Prodigal

Prodigal

Progidal is a very polished top-down Zeldalike with village-life-sim, optional romancing elements, and dungeons with enemies and lots of sokoban-like puzzles. You take control of a character who returns to his hometown and must try to rebuild his reputation while helping the townsfolk deal with problems and threats. Pros: - Pixel art style is very reminiscent of the Game Boy Color era. - The writing is great. Conversations felt natural and progressions with getting to know the villagers felt authentic. Choices felt meaningful. - Sokoban-like puzzles in dungeons are clever and have great synergy with the game's items (though they did start to get a bit tedious towards the end) - Postgame has LOTS of optional dungeons and collectibles to obtain. - Did not encounter any glitches that negatively impacted gameplay. - Pixel-perfect graphics. Cons - Trade sequences can be completed all in one go by speaking to all the villagers one after the other. MC felt like an errand boy, and the overall sequence did not feel well integrated to the story or adventuring. - No autosaving (but you can save anywhere, and the game prompts you to save when you try to exit). - Enemies don't drop health items. Whatever HP you enter a dungeon with, that's all you get. - You can "overfill" your HP bar by praying at the Church, but each prayer action only overfills it by one tick. Praying 5+ times just to give myself the max HP before a dungeon is tedious (and uses up a lot of the ingame day). - Some occasional minor graphical hiccups with sprite layering and jitter, but nothing serious. - Combat is very simplistic (just mash the button). Enemies are almost never a threat, and most barely even react to your presence and just walk around randomly, which may be by design given the lack of health items. - Villagers have routines that follow a day-night cycle, which is cool, but they do this by warping around the village at different times. This can make finding/following them a bit of a pain. Sometimes you'll see a character indoors, then go outside and find the character has suddenly beaten you there. YMMV: - Bosses are all unique but are also EXTREMELY easy. Mash the attack button and you'll finish most of them during their second vulnerable period. - The depth of the village life events and romancing options are less like Zelda and more like Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons. I enjoyed it and thought it was well done. But if memorizing villagers' names, commonly-found locations, and understanding their role in the story, does not appeal to you, then you might not fully enjoy this game. - Music is fine for a quiet village or lonely dungeon, but simple. Claire a la Mode's music (more recent game by same developers and composer) surpass this in every way. TL;DR Prodigal is one of the best Zeldalikes I've seen, but the strong focus on village life and getting to know everybody in order to fully enjoy the game may not be for everyone.

A lot of fun in a small package. If you liked the non-dungeon portions of Link's Awakening, then this is the game for you.

Sweet, charming and full of heart. This game is a perfect fit for scratching that GBC style itch, and does more than simply emulate its inspirations. Prodigal is what I love to see in gaming. Its the right length, and has reason to be replayed/ explored further. Strong Reccomend.

Not enough people in the reviews have spent enough time with this game to really understand how wonderfully crafted it is. <10hrs, people say "mehh typical zelda-like/walking sim" but if you give it the time it deserves you'll see it's an amazing game. Also it's the first step in Colorgraves expanded world that you pick up on as you play through their other titles.

Under exposed gem that nails its inspirations but doesn't feel like a clone (think Tunic). Would recommend to anyone looking for something different from a Zelda-like

ehhh

Very fun and charming game with awesome art! The gameplay is enjoyable, the combat is like a top down zelda, it never felt super frustrating. Very early on you receive an item that teleports you back to the entrance of the room which immediately adds depth to the puzzles from the beginning of the game. The story is interesting, you slowly learn about some actions of the main character and you get to decide what the motivations for those actions were. Then you start interacting with the townsfolk and I was very surprised to find a romance option! It was a very fun addition to the game as well. Post final boss the game really opens up, I did not get to finish many of the challenges at the end of the game, but most dungeons seemed to have opened up so you can visit them again for new exploration. Overall this was such a fun game, and if you want to dive deeper you can find a lot of secret rooms that contain lore, or a very in-depth post game!