Virgo Versus the Zodiac Review (Lushie~)
I want to preface this review by saying I have nothing but respect for the small developer team that packed this much quality into the game. The awesome music, artstyle, character designs, battle system, customization, animations for each character for each weapon, etc. You can tell this game was made with lots of love and effort.
But where this game pretty much completely falls apart for me is the story. The premise is good and simple but the pacing and execution is really bad:
- Virgo is a entitled, petty, condescending jerk to everyone that isn't fun to follow around
- 10 hours into the game (supposedly past the halfway point) and I still have no idea what Virgo's goal of "bringing back the Golden Age" actually means
- The other 2 party members are extremely one note characters and have no relevancy to the plot at all.
- Almost every character is introduced, beaten and disappears from the plot forever in the exact same scene or just very slightly beforehand. Because there is no build up to characters and fights, there is a huge disconnect between how grand the fights are trying to be and how I feel about characters I first meet 30 seconds ago.
- The areas are pretty uninteresting, what you see in the first 5-10 minutes of the area is all there is to every one of them. All the interactables and quests in each are there to tell some quirky joke rather than any kind of world building. A big deal breaker since the first 3 areas last 2-3 hours each.
- The game gives you choices to do/don't do something multiple times but those choices in most cases either don't matter (X happens anyway) and in one case the choice is completely mislabeled (if you choose to spare the character dies, while if you choose to keep fighting they get spared).
I'll be honest I most likely won't finish this game even though I like everything else. The way the story is handled is just that much of a deal breaker to me (it is a story driven game after all). But I do hope the developers will make another game at some point, they clearly have A LOT of potential to make something truly amazing. But please next time you make a game, give your characters and world more time to breathe.