Recent reviews by Felix the Coyote

This is the best game I've played in a very long time. I had a ton of fun with it. It's got a vibrant world that feels authentically lived in with tons to explore and see. The battle system is fun and in-depth, which allows for a lot of strategy. The characters are delightful, and the dialogue is charming. The overall story isn't the most groundbreaking thing in the world, honestly, but some of the side stories are pretty gripping (if you know, you know).

Anyway, go play it, it's wonderful!

I really wanted to like this game. I followed it on twitter during its development, and I thought the concept was really cool. A pissed off mouse taking revenge on the larger world around him with stunning 16-bit-reminiscent graphics, what's not to like?

Unfortunately, I don't think I would recommend the final product. If there's anything nice I can say about it, it DOES look absolutely incredible, and it's very clear the amount of effort and care that was put into the visuals. Additionally, the soundtrack does have a few bangers.

However, pretty much the rest of the game falls short. A lot of people have already commented about the "woke" messaging, but I honestly don't think that's really the issue itself. The messages could be fine, but, dear lord, is the writing incredibly ham-fisted and honestly just cringey at times. Comparing this to a game like Mother 3, which actually has a lot of the same themes and messaging when you get down to it, it's just night and day difference how the messaging is handled. What we got here with Small Saga was incredibly preachy, and honestly felt like a string of a college student's tweets. Just not good. Like, I'm sorry, but they really had a fascist dictator just sitting around talking about how much he loves fascism for the sake of fascism because he likes to dominate people... Idk, maybe try giving your villains some kind of motive and backstory beyond "teehee I'm so evil!!!1" None of the villains are fleshed out or have really much of a motivation at all, except Aquila. Most disappointing of all is King James, I think. We barely get to see him at all, and when we do, he's just kind of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for no reason. I was really hoping we'd get to see some kind of growth from him, but no, he really was just evil for no reason too. I don't wanna be mean, but this is like toddler-caliber writing.

Also, for the love of God, why didn't you consult a native Russian speaker for Anton's dialogue? How hard would it have been to like put out a post on twitter asking for some quick help with that? It gave me psychic damage every time he spoke.


As bad as the writing is, the gameplay is the weakest aspect of the game. I know that's not so uncommon for RPGs, but this was honestly pretty noticeably bad. First of all, the battle system is incredibly shallow. Every battle pretty much went exactly the same way, and there really isn't a lot of room for strategizing anyway, given how few skills each character has, and how similar each character's skills are. The difficulty was really quite pitiful as well. Look, I get that not everyone wants to play some tough-as-nails game, but the absence of challenge here was really quite dramatic. There wasn't a single time in the whole game, on my first playthrough, where I felt remotely on the ropes. I had a party member downed ONCE during the White God fight, that was it. The final boss, at the very least, should have been a lot harder. It was really anticlimactic just effortlessly smashing him like every other enemy.

Towns and locations felt like they needed a lot more fleshing out. Everything was very shallow, there wasn't really a lot to do or explore anywhere, really. No location, except maybe Murida in some places, felt authentically lived in. The game space itself was very restrictive and linear. There really wasn't a whole lot that could be explored, and there wasn't much to find when you were able to explore some. I pretty much felt like I was on a rail the whole time, just progressing from screen to screen exactly as intended. Continuing on that though, there pretty much weren't random or normal encounters. Almost every single battle is scripted, it just kind of happens as you go along. That's all well and good, but at that point, combined with how easy the game was, battle just felt like formalities, like I may as well have been watching a movie.

All in all, if we had a numerical rating system here, I'd probably give the game like a 5/10. It's definitely not the worst game to be released, and it does have its moments, but I think it's also getting wayyy to much praise with how many glaring issues I found with it. Because of that, I, unfortunately, cannot recommend it.

It's like Skyrim with hats.

This game is the closest anyone could get to being in a war without actually being in a war.