Shadows Over Loathing

Alright, lemme clarify; I like this game. For the most part. But its one of those titles where I wish steam had more than a simple yes/no system for reviewing. I'm voting "No" more to push the average down ever so slightly, and less because I de-facto don't reccommend it. There is a lot to like here, but there's also reasons not to play. Its a very "Maybe" kind of experience. Shadows of Loathing is the third game in the "Loathing" series of games; satirical RPGs that started with its first game, a browser-based MMORPG called "Kingdom of Loathing". A long while after Kingdom, the devs tried their hand at a single player RPG, releasing West of Loathing to the world. After that game's success, this game was born to build off the foundation its built. All three games have their strong suit in the writing; its witty, its funny, it makes of a surprisingly interesting world and its, above all, extremely absurd. People use meat as currency, the stats are called "Muscle", "Mystical" and "Moxie" over the traditional Strength, Magic, Dexterity and your classes vary from game to game, but all follow a trend. For example, the mage classes are all some kind of food-based sorcerer with related food-based attacks, like a cheesemancer that can use stinky cheese to deal stench damage. As fun as the themeing around combat can be, though, fighting in this game often ends up being rather dull and slow. Enemies are HP sponges and will outscale the player faster than you can keep up with, and although you can make up the difference with equipment, it mostly comes down to stacking up enough action points on yourself each turn to slowly whittle down 20-30 HP with attacks that deal 3-5 damage to all foes, or about 7-10 to one foe. Finding ways to one-round enemies can be rather fun to start, but with no way to speed up animations it gets incredibly dull and repetetive as this game loves to throw random encounters your way. Levelling is also extremely simplified and you get very little XP for a good part of the game, so you don't feel like you get much stronger, which ends up making combat extremely tedious the longer the game goes. There's also some rather harsh difficulty spikes that can catch you off-guard even if you're otherwise pretty well prepared for most encounters. The puzzles in this game are also pretty divisive. The brain teasers can be rather fun at times, but often it feels like the steps are so obscure that it almost feels like I'm relying on really old adventure game moon logic to stumble my way into solutions. Puzzles are either extremely straightforward and easy or incredibly obtuse, with a few noticeable exceptions that feel just right. Those exceptions are rare though, and the second area of the game in particular has a big issue with repetetive backtracking in what are otherwise extremely easy puzzles. Now, I've been pretty harsh on the game. While I do think the above aspects are repetetive and drag down the experience a lot, there's still a lot to like. For starters, its really funny. Its no surprise for this team, its pretty much the selling point of all their games. Dialogue is witty and will smack you with a punchline that you didn't realise was coming and I found myself snorting at a lot of the banter because of it. There's a ton of sidequests in the game all with really unique and interesting stories, and its very satisfying to stumble on one and work your way through. There's a surprisingly large amount of endings you can get, and while most are pretty straightforward, stumbling into one of the more hidden ones, or one unique to the way you did your playthrough, is incredibly satisfying. I do have another gripe with the game in that going for multiple playthroughs to experience things you missed or locked yourself out from can be quite the pain, requiring you to replay the whole game on a new character and not messing up your one chance on this new playthrough to do the thing you want to do. But if you stick to just one playthrough and not succumb to the completionist urge, I think you'll have a much better time with it. Its a very mixed experience for me. When it shines, it blinds you, but a whole lot of the time there will be little frustrations gnawing at you and inconveniences you wish were a little more player friendly. I don't think this is a significant step up from West of Loathing, which I would try over this game as its both cheaper and shorter while offering largely the same experience. If you liked West of Loathing though, you'll get more of the same here.