The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time

As a lifelong fan of the games being parodied/homaged I really should have been the target audience for TRotEotGRoAT. I love the general concept of a puzzlebox/mystery centered on a remake of a classic JRPG, but unfortunately this one really crosses the line from "challenging and requires looking through everything at your disposal" to "actively hostile to the player" with the combat challenges. At the point where I was told to use a specific element to advance, with no indication that any of my available attacks were of that element and no way to leave the area I was in to try to get more pages of information that might tell me, I decided I was done. I really don't think the general concept of the combat puzzles was even necessary given that there's nothing like them in the 90s games and I doubt anyone would have much enjoyed a traditional turn-based RPG that had them. I certainly don't recommend this one.

Satisfying puzzle game set in the greatest RPG of all time. Attractive 2D HD visuals, fun meta story, solid puzzle mechanics. It is a little easy to accidentally sequence break, but the developers have updated the game to allow players to recover from these scenarios.

A fun 'find the information' type puzzle game using and rpg as its setting. it is more discovery than deduction, but the deduction there is is quite fun. beaten in around 4 hours, then spend another half hour to find secrets, but for now gave up, i still have things to explore so perhaps i'll update the review once that is done.

it's fine. pretty interesting puzzle game with a huge flaw: you can just guess the code once you have 3 pages and skip to the end. don't use a common phrase, like literally patch the game and change the final word from name to like any other 4 letter word, something nobody would guess like fish or some ♥♥♥♥. ended up in that gauntlet way too early and had to look up a guide to figure out how to beat some of the enemies in it. also the story is kinda dumb and uninteresting, the fun part is solving the puzzles and getting more info.

Extremely fun meta-puzzle game. While it's a bit rough around the edges in some elements like UI, there's a ton of ingenious ideas, cool moments and frankly brazen (yet respectable) decisions in the 4-5 hour runtime. Most puzzles manage to hit a nice balance of not requiring out-of-field logical jumps while still being fun to figure out, although especially toward the end of the game it becomes harder to differentiate between what's meant to be the "main story" puzzles and what's part of the extended ARG. As for where it falls flat, I feel like the combat can be a bit hit-or-miss (sometimes it's extremely satisfying to figure out, sometimes you'll slowly go crazy at having to watch and rewatch animations to test if your combo worked out) and the narrative loses steam towards the end of the game. Without getting too much into spoilers, the mystery that starts the game is super engaging, but the new characters that are presented, the explanations that are given and the emotional payoff in the later half of the game don't land as strongly as you'd hope after all the intrigue in the first half. Either way, I'm super glad I played this until the credits (will leave the ARG stuff to the experts...) and looking forward to whatever is next from the team.

This is a game unlike any other I've played in recent years and it has my recommendation based on that alone. Separately, I too wish I will one day have the savoir faire to hand my unlocked laptop (which is currently livestreaming to Twitch) to a random person on the street, say "Hey you, record me", then run off not just trusting but knowing that the person will follow me for the rest of the day instead of doing a 360 and bolting with the computer.

Wow, this game is definitely something. I wouldn't call this game perfect, no, gameplay is slow and closer to the end gets sloggy (especially combat animations) but everything else is another story. The story, the presentation, this game oozes love that developers put into it (Tunic inspiration especially welcome :)). I don't know how to recommend this game without spoiling it so just go and play it, it's not long and really worth it.