[h2]"How do you gather your fellow witches for the tea party?"
"...Beat them up, but not so badly that they die."[/h2]
If the trailer didn't sell you on the game's artstyle, sound design and combat, and you're still wondering about [b]Garden of Witches[/b], in a nutshell, it'll feel extraordinarily familiar if you've played and enjoyed Cult of The Lamb, Hades 1/2 and Final Fantasy XIV [i](the critically acclimed MMORPG ... insert copy-pasta trial meme)[/i], but it does more than enough to feel like its own game, in every single aspect.
All in all, I loved it to bits, and while I'm only a post 1.0 player [i](as in, I can't speak about the game experience in Early Access)[/i] I can only recommend you pick it up! Really, it takes around 8-10 hours to finish the game, and around that time, give or take 1-2 hours to 100% all achievements, which feels really worth it, or at least it did to me!
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The story, while fairly simple and straightforward, it is sweet, it can tug at your heartstrings, it does so much more than just driving the gameplay, without its being too deep or complex. The characters are adorable, memorable, and feel sufficiently fleshed out, where similar to the story, there isn't really anything too deep or complex, but not in a bad way, and the voice acting [i](as of this review, at least until the Epilogues)[/i] is so good and enjoyable! My only thing which I would've mentioned here, would've been the fact that there's no VO after Chapter 5, which Team Tapas has mentioned in their future plans that this will also be covered, so I'm really hoping to see it through!
The difficulty itself does a great job of ramping up the player, with a manageable linear progression from Chapter 1 until Epilogue 3, and effectively the endgame content. The Challenge Runs themselves are where the game introduces, similar to other roguelite titles, the fight die repeat loop, with additional modifiers picked by the players. However, the modifiers themselves can sound a bit ... vague, and there's no real reward, in the form of an ingame reward or out of game achievement, so with the exception of loving the game and looking to do it for yourself, I believe that it may benefit from being provided any form of incentive, as even the current Steam achievements do not require any interaction with these runs themselves.
For builds, we are already familiar with the weapons formula from Hades, bringing a total of 6 weapons, however, this is where some Risk of Rain vibes come in, with the addition of 3 abilities, similar to the survivors, but allowing for more control. For the abilities, the game gives us 12 skills, and 4 special skills, which are independent from the weapon we pick, allowing for more customisation in terms of base builds. However, unlike Hades and RoR, there is less granularity through the upgrades given the strict format followed, and while it may end up no feeling quite as expansive, it is still rewarding to experiment and discover new combinations.
In terms of combat itself, this is where the Cult of The Lamb familiarity comes into play, where I'd like to say however that Garden of Witches does a better job of making the combat feel smooth, exciting and overall just rewarding. The combat can be as forgiving or difficult as you would like, based on difficulty alone, or using the Challenge Mode's modifiers, where nothing really feels unfair. The tells are consistent, the attack markers will definitely be familiar if you've played something like FFXIV, and even if you die, it never quite feels like it's made to just be unfair or unfun. Learning the patterns, experimenting with different builds and combinations, slowing down your gameplay, or even just greeding to burn a boss' HP down quicker, it just feels good.
Finally, the artstyle, sound design, and everything else, it looks, sounds, feels cute, good, sweet, exciting, there's definitely a lot of thought put into each element. It's all consistent, it flows seamlessly, and it does not break during combat either, meaning that nothing feels all of a sudden out of place, or forced, in order to accommodate combat, whether we're talking about level design, enemy design, combat elements, sound design, anything really. My literal only note with this, is the yellow arrows in the Epilogue, which are so painfully out of place [i](minor too, but this is the only thing really I can share and complain about!)[/i] and too much of an attempt to the "yellow paint" of videogames.
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The game isn't perfect, as I've mentioned downsides before as well. It's most major downsides, are the lack of endgame content for replayability, as well as the niche Epilogue content. Why? The endgame content has nothing to motivate a player to keep challenging themselves. CoTL has you gathering resources, followers, and others, Hades lets you unlock statues, cosmetics, interactions, but Garden of Witches doesn't have enough to motivate players to continue challenging themselves. As for the niche content, I will mark each Epilogue's content as spoilers to not ruin someone's experience, but noting that all of their individual content is something really great and exciting, if not for the fact that it can only be experienced during standard progression, or returning to it to 100% your achievements, or attempt a Challenge Run.
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[*][b]Epilogue 1:[/b] [spoiler]gives us an arena type gameplay, without real breaks inbetween, which can feel really interesting and exciting given that you gain experience based on how much you progress within a limited timespan, and now in hindsight, giving Brotato vibes. I'd love to see this better put to use.[/spoiler]
[*][b]Epilogue 2:[/b] [spoiler]gives us dungeon crawling! I mean, I'm sorry, what? This is so good, and similar to the previous one, it was really exciting, as well as challenging due to the poison as well, and it's such a shame that there's only this much. Now imagine if the game had dynamic and procedurally generated dungeon crawling, with some tweaks, you'd potentially have a true roguelike, either as a sufficiently long segment of the game, or even potentially something separate like a DLC.[/spoiler]
[*][b]Epilogue 3:[/b] [spoiler]yeah for this one, I'd say that for 90% of it, what drove it to feel so good was the story and characters, with one exception being the final boss fight. Multiple phases [i](scary, but honestly exciting!)[/i], new mechs, it felt really good as a way to wrap-up the story of this Epilogue.[/spoiler][/list]
