In Stars And Time

[h3] spoiler free part [/h3] I had fun, I enjoyed the game, I liked the characters, I liked the story, but I can't help but think they could have done a great deal of things better. Truthfully, the prologue does a better job of hitting the key points this game tries to cover. And it does it a great deal faster too. A tight 5 hour package compared to 30 hours with ISaT. There is room to streamline this game and there is also room to finish things in this game too. It gets so close to being great but it ends just good or alright. It’s a cheap game so it can’t hurt to try. [h3] spoiler warning!!! [/h3] I enjoyed the game a great deal but I find it very difficult to recommend. My first playthrough took about 30 hours and across that 30 hours, there was maybe 10 meaningful hours of gameplay/story. The characters are very likable and they make a good party. It is clearly a deliberate choice to make the looping annoy the player but it is simply overdone. The amount of times I checked something and the game was like "um actually you need to loop back despite you checking that exact object because you missed it the first time." This probably accounts for 60% of the loops I had to do. I can understand some mandatory loops but there are way too many instances of "find item on 3rd floor, loop and talk to NPC, find item on 2nd floor, loop and talk to NPC." I think it would have made a HUGE difference if loops were longer but more spread apart. This game just gets in its own way too frequently in my opinion. There are SO many mandatory loops and SO much of your time is spent going through the same hallways, encountering the same NPCs, getting the same keys, and hearing the same dialogue. Even in ACT 5, where Siffrin (the player character) skips bosses by killing them in a cut scene before the encounter, you still must defeat regular enemies. There were several moments where I would be trying to complete a side goal while working on the main goal. After progressing the main goal, I’d need to loop. This would make me choose between losing progress on the side goal or wasting time by completing the current loop. After the 3rd time I just felt like the game didn’t want me to actually do anything but keep looping. I’d have what felt like a strong plan and the story’s climax around the corner so I’d do all 4 side character quests at the start for what I believed would cause a “good ending”. It would just be wasted time every time. I’d always need to loop back and start over. I’d also like to clarify I’m not bothered that there isn’t a “good ending”. It’s that regardless of what I did in the loops, it never mattered. There was a single way it ended, predetermined from the start and almost everything else I did in between was of zero importance. Player agency unfortunately takes a back seat in this game. It feels very on the rails for a game within this genre. Like I mentioned prior, you will "miss" things despite interacting with the exact object (closet, desk, journal etc.) and will need to loop back to grab it once the game decides it is time. Across all these loops, there are very rarely new dialogue options. Most of the ones that get added simply exist to speed things up. In order to get to the end of the game, there is no solve to the time loop done by the player. You must exhaust all the options and Siffrin then begins to have a breakdown after another (weak) idea doesn’t work. This breakdown completely removes all player choice and every interaction has a single dialogue option. You aren't able to back out at any point, you aren't able to make any new choices, and the game goes exactly how the developers intend on it. There was so much build up and figuring out done that amounted to absolutely nothing. This causes the ending to feel hollow or even fake to me. You or Siffrin did not grow to get there. My biggest problem though is Siffrin as a character. They obviously have trust/anxiety issues which is both fine and relatable. He has admirable qualities and great moments in the story. However, throughout playing the game, Siffrin gets to know his party [spoiler] (family)[/spoiler] even more. Siffrin has heart to hearts with each of them and gets much closer to them. The entire party grows closer as a result. This ends up not changing anything but despite all this growth happening between them, Siffrin has the exact same problems. He never tries to actually talk about his problems [spoiler] until the literal end of the game and barely gets into it there. [/spoiler] Even though, he has Odile who knows a great deal about craft and is generally a very intelligent person, he does not try a SINGLE time to talk over the time loops with his party. There are some reasons that may make someone hesitant to have that talk... But, he knows these people care for him, he knows some of them relate to his struggles, he knows he can even go back in time if he messes it up. Despite all that, he never tries once to talk with them. With the loop count I finished with, he spent nearly a year in the same 2 day loop. Not once, was there an attempt to have his party help. It is just too much to ignore after 30 hours of gameplay. At least TRY to have the talk dude. On the note of the talk, the entire cause of the loop was simply just his wish to spend more time with everyone. He had tender moments with every single member in a single day and couldn’t muster up the strength to just say “hey can we hang out after this too?”. Siffrin feels more like a plot device for the loops than a character. Only a character as obtuse and insecure as Siffrin would allow this to happen. Your friends have told you they love you, they care for you, and they want you to visit them after. Just ask dude you can literally loop back in time if it doesn’t go over well. That wish being the cause feels like a direct contradiction to all the party side quests. You have all these characters go through growth and vulnerability for Siffrin to sit in the middle of it, remain stationary and be sorry for himself. I can’t help but view it as anything other than crazy emotional immaturity and unwillingness to improve things for yourself. This wish is almost like a manifestation on his reliance on external forces for his relationships. It drives me mad that the ending was achieved by being the worst version of himself and not over coming his need to put up walls. The other characters feel fairly one note as well. I like them but due to the fact they almost never have unique dialogue between loops it’s almost always an identical experience with them. There’s a good deal of heartfelt moments but the loops just get in the way of these. The final loop is primarily composed of Siffrin being horrible to them until the very end where they metaphorically scrape him off the ground. I had fun, I enjoyed the game, I liked the characters, I liked the story, but I can't help but think they could have done a great deal of things better. Truthfully, the prologue does a better job of hitting the key points this game tries to cover. And it does it a great deal faster too. You get the meta loop frustrations, the party growing closer/distant between loops, the climax of letting down the walls and people seeing what is going on. All of that in a tight 5 hour package compared to 30 hours with ISaT. There is room to streamline this game and there is also room to finish things in this game too. It gets so close to being great but it ends just good or alright. It’s a cheap game so it can’t hurt to try.

this might be my favorite work of art ever. one of my favorite aspects of it is that it takes a bunch of tropes/mechanics of classical rpgs and twists them until it hurts, without breaking the 4th wall even once. if you like undertale or deltarune, you NEED to play this tl;dr i loaf my friens :heart:

그냥 개인 취향 문제가 아니라 냉정하게 실패한 게임임 플레이 타임이 긴 이유는 진짜 그야말로 스토리할 때 좃뻉이를 뒤지게 치게 만들어서 그럼 그래 뭐 게임성까진 그렇다치자 스토리 게임이니까 근데 스토리마저 이상함 우선 떡밥만 보면 방대한 세계관의 흥미진진한 스토리가 보이거든 떡밥만 보면 농담아니고 진격거랑 좋은 승부하는데 얘네는 이상함 보통 떡밥이 많은데 스토리가 구린 것들은 그걸 회수를 어거지로 해서 그렇거든? 근데 이 게임은 그냥 회수를 안함 ㅋㅋ 떡밥 한 100개 있으면 10개만 풀고 90개는 너네가 알아서 해석해라식으로 냅두고 추후에 개발자 qna로도 언급 일절 안함 그냥 스토리 떡밥을던져놓긴했는데 막상 만들고보니 이걸 회수시킬 능력이 부족한거임 제발 사지마라 진짜 제발 어지간한 스토리 게임 다 해봤는데 이건 진짜 아니야

wow.... gay people..........

game so good I had to pirate it because my friend was using my copy also siffrin my goat

I now hate croissants.

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