i had fun from the start to the end, the game has discouraged me sometimes but i ended up being so attached to it and it kept motivating me to see what’s next, i loved every minute of my playthrough.
This game is about the vibe, the experience you get while playing it.
It’s really hard to do justice to the game explaining its qualities, but it’s so cheap you should definitely play it even if you end up not liking it.
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In depth review :
First, a lot of critiques are actually invalidated by just reading the manual, this is the first thing the game tells you to do, even if this instruction is actually so easy to miss.
The formula is pretty much core-dungeon crawler RPG, with a touch of rogue-like elements.
Some people say it’s kind of a souls-like, i actually disagree. The game is hard, yes, but that’s pretty much it.
Pros :
Yes you have to draw your own map, and as someone who didn’t grow up with game that made you do this, i really loved it. It makes you invest yourself and engage with the game and its level design in a way that you wouldn’t otherwise. For me it was a lot of fun, i really think it adds a lot to the experience.
The game system making you loose your characters and recruit new ones is really nice, i think it finds a good balance between die and retry, and the pleasure of general progression.
The monster’s scaling makes sure you don’t exploit grinding tho.
Progression is cool, you gain random stats at the end of every finished fight, and you sometimes randomly unlock skills while trying to cast another spell. There is a lot of random so don’t expect personnalisation for your team, the only thing you get to choose is the 4 classes you will use.
The level design is nice, there is only a few mechanics but they are exploited nicely and in various manners, so there kinda is always something interesting about the dungeon and its new floors.
The mid-game twist is cool, it kept my interest, even if the second part of the game is not as much fun as the first.
I found the graphic style very appealing and ended up really loving all the character sprites, and the general visual vibe of the game.
Music is simple but really well executed, and with all the soundscape, the game manages to create a really nice atmosphere.
Cons :
The gameplay is classic RPG stuff, nothing crazy. It’s really efficient even if i wish it had a little more depth to it, the type of damage you deal, for example, is supposed to be affected by the type of attack (slash, hit, piercing) but i really didn’t feel like it impacted in any case my gameplay, not as much as the randomness of the damage dealt.
Elemental magic could have been the same too.
The dungeon itself can get pretty boring visually. I know it’s the point for it to feel like a maze but maybe the walls could at least be a little more diverse, especially because it’s what we look at 50% of the time.
As for the painful menuing, i think it’s the most legit critique that i see people make. Yeah it’s a pain to path all the way to the one character you want, the same goes even worse for creatures. The text box in combat feels pretty rough to read too.
This is not a deal breaker for me, but it sure affects the general experience.
