Thirsty Suitors

Thirsty Suitors is underrated as hell. First, the obvious. It's got a really nice cel-shaded artstyle with heavy comic book inspiration, and it makes me feel this game is going to age extremely well in that department. Secondly, the score is amazing. A few themes are quite subdued and less impactful but those that are, they really make the ambiance pop. My favorite has to be Diya's battle theme. Then, there's the writing. This is the game's strongest aspect, and by far. These characters are all messed up in some way about our queer protagonist, Jala, and they don't hold anything back in this messy break up simulator-esque story. Jala herself is quite fascinating as well, with a great deal of growth over the course of the story. The story itself is quite strong in the Scott Pilgrim vibes, but here you don't beat up a lover's evil exes, no. You just have extremely dramatized arguments with Jala's exes in the aim of fixing her past mistakes, which is a very good concept. I especially loved the focus on Jala's main relationship with Tyler, and how it's written. Sadly, compared to that, the whole Soundie storyline ends up feeling a bit too much like padding, but it's not too bad. Aside from that, while I don't have the experiences of these characters and thus can't say how well they represent the groups they're part of (mainly south asian, but other regions of the world as well), I can say I especially appreciated the big focus on the indian culture via its cuisine. It's cliché but true, you learn about a country via it's food, and how it's people engages with making and eating it. Another star in this game has to be the environment design, especially during the main bossfights, they all look quite inspired and fit the characters they're associated with perfectly. To close the positives, I gotta give praise to the voice actors, they did a really good job giving this game a more natural feeling in the delivery of the lines than a lot of AAA games would nowadays. Now, let's talk about the only real issue, which is the gameplay. First, let's start with the skateboarding. Having played Skate Story before this, it made me wish the skate mini games had been more fleshed out here. It's absolutely possible to do a very arcade take on this sport in a video game and sadly in my opinion Thirsty Suitors made its skateboarding too simple. The turn-based combat and the cooking gameplay are good on their own, but when putting them together they end up feeling somewhat same-ey, especially because of the QTEs being the same across the two gameplay systems. I liked the taunt and weakness system during fights. Even though it's functionally not that different from other turn-based RPGs, the nature of it being lines said by the characters in the aim of emotionally destabilize their enemies is great comedy. The fights didn't feel too hard, but the WP economy was the main frustration point, which would've been alleviated if Jala's base attack's WP refund scaled up with the total WP stat that keeps leveling up through the game. Speaking of level up, I didn't like the Thirstsona system, it felt a bit confusing and not very well explained. Overall, this is a great game, with strong writing about messy queer people with what felt to me like a solid approach to representation for people with roots in different parts of the globe. Solid recommend.