Recent reviews by Grahammatical

This is the buggiest game I have ever played. About a quarter of the missions have failed to allow me to proceed to the next step without quitting and re-entering the game, and finally I encountered one of the primary missions which is so bugged that it has hard-locked me from progressing in the story, and which from online posts it seems the only way to correct is by using a save-editor. Even despite the fact that I have never had to use a save editor to allow me to progress in a game, I would be willing to try it if the game was fun, but it really isn't. Every aspect of the game is repetitive, empty, and every feature in it is half-baked and feels shallow, as though the developers wanted to shove every possible game mechanic into it without any thought for how that will or should affect progression, and likely without thoroughly testing it either. It is also horribly unbalanced. It's really a shame because the concepts the game explores are all interesting in theory, but once you actually start to engage with them you realize that it's just more of the same gameplay that you already experienced.

It's kind of a shame to me that this game is notorious for its difficulty when there are plenty of popular side-scrolling hack n' slash RPGs that are FAR more challenging, with very good reviews, like Dead Cells, for example. I assume the misconception is based around the idea that you should charge in at every monster you see. Patience is definitely an important part of the adventure and often times you should make sure you're fighting monsters 1x1 rather than trying to take on several at once.

The controls can feel clunky at first, but once you get used to them you will find that they are very smooth and precise. I think the trouble that people have with it is that there is slight buffering so that if your character is performing an attack and you enter more commands, she will perform the next command once she's done with the current one, rather than ignoring it, as some other games might do.

With all of that said, this game is everything that I love in an action-adventure JPRG: The story is quaint, the characters are likable, the music is charming. The scale of the story isn't "gotta save the world", and instead is localized to a couple of towns (kind of like the Ys series). The adventures that the characters go on feel almost nostalgiac -- it's not unlike kids in real life who might go explore some woods or a creek, but then make sure to come back home in time for bed (because they can't exactly stay at an inn). It's cozy, in a way (difficulty aside).

Anyway I don't think anyone should let the difficulty of the game keep them from playing it. You can't rush through all of it, that's for sure, but it's not like you can't grind if you absolutely need to.

I enjoyed playing this but only for the ambience and calmness. It doesn't take really any thought to play through, and the puzzles aren't really puzzles so much as rotating the camera until you find the correct angle. If you're looking for something to play passively this game is fine for that.

I'm sorry but this game put me to sleep. The music is good and the art is nice, but the story is banal and the characters are trite. The gameplay was too easy, most of the characters that join your team are identical or similar to other characters you already have. The combat mechanics were interesting but I think they could have done a lot more with it. If you're going to allow only two party members active at a time, you should make the player really think hard about which ones they're going to use (Paper Mario did this well imo). This is made even worse by the fact that there's shared exp so there's literally no point in thinking about who you're going to use/level, etc. There are better RPGs out there that hit all of these points well.

Very challenging, great music and art. Autosaves after you make a decision so you can't take anything back. Can get a little frustrating because it's so easy to make a bad decision, but never bad enough that you feel like you need to restart the game.

I seem to have begun my own neverending rain made of tears. T_T