improved on the combat, by shortening your scan range while adding a stun to it. Which encourages risking the enemy’s to come closer and keeping the every interaction tight. It makes you feel less guilty for missing in a high pressure scenario while making you feel skillful when you succeed in perfect combo’in the enemy.
The only downside I’d say is that after the 1st level the enemies become very manageable after you apply upgrades, and I didn’t feel any real fear or tension in a fight until maybe the last level (knowing this I avoided upgrading until the last level because I liked the difficulty). I just wished the difficulty ramped up some more with some more aggressive enemies through out the game; not more enemies in general though. But again I do have experience with the gameplay loop so it maybe my bias there. I just wanted to be more tense while exploring.
There were also some small quests you could do in the level that encouraged exploration which was fine UNTIL…

The pickle incident

It genuinely hurt to be punished as a new player immediately out the gate and only 4 hours later find out you made a mistake at the beginning, throwing the item away to the wrong quest, when you could literally never know what or where you’d actually need that item until halfway through the game. With no way of finding a replacement, and therefore having no way of completing that side quest.

Small gripe but it sucked. Everything else was fine. The only other complaint I could think of is wishing there was more side quests and more game to play. But that’s not really a complaint.

The story: it was very interesting, with its scale I can tell the choices really matter in which of the endings you get. I’ve only played through once so far, but I really appreciated the game catering to my decision making style. I feel in most multi ending games, I’m punished for not taking extremes and giving 100% loyalty to the roots. I liked the feeling of nuance it was giving me on my decisions (that being with Darrel and the Dream eater) with my opinion switching halfway through my play through. This worrying me that I might get the “half-assed” ending. But no, I felt I was allowed to change my position on characters as I interacted with them more which felt more natural to me myself being the character within the story making these choices. So with that I actually did think long and hard about each decision and why I was helping or harming them.
With that being said since I only completed one of the endings I can’t really pin down what the overall message of this story would be, but I think I was able to pick up the general theme about love. Or maybe I got something I agreed with because I made and heard the dialogue I agreed with. Im not sure there so I won’t speak on it for now.

Overall Fun game, loved the style of the whole thing, glad I was able to support a smaller team of dev’s and artists. Thank you for creating this.