ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN

10/10 beautiful

I feel like a lot of negative reviews must say this, but I really did want to like this game. Off the bat, I loved its visual style, and I liked the bizarreness that it leaned into. Right from the start it rushes you through and puts you in the midst of the story, which is fine. It tells you about how Romeo's already fought a few versions of Juliet already, and that's cool! Kind of wish those were the bosses we ended up getting, instead of a bunch of kind of boring guys (not counting the 'Juliet' that you do get to fight). Story-wise, a frequent thing the game will do is just say state something random and outright tell you to just 'go with it', which I was happy to do, but only because I thought 'going with it' would actually take me somewhere. What it is instead is a bunch of disjointed, disconnected events that lose relevancy as quickly as they come about. I always thought it was at its strongest when it was dealing directly with Romeo and Juliet. Holding out for their next scene together was what pulled me through a lot of the honestly pretty boring zones, and for the most part their scenes together didn't disappoint. They were interesting! So, with that in mind, their final confrontation was super lackluster and the focus was almost entirely shifted to this astronaut alien (that does look cool) that Romeo suddenly decides he has history with. I'm just saying I've spent 13 hours with him at this point, it wouldn't kill them to effectively set this up in advance. Also, after feeling like the game was already just doing whatever they thought was cool, the after credits scene really felt like rubbing salt in the wound... nice animation! But kind of pointless. It feels like it tries hard, but it also feels like they're just hopping between topics, doing whatever seems fun to them in the moment without caring about actually crafting an engaging story that allows you to become invested. If you're ok with that, with just playing through a series of loosely connected events, then hey, maybe you'll have a good time! There ARE cool things in the game. But I just needed a little more of a throughline to actually get me feeling invested. I mean... there's even a major twist that's revealed during the end level, that I already didn't really care about and didn't really ask, but then they just kind of... leave it. And the character involved is just like 'continue on your way' like ok dude. There's a few moments like that, actually. For some reason their 'twists' never landed with me. Gameplay wise, I don't really need things to be too complicated personally. I thought the combat was simple but fun enough, I mostly just stuck with the default weapons though. I'm pretty sure they all have just the one combo you spam though. The side dungeons were basically the same thing over and over, which is less fun. While I didn't care for the bosses as characters, they were decently fun fights imo. That One Level where the genre changes was cool! But it also felt like it ended up overstaying its welcome, too. ... Kind of a habit of all the main levels, honestly. Especially the last one, climbing the floors was just really tedious and annoying. Also a lot of people mention the performance - I have a higher end PC and it definitely was a bit rough until I turned off motion smoothing. Once that was off, I was able to enjoy it at higher graphics settings, even if it did hitch on certain occasions, so it was alright for me. So for me! I didn't like this, and I unfortunately feel like it really just kind of wasted my time. The premise of Romeo and Juliet was interesting, and their dynamic was really engaging, but the devs seemed to get bored with that and just want to do whatever the hell else with their time. I'm grateful that it is, however, completely earnest, and I'm glad it seems they had fun making the game. I'm glad lots of people have enjoyed it. I do appreciate some parts of it - just, as a whole.. it fell flat to me, in a way that kind of leaves me feeling pissed off lol. I LIKE weird games, and this was weird, sure, but just ended up being boring overall... if EVERYTHING is weird, then nothing really ends up standing out, I guess. So, yeah, wouldn't recommend personally unfortunately.