This Way Madness Lies Review (jlateralus)
This Way Madness Lies is a quick and breezy RPG designed to be finished in a weekend. It really reminds me of B tier Super Nintendo RPGs, something in the vein of Paladin’s Quest or Secret of the Stars.
The setup is a group of high school girls travel to Shakespearean inspired worlds and make their way through a RPG dungeon to liberate it from some big bad. Interwoven between the dungeons are brief visual novel style sequences to add story bits and humor.
Up until the end, each chapter forces you to play with mostly different characters, each of which has unique battle abilities. You can also equip traits on each party member to add stat boosts or passive abilities, which helps to add a little bit of depth to the party customization.
The music is great and I really liked the visuals as well. There are neat transformation sequences at the beginning of each dungeon that drive home the magical girl aesthetic.
I clocked around 7.5 hours and that length felt about right for the depth of the game. I think if it were longer I’d be looking to get more out of either the story or the gameplay, but for a RPG designed to be finished quickly it’s well tuned.
Just play on one of the harder difficulty settings to get the most fun out of it.