izigame.me

Review Summary:
If you are looking for a game with low impact and crafting, then this will not be a bad choice. The story is nice and the pacing is not too bad. It feels a little lack luster and most things feel repetitious by the end of it. It has a lot of tried and true concepts that feel poorly implemented. The post game content is hidden and fairly dragging. It almost feels like this game could not decide between casual clicker game and old-school RPG. It ended up doing neither of these well.
The art, writing, and lack of severe bugs show that there is great potential from this creator, but the UI/UX of the minigames and main flow of the games show that there is some learning to be done. I cannot recommend this game, as my reviews are meant to target folks who have to decide where they spend their gaming money, but I will be playing more games from this developer to see how they grow.
Ending Score: -35 -NOT RECOMMENDED-
Pros: +35
This game looks well done, and the story is not bad. The way that your goal is to build up your village and just be a smith is great! It does feel like it is an RPG without fighting mechanics.
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+5 - Art is very well done
+5 - Can give ox a hat
+5 - Village upgrades are really cool visually and mechanically
+5 - Camp is a super cool feature
+5 - Day Night mechanic is actually used
+5 - Decent story/writing
+10 - Puzzles were a lot of fun
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Cons: -60
The UI flow in this game is its greatest enemy, and the developer should really look into this for any future titles. The controls easily transition between controller and keyboard, but it feels like it sacrificed the benefits that both have in order to do that. Along with poor UI flow, the post game content suddenly becomes less hand holding, and leaves you to figure out what to do next. This would be great, if there was a hint of any kind that the game was leading up to this. More quests that left you to utilize your village and figure out recipes, or something. Alas, that is not there. It leaves a feeling that the game is over and you can just do bounties forever, especially if you visit the first village which has no requests. You have to actually hunt for the post game content.
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-5 - Recipes must be exact. Iron Knife has to have the handle in the middle and the iron plate at the top, cannot be shifted down.
-5 - Doesn't allow crafting from chests in camp. Items must be on your person.
-5 - No obvious stack splitting for taking things from storage, you must take all that you have
-5 - Impact of the end item is lost by suddenly needing 4 of them.
-5 - 13.3 hours of play for 20$. Post-Game content might fill this in more, if the slow crawl that is the post-game add more than 50% of the main game, I would give another Con.
-10 - Can only place one ingredient at a time in the crafting space. For billets this becomes very annoying, and leads to rapid clicking far too often.
-10 - Smelting new ingots is very tedious, by far the slowest part of the game, and it takes far too much of the game time
-10 - Post game is rough with very little direction, gives a lot of blank page syndrome after a fairly linear storyline.
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Hrms: -0 (usually zero)
Cutscenes that cannot be skipped are always bad. Beyond that, I only have Hrms on the economic balance of requests and the fact that you can only talk to your Ox at very specific moments.
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-0 - Cannot skip the beginning cutscene
-0 - You can sell higher level weapons for a premium higher than the quest boards. Certain items can be sold in bulk to make you rich instantly.
-0 - Cannot talk to the Ox in town to change his outfits.
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Bugs: -10 (Scored on impact)
I found a few bugs, but two held in my head. Pressing E in crafting will pick up the item you are hovering, but hold E will initiate crafting. Because of this, it can be frustrating to craft at times. The second was one that plagued me through the game, as Arcana leaves their town and it begins to feel like quests you had for them will stay in your journal forever. You can also pick up more unfulfillable quests for this character while they are gone.
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-0 - If you pick up a normal equipment while holding an enchanted equipment, they both become enchanted.
-0 - Text moves behind the item in the crafting menu if you have some left over after a bulk craft.
-5 - Hold E to create should not be overloaded by Press E to Pick up. It is clunky.
-5 - Arcana can have bounty board quests even while they are not present to speak to.
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