Boring

That stuff that looks like AI art, isn't. It's just art in a style that AI likes to rip off. The illustrations here are intentional, and they're well composed. In fact, the game overall is pretty solidly designed---it just suffers from looking like things it isn't.

For all the Darkest Dungeon trade dress on this thing, it's actually a pretty by the numbers jank indie dungeon crawl. You navigate maps, explore interaction nodes, do quests, churn gear. Combat is turn-based but on a timeline, and effects last for X number of seconds, and by the time you're an hour in you've unlocked enough build pieces that you can pop off into storms of damage, throw up an X seconds damage screen, let the enemies whiff their attacks into you, and if you're a spreadsheet games kinda person it all feels pretty good.

There's also a fair bit of depth. Every class comes with a big skill grid for actives and passives, and you unlock lots of other little subsystems as you go. The first few combats are very flat, but things quickly get extremely dynamic, with your character naturally ramping over the course of each fight. Gearing is not "just use the highest level piece", and I've found myself swapping uncommons and rares into slots I had a legendary in because the build synergy was better.

The writing is even alright, if very translated. There's a good sense of the setting and even some charm to the worldbuilding. You're serving a demon so that you can fight demons, which rules in a very 90s comics sort of way.

I do think it's probably best to grab this game on deep sale. The edges are rough enough that unless you know in your heart it's going to be your jam, there might be some element you bounce off of. However, at like 80% off? Instabuy. I'm having a great time and can't wait to play more.

I haven't hit credits, and I'll update when I do, so there's always a chance something later in the game sours me on it. But for now this is a pretty decent recommend.

Edit: Probably best to see this thing as a gamebook, and in that sense it's pretty rad. More Destiny Quest than Lone Wolf, but I like Destiny Quest, so this isn't a problem. Also kinda surprisingly bug free, even if the translation sometimes makes it hard to know what's supposed to go into a crafting recipe. And the art is interesting once you start looking past the Darkest Dungeon gloss. There's more subtlety than you'd expect, as with the writing. Honestly I think this is a good game.

2nd Edit: Game kinda just ends, and there's a new game +. Which isn't bad in this type of thing. A lot of what there is to enjoy here is making your numbers go up, and looping the game does work with that. Most of my issues with things are just spots where there could've been more polish. So yeah. I can pretty confidently say grab this on deep sale, it's neat.

i've really enjoyed playing this one. The game was just enough challenging to not be a pushover but not too hard that I thought of lowering the difficulty. The only thing I would say that I expected another ending for new game plus.