izigame.me

i came into this game on a recommendation
at first the "budget" realy shows, gotta be real: my initial impressions weren't great.
the lore and athmosphere just "felt" copied, the combat (design) kinda ripped from Soulhackers/Persona (minus the Pokemon elements).
but boy was i wrong.
yes: it's kinda sci-fic-cyberpunk mixed with "magic" and fantasy. after playing a lot the game reminds me most of Shadowrun (in all the best ways) when it comes to the lore and world.
there's old wars, there's lots of technobabble, there's Shamans and whatnot. it's great, it just takes a while to build up.
you can also clearly see the devs love for the cyberpunk genre (think Bladerunner), the easter eggs alone are pretty telling.
backround art, character design, world design and even sudo-philosophical intermezzos, with their own audiotracks and ambience paint a very pretty picture after a while.
i realy do hope they are working on a sequel, cause this is an IP i want to see continue.
then there's the core gameplay. again it doesn't start out great.
then you realize that there's basicaly a turnbased combat Diablo clone "under the hood". randomized dungeons to explore, with randomized loot. it's a whole side-system that realy grew on my.
which is also supported by a very robust rpg-system-core.
you get talent trees (classical leveling up); which are not just % increased, but also modifactions to existing skills (like added effects, reduced cd, etc.) for every character.
you get a an equipment (weapon) system that works great with the dungeon-delving: weapons come in different rarities, which offer a different amount of possible affixes and not just increased damage/def. early on this won't matter much, but for later content you realy feel like you can build your team.
then there's the amazing "perk" system ontop. you get kinda a sphere-board where board pieces are either quest rewards or found in dungeons (hunting for em also in the randomized loot dungeons is quite enjoyable).
slots on this board are level locked. the board offers a fixed number of slots which you gradualy unlock while leveling.
pieces come in stes and rarities. they also got sorta connections (random) which you will need to activate set-boni.
sounds more complicated than it is. but it's a whole nother level of character/party building, loothunting and tinkering around.
cooldown based special attacks (like taunts, aoe-damage, debuffs/buffs) ad another layer of tactics to the content and the idea to have a shared party-hp-pool also works to make the whole thing feel different.
there's even "buff" shrines withing each dungeon (lair). these shrines offer you boni to select which apply then to your current run and often support also specific approaches to your party-build.
then there's elite enemies, bosses, mini-bosses, little area-challenges (mostly in story/side story lairs).
also like other good jrpg-dungeon-crawlers (again this is more or less side-content here, but enough to keep you busy for quite a while) you can easily skip most if not all animations or activate auto-combat.
all these core-systems come together the longer you play. they work for motivating you to continue leveling and also hunting in rng dungeons and doing the sidequests. tbh. i found this much more enjoyable than it is in most "big" jrpgs.
then there's the "mind hacking". it's kinda a card-based minigame you do sometimes during main- or sidequests. again you create decks and the system offers quite some options, but in general this was nothing special. it works, it's solid, but i wouldn't say it stands out. the presentation is nice though.
the OST is also fantastic and so are most of the VO lines. in general the plot is presented either in inengine animated cutscenes (which are pretty entertaining), kinda comic-book-like sequences or standart jrpg 2D art conversations. the athmosphere, tone and ambiance of the whole thing need a while to get going, but after a couple of hours i realy did enjoy exploring and learning more about this world and it's characters (Smoke is still the best...sorry).
you realy need to get through the rough first impressions. areas are instanced and rather small, quest markers are shown on screen for everything (even not picked up side quest), npc conversation with randoms take place after a tiny loading interval, the U.I. is kinda clunky and early on neither exploration nor combat realy stand out. but stick to it...it's great.
there are some minor issues i got: there's quite some spelling mistakes (english) and the shop U.I. is downright horrific.
but none of that makes this a bad game.
if you like complex jrpgs, noir or cyberpunk content or can live with a slightly more low-budget game which on the otherhand has clearly seen love and care from the dev: this is a save buy. also there's no artificial timelimit anywhere to be found.