Recent reviews by Vanity Evolved

I love badges.

I received this game as part of a recent Humble Bundle, and honestly, I still feel a little ripped off. I'm honestly surprised this has so many positive reviews.

I'll get the one positive I have about the game out of the way first - it's a nice looking game. Decent pixel art-style which fits the setting, but it soon becomes apparent that even that was skimped out on, with how quickly palette swaps become the standard enemies of the game. Even the final boss is just fighting the same bosses over and over.

Now for the rest. It feels like whoever made this game had no idea how to balance it. It's a game which could really benefit from some sort of party mechanic, not a one-vs-many set up as for the majority of the game, it's a cakewalk. You'll hit about three hours in, unlock the ability to wipe out entire groups of enemies in a single move, and progress - until you hit the final dungeon and the flaws really begin to show.

Enemies suddenly deal twice the damage they have been. They have no weaknesses, all get the first turn and have enough HP to tank at least two or three attacks. God forbid they use the power down move (9/10 they will), which now means combat takes twice as long.

It seems this is likely the reason the ability to skip combat, and even skip entire bosses, was implemented. It really overtunes the last section of the game, where no only are bosses taking multiple turns, but now include new mechanics introduced -just- before the last boss which renders half your items obsolete (Deflekator), as being able to ward off a single subsystem attack just isn't viable. You're now spending multiple turns healing to counter the damage output, while doing small amounts of damage in return.

If you want to beat the final boss, you're looking at about 90-100 turns to beat the first form. The second form, assuming like me you didn't grind, but did all content on normal encounter level, you're looking at another 90+ turns of damage dealing -alone- to beat her. It's not hard. It's tedious. Your only other choice is to grind for a couple of hours, which is also hugely slow, as despite the huge spike in enemy difficulty, the rewards they give are tiny by comparison. I've never been so glad for an I Win button, just to get through the slog and finally see the ending.

Which may not have been so bad if the plot itself was anything worth fighting her for. It's a very simple, point a to point b plot. Girl has to save her father, has to save the day and evil corpo lady wants to do evil corpo things with supertech as she takes over the world. If it had remained a simple, cozy 8-9hr RPG, it wouldn't have been so bad, but really, the last two hours turn what was a fairly mindless, chill RPG into a relatively frustrating slog just as you're already starting to lose interest.

Even on sale, I'd highly recommend avoiding this. Characters which aren't endearing, a plot which doesn't grip you, cringeworthy writing which is so full of quasi-scifi lingo that at points, it's illegible. Hard pass.

Oni has definitely learnt a lot from WAMI. Some teething problems at release, but they personally sorted it out in the discussion/Discord for players. Definitely seeing this going places, even for EA.

I like badges.

Probably one of the worst turn-based games I've played. I've just managed to beat it, luckily on my second try so I didn't waste more time, but this game combines some of the worst elements I've seen in in a turn-based RPG:

- Most victory in the game relies on abuse of the AI. Pulling back and allowing the computer to waste AP to approach you, then ganking enemies one at a time. Archers are ridiculous, will always be placed in the most ridiculous to reach places where they rain death on you - until you get your fae archer, and proceed to abuse the fact that if they're out of range, they won't close distance. They'll pass their turn. Step 2 spaces close, two shots, step back, repeat.

- Most of the passive abilities, and the ability to gain power, is either a trade off or mostly worthless. Multiple abilities will have huge downsides (-2AP permanently) for a minor bonus (+1 Attack, probably about +5% chance to hit). Damage ranges are never really explained. Sometimes an attack will do 1 damage, sometimes it will do 11. This feeds into the biggest issue...

- Checkpoints. You get usually one between combats, as most stages are two battles long, until the end of the game. You got unlucky and got critted? Well, you gotta redo the whole level from the start. Some levels later on are about 30mins long, with several battles which can oneshot your units. Finally...

SPOILERS:

The final battle is one of the worst combinations of every problem in this game. You have four units, like usual. You face units three times bigger than yourself, about four times in a row. Each time, they are spawned around you in a way that will slaughter you if you don't cheese the system, run back and constantly try to kite and funnel them backwards. You'll lose two or three units. In the final battle, you get NO rest between combats. Lost any units in the previous match? Tough ♥♥♥♥, they're worthless now. You used up your Willpower, which requires rest of kills to recover, on your main character who HAS to be in the last fight? Tough, he comes in at the same health and Willpower from that point.

The game never informs you of this, and this is the point of no return. You will need to heavily abuse the fact inventory use in combat is free, and you can just keep healing - but if you didn't spend all your gold on Restoration and Nightshade before the second to last mission? Tough, you can't go back now. You will need to abuse this, because now you're potentially in a dead end save, because...

You have to fight in a battle with all the usual problems, with four times the units as normal. You have four guys still. You have to somehow, in this time, destroy four things under a time limit of eight rounds. Nearly killing my guys, I ended up doing this on the last turn I Had. Once this has been done, you have to play a weird game of balancing damage, because your main character -has- to land the last blow, or it's game over. After another 30min fight, I lucked out, by inflicting him with Burn - the game decided with 89% chance to hit, I'd miss four times when he had 1HP left. He was luckily Burning, so he took 1 damage at the end of his turn, saving my playthrough.

I got this in a Humble Bundle ages ago, decided to redeem looking for a tactical RPG. Do not waste your money on this. It's rare that I say this, but this is one of the worst games I have ever played.

Pretty standard but good idle. Very long endgame grind if you're pushing for 100%.

Zooooom, Team Corgi! Awoo.

I love me some badges. Also, Max Payne 3 is pretty top tier - play it.

I love badges, and waifus. :o

Enjoyable for the first couple of hours. You know what's fun? Multiple new debuffs each time you move a screen, solely focused on either killing you ridiculously quick or just stealing your items/making you drop them, forcing you to constantly spend time in your inventory/rebinding your gear. And ontop of that, one of the most pathetic excuses of a 'final boss' gauntlet I've seen in a game. Save your money and your patience for much better games.