A Five Nights at Freddy's themed homage to JRPGs. While I fully believe the horror property’s skin was only slapped on this to drum up interest due to the even more abstract and barebones than usual storytelling that gets a little too caught up in meta self-awareness rather than developing a legitimate narrative, franchise creator Scott Cawthon did at least make it to tie into FNaF 4 in an interesting manner so that it has a bit of lore significance. Plus, it plays off of the franchise’s penchant for multiple endings and hidden secrets in novel ways to give players slightly more to do than merely engage in nonstop turn-based battles. You’re actively encouraged to investigate anything that may look out of place to uncover concealed paths through objects that aren’t as solid as they at first may seem or faux “glitches” that let you reach new areas through unconventional means to obtain powerful items.

Otherwise, it’s a constant onslaught of random encounters as you try to find your way through a variety of different zones and amass a collection of familiar animatronics to fill your party with. It can get pretty monotonous, but World does put a unique spin on its combat. When it’s time for you to select a move for one of your characters the rotation of who gets to go next never pauses. Meaning that if you take too long to make a decision your enemies’ turn will loop back around, skipping over the other three members of your team, before you even fire off your first attack, buff, or debuff. It’s a clever method of keeping you engaged in the action by forcing you to react quickly so that you’re capitalizing on that brief window of opportunity to do as much damage as possible prior to your foes’ assault. It isn’t able to prevent fights from becoming repetitive early on thanks to how you’re thrown into one every few seconds, however. So despite being a relatively short experience, I had to play it in short bursts between other titles over the course of a few months to keep the adventure from growing too mind-numbing to finish.

Yet, where I think the game’s biggest shortcoming lies is in failing to make its entire roster of nightmarish mascots useful. With a cast of 48 recognizable unlockable faces it’s only natural that some would prove more valuable than or overly similar to others, but here the vast majority of them are steadily made more irrelevant as specific abilities are blatantly required to be able to defeat the later bosses. There are a handful of skill chips and purchasable “bytes” (small robot support companions) that can give you said abilities to grant a touch more flexibility in regard to what/who all you need to bring with you into these clashes, but it’s still disappointing to see your options for a genuinely effective squad lineup shrink the further in you go. Especially since the RNG that determines when you get the chance to acquire the necessary heavy hitters could leave you feeling high and dry upon reaching these sections.

All things considered, this is a serviceable diversion for the series’ fans that’s admittedly hardly necessary and something I probably wouldn’t be rating this highly were it not completely free. It’s lacking the same depth under its simplistic surface that the scary main entries have, but is in a lot of ways a bigger overall package that offers more for the dedicated to uncover. As such, I can see the hardcore Fazbear devotees out there putting far more hours into this than a normal playthrough would take, and stands as one of the more enjoyable, if also somewhat middling installments I’ve played thus far.

7/10

Would probably be much lower if I didn't have huge nostalgia for this but I still find the game to be decently fun even if the combat is barebones. Unlocking new characters is fun (though the RNG can be a huge pain in the ass and can straight up make you not get any new character for hours). I would love to have a remake of this game that fixes the atrocious character balance, the boring overworld that is huge but has so little substance and SO, SO much more. I still love this game but I cannot in good faith give it a higher score and even then this is pushing it...