STARDUST: Wish of Witch

Great visuals, okay story, average RPG, but irritating experience with everything else. The game feels like the devs had many ideas, abandoned most of them but still left them in the game (details below). I was really enjoying the demo, the characters felt fresh and the combat had its own interesting twist. But the more I play and the "smaller" the game feel. When you cut all the abandoned mechanics, missing information, confusing skills, etc. what s left is very repetitive tactical combat, not a lot of flexibility in the team building and an okay story with voice acting. Not worth the asked price imo. Overall, I would not recommend. --- Some details --- About the abandoned mechanics: - You have your own room to customize, but the only thing you can change is the carpet. After 20h of playing, I saw 2 different carpets. - You have a Cafe to buy boost for the next mission but the boost is about a 1% increase in stats (usually less). - You have maybe 30 to 40 different ressources (no filter, no sorting), they are only used to build accessories, and if you use all your ressources and money to build/upgrade those, they might provide a 12% to the stat of one of your guy. - The "village" which is your hub is very small, empty and unchanging. NPCs stay the same, gives the same lines... it feel like a ghost town. - The "village" which is your hub is also too big. Each time you want to go on a mission (aka the only way to progress the game), you got to go through 4 different zones and maybe have 2 or 3 conversations about the weather. It s designed to force you to walk back and forth. - There is a map feature to fast travel, but it only works when you are outside buildings for some reason. You might save 15 sec on the full loop for starting a new mission. About the irritating experience: - Most skills are impossible to understand: "attacks all enemies in a range of 5" is actually a skill that does damage in a cross-shaped that s 5-square wide. But "attacks enemies in a range of 5" is a single-target spell with a range of 5 around the caster. So reading skills doesnt help understanding the skill most of the time. - Also, not all information about skills are written. Some effects of certain skills are only readable when in a specific menu outside combat. And even while in the menu, you have to select the skill and open the description. - There are no options for the UI: for example, you cannot see the health of the mobs during combat except at very precise times. I would have loved to see the mobs'health in one quick gaze so I can do the math for damages. - Damages are not calculated in fonction of your target. You have to manually check the stats of the mob to gage how much you ll do. - Maps have invisible walls. For some reason devs decided to have height on fighting maps (like piling crates), but if the height is too high you cannot walk behind it (it s not real 3D). It made a few fights really weird. - Fast travel doesnt bring you where you want to go, it usually brings you at the start of the zone you want to go and a few pixels off. So when you fast-travel to the "Guild", it will not bring you to the Guild but to the door of the Guild... and not exactly to the door so you still need to move around to find where to enter while avoiding talking to the guards. That s something you need to do everytime you want to start a mission btw. I ll stop but there are more things that are botched (freezing game, conversation with people who are not on screen, poor balance, etc.). It s a good base but the devs invested their time in the wrong place (voice acting doesnt make a game).