It feels like a game that doesn't know what it wants to be. It draws inspiration from a lot, but fails to weave it together well.
Is it an incremental/RPG? You can grind... but only as much as the developer feels is appropriate for any given zone. Your xp boost has a hardcap, and realistically there's only so much SP you can acquire in a zone based on options provided.
Is it a roguelike? Gameplay is played in runs with (most) things resetting between them, taking the same routes over and over, yet there is effectively no randomization present beyond encounter rate and in-combat hit/crit/combo chance.
Is it a real-time skill-based game? A decent portion of routes is you maneuvering your character around a bunch of arbitrary obstacles on the map, on a map that shifts around between characters, yet it is not actually challenging, just awkward, yet still necessary.
Is it a puzzle game? Realistically the only way to progress in reasonable amounts of time is to plan routes and builds due to limited meta-progression, and to optimize as much as possible, but solving the puzzle does not inherently mean your route will succeed due to the aforementioned randomization, plus having to execute it in real-time.
Everything feels a bit at odds with each other. It fails to get the grinding appeal of the incremental/RPG because of its hardcaps on progress. It fails to get the roguelike appeal with no randomization to break up repetition. It fails to get the puzzle appeal because even with an optimal planned route you can stumble on encounter distance and in-combat chances. It fails to get the real-time skill-based appeal because other than running around a top-down map trying to dodge static obstacles that aren't really challenging, just a bit annoying as you clip on them and lose a precious second.
But overall, it's still fun. At least for the first zone... The Glades. Then you reach the next zone, The Oasis, and everything gets even worse. Your starting point is based on how optimal your runs of Glades are, meaning you have to repeat and optimize that [i]even more[/i] rather than moving on even if you've 100%'d the zone's progression. The difficulty spike is [i]big[/i] and just having completed Zone 1 is [i]not[/i] enough. You will have to run Zone 1 many more times to have a suitable start. You also go from singular characters to multiple at once, with weird splits of non-integer encounter points if you aren't fully optimized and a movespeed and encounter chance varying depending on your main character [i]and[/i] which gear the character is on. Combat goes from largely fire and forget to having the option to swap characters to optimize, which isn't a terrible idea inherently but is not foreshadowed or what people sign up for playing The Glades, and the auto mode is very much-so inferior. There's also a strange thing where one of the characters you acquire in The Glades just can't go to The Oasis. Since the cast is 5 and you have to use two preassigned characters come zone 2, they are just left behind. I can only imagine these issues compound further if you go to zone 3 and on but I don't have the dedication to continue Oasis after spending a significant portion of time on it. It's just not fun. God knows how it would look in the eventual planned seventh zone.
It also feels like the developer doesn't really respect your time. Features are locked behind fully clearing a zone for no apparent reason. Want to grind by killing and looting all encounters to potentially make the zone easier if you're struggling? The developer put in a zone counter to tell you on the map... [i]but[/i] it only activates once you've beat the zone, being hours and hours in. Want to scroll around the map to see things not in your immediate vicinity to plan your route to help you beat the zone? Again, completely unavailable unless you've already beat the whole zone. Similarly, you have five characters to beat the zone. No progress is carried over between them except a fractional boost to xp and gold from other characters (at 100% zone completion 10% exp and 5% gold respectively) and the ability to get more Boss Points for the skill tree. The boost to xp and gold does make it faster, but only slightly. I would wager completing the fifth character's story still took about 75% of the first character's playtime, and there really isn't much difference between the actual zone playthrough, just some bosses and obstacles swap places or move slightly. The Boss Points are also limited in usefulness as almost every perk on the tree requires Boss Points AND Skill Points, and Skill Points can only be acquired by completing challenges as your current character with no crossover.
I really enjoyed this when I played the demo back in the day, it showed a lot of promise, but... well, barring beating zone 1 for your first time, it's just not fun. It's not advertised accurately either. The developer's blurb of this being a "simple, casual game" is just not accurate. If you were to present this to someone unfamiliar with gaming, they would not be able to beat the first zone, even if they grinded out what they reasonably could. It is punishing, incredibly repetitive, and many mechanics just aren't intuitive. I want to like it more, but I just don't. I don't really see any easy avenues to make it more appealing either, a lot of the issues feel very baked-in. It feels like the developer needed to lean in even heavier on the puzzle or incremental aspects, but didn't, so we're instead left in a very awkward middle-ground.
I'd also say it would be better without the timer or active combat, removing the necessity for mechanical skill, but that's just personal taste.
