izigame.me

5/10 - quit ~80-85% through the game
Have you ever had one of those moments in a game that just makes you go... "fuck this" and quit on the spot?
That pretty much sums up my experience here. First off, let me give credit where it's due: you can see a lot of heart went into this title. There’s clear passion on display, and it genuinely shows in certain aspects—particularly in the level of thought and effort put into building the world. While I didn’t find the setting itself super compelling, it worked as a serviceable backdrop. The art and art style are solid—definitely above average, with some interesting character designs and scenic vistas that can be quite striking. The music, meanwhile, is perfectly fine: nothing that’ll stick in your head for days, but never obnoxious either. The writing, I’d argue, goes a step beyond the usual generic script, imbuing most characters with tangible depth. Brynn, the lead character, is especially likable. Voice acting, on the whole, is top-notch—some performances obviously outshine others, but together they make for a compelling vocal package.
The story, unfortunately, never grabbed me. I wouldn’t call it “objectively bad,” but it just failed to hook my interest. I was doing every side quest yet felt little urge to dig deeper into the lore. I also never skipped dialogue, but I still found my attention drifting during lengthy expository scenes. The narrative tries to cram in quite a bit of complexity, so I often felt confused about my objectives. There’s rarely any sense of urgency, and sometimes the game seems to lean into a cozy “town sim” vibe that clashes with both the broader narrative and the gameplay loop. For a title that isn’t really an RPG (your dialogue choices don’t appear to matter in any tangible way), there’s a staggering amount of back-and-forth conversation. It got to the point where I would sometimes spend an hour just traveling from place to place, exhausting dialogue options, and feeling a bit over it.
Then there's the gameplay, which was largely a miss for me. The standard moment-to-moment combat—non-boss encounters—is pretty underwhelming. You fight maybe two or three enemy types, with minor changes to their elemental powers or weapons, over and over again. They all have way too much health, so battles drag on without meaningful reward. Eventually, I started sprinting past most enemies unless a quest item or chest forced me to engage, which was itself frustrating because you can’t interact with items when enemies are around—an ill-conceived decision that made me roll my eyes more than once. The inventory limits felt more like a nuisance than an actual challenge. On top of that, movement and physics often felt janky, especially when scaling large bosses and trying to maneuver around limbs. The inputs just never quite matched what I wanted my character to do, which got aggravating fast.
Those big boss fights, however, are the high point of the gameplay. It’s genuinely satisfying to figure out a boss’s weak spots and break them down, especially on your first encounter with each giant foe. But exploration outside of those fights felt unrewarding. Aside from fetching some better crafting materials (which didn’t seem to noticeably boost my character’s power), I rarely found anything that made the detour worthwhile. The world can be beautiful, but beyond the visuals, I rarely felt compelled to wander off the beaten path.
All of this led up to the boss fight against the Herald, which ended my playthrough in a blaze of frustration. I can honestly say it was one of the worst boss battles I’ve ever experienced. It exemplifies the game’s roughest edges and intensifies them. It wasn’t about raw difficulty—I could handle that. The problem was that I knew exactly what I needed to do, but the controls were too imprecise to let me pull it off. Climbing and maneuvering around a massive enemy’s limbs was so awkward, I ended up giving up on climbing entirely. Instead, I chipped away at the Herald’s breakable parts slowly with a spell for what felt like an eternity—over 45 minutes in total. It was then that I realized I just didn’t care what happened next. If I’d lost that fight, I would have quit without regret. When I did finally beat the Herald, it felt like a final boss encounter, yet I learned there was another entire act still to go. That was the moment I thought, “Nope, I’m done.” The payoff wasn’t worth the effort, especially when the game’s supposedly big, epic showdown turned out to be an infuriating slog.
In the end, I walked away disappointed. My expectations weren’t sky-high, but I was hopeful for an under-the-radar gem. Instead, it’s a fairly mediocre third-person action title—albeit one with some lovely art and decent world design—held back by clunky gameplay and a narrative that never truly ups the stakes (and often drags). I still see potential in this developer, because you can tell they cared about what they were making. Maybe with more time in the oven, the good ideas could have flourished into something greater. I do hope the game finds its audience, because you can’t deny the passion that went into it—but personally, I’ve had enough.