Chicory tries to meld the coziness of Animal Crossing with the action and adventure of Zelda. There are towns to visit, characters to chat with, and portraits to paint; likewise, there are dungeons to delve through and bosses to battle. It sounds great, and in some ways it is, but unfortunately there are a few niggles that dampen the proceedings.

Let's start with the story and characters. The main characters are a highlight -- the dynamic between the protagonist and Chicory is one of the best parts of the game. Both characters have clear motivations and distinct personalities, and their conversations flow between topics like friendship, confidence, and artistry with ease. Reading their conversations is always a joy.

As for the other NPCs, my feelings are mixed. They're all fun and quirky, but I rarely felt engaged when chatting with them. They'd tell me about their problems, or thank me for painting their houses, or talk about what they'd had for lunch, and I'd simply nod my head and wonder how soon I could get back to the main crux of the adventure.

The adventure itself is also one of ups and downs. Exploring the map is fun, and the game offers up plenty of clever puzzles to solve, both mandatory and optional. If you've played a Zelda game, you can expect puzzles in that vein, although often with unique painting-centric twists.

The bosses, on the other hand, were frustrating. Because there are no Game Overs in Chicory, the bosses aren't difficult in the traditional sense, but they do take a lot of hits to bring down. Although the battles look intense, knowing you can't lose drains them of any sense of tension. Just keep swiping with your brush and you'll win eventually.

While I appreciate the story and I'm glad that Chicory exists, for me it feels a bit too at odds with itself. It has an abundance of cute characters but 90% of them have nothing interesting to say; it's a Zelda-like adventure but with boss battles that feel less tense and more tedious. The result is still a strong game, but one that could've been even stronger if it had cut a bit of fat and doubled down on what it does well.

Before starting to play, I thought Chicory was a game like Toem, relaxing, captivating, simple, and that I wouldn't even notice time passing while playing.

The beginning is quite interesting, seeing the game with those colors and textures and then everything turning blank is something that motivated me to keep going.

One thing that I didn't understand at first and that I think should have a better reward is the fact that you paint the screens on which you play. Sometimes a character appears somewhere you painted to say how beautiful it is, but that's about it, and I'm not sure if not painting would have affected the 100%, but I'm almost certain that painting or not painting the world doesn't affect this percentage.

The painting mechanic was quite strange for me at first, but after figuring out on my own that you can change color, size, draw, and erase with the mouse, everything became easier.

Unlike Toem, in this game, talking to NPCs is not as fun; few have any missions, most just say something involving the world or you, and nothing that implies or ends up directing you to a side quest or something similar.

I spent a lot of time painting the game, and that was good in a way since the game aims to make you truly become an artist and ends up making you develop an affection for the game. The downside is that not knowing how impactful painting the world was, I kind of felt disadvantaged for not painting and it sometimes became somewhat monotonous to paint areas with the same colors.

Something I really liked was the affinity with the brush that adds mechanics that impact the whole map, even the last one you discover to finish the game, and after the credits, it allows you to explore several areas that were previously inaccessible.

I found the collectibles very superficial and easy to ignore, as they are just decorations for locations, and I personally only collected them all at the end and didn't want to furnish anything with them. The clothes also don't have any impact other than visual.

Overall, the game is cool, has an intriguing story, and a pleasant ending. It has characters that, even if not so impactful in the story, are memorable, a very large map that is easy to remember each area of, good challenges, and you can see that they put care into thinking about every detail. Even though several aspects were not as I expected, it was a good experience and I recommend it for those who like these more relaxing and casual games.

I was kind of surprised how Into this game I got, but I guess it does make sense. Adult coloring books are super popular, right? Maybe I should look into those because hot damn it was fun messing around with this game. When I was a kid and I got a coloring book, I'd go kind of crazy with whatever colors I liked instead of the colors that, well, technically made sense, and I felt like it was fun to apply the same philosophy to each screen. The fact that you get four colors for each area helps things still look kind of nice even if you decide to color the tree trunks green and the leaves yellow, you know? I ended up kind of approaching each screen as a puzzle to the point where when you get to make your own pallet, I ended up not really using it all that much because I enjoyed working with the tools I was given.

I probably ended up making things a little boring once I got the fill tool, though.... but at the same time, it made sense to me. I liked the bright, fairly uniform colors, and the only thing that ended up really frustrating me about the whole thing was that it could be kind of difficult to differentiate different objects with both controller and mouse. Sometimes I couldn't figure out how to target a trunk to color and would just color the leaves... and damn, the "draw a thing" segments were uh. Well, I'm actually pretty proud of a Dragon Quest slime I drew. But the "recreate these paintings" segments looked goofy as hell.

But I feel like that's part of the point, isn't it? I'm sure there are people who have made some fantastic works of art in this game, but I think bringing a sort of amateur-ish vibe to the game feels like it vibes with the Themes. Pizza (or whatever your favorite food is, I ended up naming them Sushi lmao) just kind of picks up the brush to be Helpful and isn't really a professional or anything. The themes here are real good, man, whether you relate more strongly to Chicory or Pizza.

I... kind of did art when I was younger, but I got discouraged because I didn't think I was any good. There were people who told me I was good, but like. They were family. Was it actually any good? I don't know. It was pretty How To Draw Manga flavored. I think someone was Real with me and that kind of discouraged me out of it, but was it Real or Mean? I guess Art is just supposed to be, you know, fun and personal expression... I feel like the art classes in this game actually did a pretty alright job of getting that across, haha.

But you do kind of want to live up to the Legacy of the artists you admire, right? Even if that might not be for the best? There isn't something as crazy as a Chosen One who colors the entire world, but man. There's good themes here, is all I'm saying. I Did Cry at the end. Both the Art Themes and the Depression Themes were Very strong.

On the more, uh, gameplay-ish side, outside of Coloring there's a lot of puzzles around trying to figure out how to traverse the environment, with the more abilities you get making it easier to get where you want to go and making it possible to find Secrets. I found it really fun! There's a lot of puzzle elements that interact with the environment in fun ways, like colored surfaces that touch the water bleeding into it once you gain the ability to start coloring in water, and clouds that you can use to traverse raining color out if you color them in. It's cute!!!

There's no combat outside of boss fights, which are Buck Wild, man. They start out Kirby endboss in terms of flavor and get wilder from there. You can say the game doesn't quite prepare you for them but they ARE basically still traversal based, more or less... the ones I found kind of frustrating ended up being the mirroring ones. Fortunately, the game isn't Mean about them and gives you generous checkpoints even if you don't mess with the difficulty options.

Anyway, I think it's a whole lot of fun! Definitely a recommend from me, whether you're Big Into Art or not. The world it presents is also really fun, with a bunch of cool ideas that it doesn't dig TOO deeply into but presents you in a cute way. Lotta good minor NPCs. My favorite location is Feast, which may be a bit of a Nightmare Area for some but was a complete delight for me, an insect lover.

This game is a delight to play and takes you on an emotional journey. The story follows a puppy who gains the power of a magic paintbrush as all color is drained from the world. As the new wielder, you are tasked with fighting the corruption and bringing back color to the world.

Outside of the boss battles, there is no combat, the gameplay is entirely traversal and puzzle based using your ever growing paintbrush powers.

One of my favorite aspects of this game are the NPCs, who are varied and have their own developing stories as the game progress if you bother talking to them or doing their quests. You will regularly see familiar faces as you travel the map, as they like to move too which makes the world feel more alive as you are not the only one experiencing it.