Earthbound is down the hall and to the left
This review contains spoilers
this is the most difficult negative review i've given.
it's so hard to say that i think this game is kind of mediocre, because so, so, SO much of it is worth your time that i think its worth people looking at regardless of quality.
i'll try to be clinical about this one, but first ill address the issue i have with the game that is sort of the root of many disappointments i have with the game: the hook.
it's not fair. i know it's not fair to judge a game for what it isn't rather than what it is. i know i wanted the game to be about you killing people and serving them as hamburgers because that's what the end of the demo implied. i know i wanted to see a story that was ABOUT keeping these horrible things from your three co-workers and the guilt that tore you up inside over it. the warioware sensibilities themselves would be almost a cruel mockery of what you did. the world stays twee and quirky despite the horrible thing you did.
but it wasn't about that. frankly, i don't think it was about anything.
right, clinical.
This game is exceptional in quite a few areas, and nearly all of them involve the game's audiovisual presentation.
The soundtrack, done by Andy himself along with nelward, the Gyms, Joe Aquiare, Barchboi and lizzy are all fantastic. Despite the wide range of composers, none of them ever felt out of place in any given situation. They all fit the surreal and absurd world of Knuckle Sandwich like a glove.
The visual style, the graphics, everything is presented with such candy-coated sweetness that even remembering some of the game's more questionable sections, I also remember how visually captivating the game's battle UI is, or the silly clay animations whenever you find a goblin, or even just the random, rainbow colored NPCs that speak gibberish to you. So much of this game is so, so wonderful to experience in the moment.
The game's combat centers around microgames, timed attacks, and timed dodges. I think the game succeeds at approximately 85-90% of the microgames, while the attack and dodge system never felt wrong to me. The game continually spices up the basic attack command through three different variants, all of which felt very satisfying to pull off (I got a x28 combo with the circle attack. Thank you, Hatsune Miku, for training me). The timed dodges, too, never felt non-intuitive. The moment I figured out an enemy's tell, I could always dodge their basic attacks.
ah
i really don't want to keep going
i really wish i could just stop and leave it there
it'd be so easy
but
There are two pillars of problems with Knuckle Sandwich as a game. That being its game design and its story.
Knuckle Sandwich's game design issues are cumulative in nature. A lot of small issues coagulating into major problems that make the gamefeel incredibly unusual. I'll list them here:
- Stat values feel almost entirely meaningless with the exception of your speed. This is the root of many of the game's issues regarding gamefeel.
- Buffing and debuffing skills, for the very few that exist, barely make any impact as a result.
- There is no skill that allows you to lower an enemy's Defense. This is a problem because of a point I will address later.
- There is no consistent curve of enemy Defense values, which means your attacks will rapidly oscillate between doing 20 damage to one enemy and then doing 1 damage to the next.
- There are never any shops when you actually need shops. I accumulated vast amounts of Fortune Rocks and rarely ever used them.
- The inventory system is genuinely abysmal. Each party member is given eight slots. The items that take up space include consumables, equipment, and key items.
- Armor and Weapons rarely make a significant difference in combat.
- Boss fights are more or less scripted encounters where the boss exhausts all of their dialogue and either reduces their Defense value drastically, or they remove the RPG elements entirely and just have the fight be a completely different game.
- Even in boss fights without these scripted elements, they are oftentimes meat sponges that will take upwards to fifteen turns to beat. This, to me, is unacceptable.
- The damage dealt by your special moves is oftentimes worse than your standard attack. Even if you perfect the microgame, you can easily outdo the damage without the EP cost by doing your timed attack.
- The defend action only recovers a single point of EP. This is completely worthless and only serves to waste an action.
- The only healing skill in the game heals 11 HP. This is almost completely worthless.
- Once you acquire all three party members, you cannot swap them out in combat if your party member has fallen. This, to me, defeats the point of that system.
- I only got one skill that afflicts a status effect. It never afflicted it once.
- Status effects feel meaningless when applied to enemies.
All of these issues are either the root of an issue or are the resulting issue. Even the novelty of new microgames with every fight wears thin when every fight feels at least two turns too long and there are so few skills I can use to meaningfully accelerate the rate of combat. It's hard to prepare for any given fight because there's so few equipment, and what equipment does exist barely makes a difference. I don't even want to use skills because the damage they do barely means anything, and there's a decent chance that doing high damage barely even matters in a boss fight anyways.
Perhaps it is a commentary on my lack of agency in the story. Let's talk about what the story actually is.
The game's hook, as I mentioned before, is perfect. After arriving in Bright City and going on a gameshow in an attempt to find a job, you are completely unqualified for anything and are forced to go elsewhere. You end up going to Gorilla Burger, a terrible fast food joint. At the end of the night, you're attacked by a knife-wielding gangster while taking out the trash, and you end up killing him. After the game's surrealism, this was a lurch. Even more of a lurch is when your boss witnesses a murder, and decides the best course of action is to cook him. It ends with him patenting this horrific act of cannibalism as the world's first...
Knuckle Sandwich.
It's flawless. It's immaculate. It doesn't come up again until the last hour of the game.
The actual story is that Bright City is in danger due to some sort of Anomaly. It's causing the world to go out of whack, and you need to figure out who's causing it. The problem is that a lot of people think that you're the Anomaly, and are trying to get rid of you as a result. There's also a group called the Brightfangs who have their own agenda. It's fairly self-evident early on that they are extremists working towards an ultimately positive end, and the people you and your co-workers ostensibly trust are actually not very trustworthy.
Oh, right. You deliver some food to a stupid billionaire named Mr. Apricot. He's useless, but you assume he's just some guy. There's also someone named Xander. He's a justice cop. He dies and was a stooge of the real villain, the gameshow host. He's the twist villain who is pulling the strings. Except it's actually his assistant, Prima. She's the real twist villain.
Throughout being pulled and crammed through all of these situations, there's barely a sense of friendship forming between you and your party members. This isn't an RPG where you get a character sidequest with your three co-workers that gives you some insight into them. They just exist alongside you. When the game killed them after revealing the second twist villain, I didn't feel much of anything. It was surprising, I suppose, but I knew they wouldn't commit to it. They didn't.
(Edit: There are apparently secret scenes that you get through means that are not intuitive to me and involve friendship variables. I saw the scene with Echo on YouTube. It was cute. It probably would've helped me feel a bit more for the characters. I wish they weren't so obscured.)
The point I'm getting at here is that none of this means anything. Nothing is ever developed to a satisfying conclusion. The final conclusion to the game is going back in time before the game began in order to rectify you killing the guy at the beginning and killing the Anomaly, the Tiny Baby, before it can do anything (also, the boss at Gorilla Burger had an arrangement with the gangster to kill employees and turn them into food beforehand. So it's not like the "world's first knuckle sandwich" was actually the world's first. He's been doing this the whole time to feed those rainbow colored NPCs. They're mutants, by the way. That was an okay twist that didn't amount to much).
Busdriver (the guy who occasionally pops in and goes "wow that's crazy anyways im working on goblins right now and spirit cells) helps you out at the very end and apologizes to you for ruining your life and dragging you through all of this. You're finally given the choice to either forgive him or not to forgive him, and then you can choose whether to stay in Bright City or work as his partner.
None of this means anything.
Your lack of agency in the plot is felt throughout the game in ways I would consider unintentional, and it is never directly addressed until the last minute of the game. I desperately wanted a moment where the protagonist acknowledged the ridiculousness of the plot and being shunted from place to place without any rhyme or reason. Even a brief moment of rebellion would've made it clear what a nightmare the experience was and would've given it more weight. The protagonist never did.
If the game was about overconsumption and capitalism, it failed at that, too. There was a brief flicker of hope when Prima, the second twist villain, casually asked for backup after the Anomaly escapes, and your party member asks "who's responsible for this," which she's been trying to figure out the entire game. Prima, at first, addresses the fact that there is no "one person" responsible for this. You think for a moment that she's pointing out that there is no "final boss of capitalism." It's a system. That might've saved it for me. But no. Prima is responsible for this. It's just her. She's the CEO of Capitalism, actually.
I'm still thinking about the hook.
Maybe it's actually fair to criticize the game for that hook. It had gold on a platter, showed it to me, then tossed it out in favor of semi-coherent surreal shenanigans. It's less of a "criticizing the game for what it isn't." That's more akin to watching a horror film and complaining it isn't funny enough. The film is about horror. Unless it makes itself known as a horror comedy, you can't really get mad that it isn't funny.
But attempting to be funny and failing in a horror movie would be perfectly reasonable grounds for criticizing it for that, in the same way introducing horror into a comedic game can be done poorly. If the horror is barely developed, either failing to be integrated into the game's comedy or failing to transform into its own, terrifying monster, then it fails.
You shouldn't have introduced it to begin with.
well
im gonna lie down. this was miserable. it's hard to convey how sullen this whole experience has made me.
sorry, andrew brophy
maybe next time
it's so hard to say that i think this game is kind of mediocre, because so, so, SO much of it is worth your time that i think its worth people looking at regardless of quality.
i'll try to be clinical about this one, but first ill address the issue i have with the game that is sort of the root of many disappointments i have with the game: the hook.
it's not fair. i know it's not fair to judge a game for what it isn't rather than what it is. i know i wanted the game to be about you killing people and serving them as hamburgers because that's what the end of the demo implied. i know i wanted to see a story that was ABOUT keeping these horrible things from your three co-workers and the guilt that tore you up inside over it. the warioware sensibilities themselves would be almost a cruel mockery of what you did. the world stays twee and quirky despite the horrible thing you did.
but it wasn't about that. frankly, i don't think it was about anything.
right, clinical.
This game is exceptional in quite a few areas, and nearly all of them involve the game's audiovisual presentation.
The soundtrack, done by Andy himself along with nelward, the Gyms, Joe Aquiare, Barchboi and lizzy are all fantastic. Despite the wide range of composers, none of them ever felt out of place in any given situation. They all fit the surreal and absurd world of Knuckle Sandwich like a glove.
The visual style, the graphics, everything is presented with such candy-coated sweetness that even remembering some of the game's more questionable sections, I also remember how visually captivating the game's battle UI is, or the silly clay animations whenever you find a goblin, or even just the random, rainbow colored NPCs that speak gibberish to you. So much of this game is so, so wonderful to experience in the moment.
The game's combat centers around microgames, timed attacks, and timed dodges. I think the game succeeds at approximately 85-90% of the microgames, while the attack and dodge system never felt wrong to me. The game continually spices up the basic attack command through three different variants, all of which felt very satisfying to pull off (I got a x28 combo with the circle attack. Thank you, Hatsune Miku, for training me). The timed dodges, too, never felt non-intuitive. The moment I figured out an enemy's tell, I could always dodge their basic attacks.
ah
i really don't want to keep going
i really wish i could just stop and leave it there
it'd be so easy
but
There are two pillars of problems with Knuckle Sandwich as a game. That being its game design and its story.
Knuckle Sandwich's game design issues are cumulative in nature. A lot of small issues coagulating into major problems that make the gamefeel incredibly unusual. I'll list them here:
- Stat values feel almost entirely meaningless with the exception of your speed. This is the root of many of the game's issues regarding gamefeel.
- Buffing and debuffing skills, for the very few that exist, barely make any impact as a result.
- There is no skill that allows you to lower an enemy's Defense. This is a problem because of a point I will address later.
- There is no consistent curve of enemy Defense values, which means your attacks will rapidly oscillate between doing 20 damage to one enemy and then doing 1 damage to the next.
- There are never any shops when you actually need shops. I accumulated vast amounts of Fortune Rocks and rarely ever used them.
- The inventory system is genuinely abysmal. Each party member is given eight slots. The items that take up space include consumables, equipment, and key items.
- Armor and Weapons rarely make a significant difference in combat.
- Boss fights are more or less scripted encounters where the boss exhausts all of their dialogue and either reduces their Defense value drastically, or they remove the RPG elements entirely and just have the fight be a completely different game.
- Even in boss fights without these scripted elements, they are oftentimes meat sponges that will take upwards to fifteen turns to beat. This, to me, is unacceptable.
- The damage dealt by your special moves is oftentimes worse than your standard attack. Even if you perfect the microgame, you can easily outdo the damage without the EP cost by doing your timed attack.
- The defend action only recovers a single point of EP. This is completely worthless and only serves to waste an action.
- The only healing skill in the game heals 11 HP. This is almost completely worthless.
- Once you acquire all three party members, you cannot swap them out in combat if your party member has fallen. This, to me, defeats the point of that system.
- I only got one skill that afflicts a status effect. It never afflicted it once.
- Status effects feel meaningless when applied to enemies.
All of these issues are either the root of an issue or are the resulting issue. Even the novelty of new microgames with every fight wears thin when every fight feels at least two turns too long and there are so few skills I can use to meaningfully accelerate the rate of combat. It's hard to prepare for any given fight because there's so few equipment, and what equipment does exist barely makes a difference. I don't even want to use skills because the damage they do barely means anything, and there's a decent chance that doing high damage barely even matters in a boss fight anyways.
Perhaps it is a commentary on my lack of agency in the story. Let's talk about what the story actually is.
The game's hook, as I mentioned before, is perfect. After arriving in Bright City and going on a gameshow in an attempt to find a job, you are completely unqualified for anything and are forced to go elsewhere. You end up going to Gorilla Burger, a terrible fast food joint. At the end of the night, you're attacked by a knife-wielding gangster while taking out the trash, and you end up killing him. After the game's surrealism, this was a lurch. Even more of a lurch is when your boss witnesses a murder, and decides the best course of action is to cook him. It ends with him patenting this horrific act of cannibalism as the world's first...
Knuckle Sandwich.
It's flawless. It's immaculate. It doesn't come up again until the last hour of the game.
The actual story is that Bright City is in danger due to some sort of Anomaly. It's causing the world to go out of whack, and you need to figure out who's causing it. The problem is that a lot of people think that you're the Anomaly, and are trying to get rid of you as a result. There's also a group called the Brightfangs who have their own agenda. It's fairly self-evident early on that they are extremists working towards an ultimately positive end, and the people you and your co-workers ostensibly trust are actually not very trustworthy.
Oh, right. You deliver some food to a stupid billionaire named Mr. Apricot. He's useless, but you assume he's just some guy. There's also someone named Xander. He's a justice cop. He dies and was a stooge of the real villain, the gameshow host. He's the twist villain who is pulling the strings. Except it's actually his assistant, Prima. She's the real twist villain.
Throughout being pulled and crammed through all of these situations, there's barely a sense of friendship forming between you and your party members. This isn't an RPG where you get a character sidequest with your three co-workers that gives you some insight into them. They just exist alongside you. When the game killed them after revealing the second twist villain, I didn't feel much of anything. It was surprising, I suppose, but I knew they wouldn't commit to it. They didn't.
(Edit: There are apparently secret scenes that you get through means that are not intuitive to me and involve friendship variables. I saw the scene with Echo on YouTube. It was cute. It probably would've helped me feel a bit more for the characters. I wish they weren't so obscured.)
The point I'm getting at here is that none of this means anything. Nothing is ever developed to a satisfying conclusion. The final conclusion to the game is going back in time before the game began in order to rectify you killing the guy at the beginning and killing the Anomaly, the Tiny Baby, before it can do anything (also, the boss at Gorilla Burger had an arrangement with the gangster to kill employees and turn them into food beforehand. So it's not like the "world's first knuckle sandwich" was actually the world's first. He's been doing this the whole time to feed those rainbow colored NPCs. They're mutants, by the way. That was an okay twist that didn't amount to much).
Busdriver (the guy who occasionally pops in and goes "wow that's crazy anyways im working on goblins right now and spirit cells) helps you out at the very end and apologizes to you for ruining your life and dragging you through all of this. You're finally given the choice to either forgive him or not to forgive him, and then you can choose whether to stay in Bright City or work as his partner.
None of this means anything.
Your lack of agency in the plot is felt throughout the game in ways I would consider unintentional, and it is never directly addressed until the last minute of the game. I desperately wanted a moment where the protagonist acknowledged the ridiculousness of the plot and being shunted from place to place without any rhyme or reason. Even a brief moment of rebellion would've made it clear what a nightmare the experience was and would've given it more weight. The protagonist never did.
If the game was about overconsumption and capitalism, it failed at that, too. There was a brief flicker of hope when Prima, the second twist villain, casually asked for backup after the Anomaly escapes, and your party member asks "who's responsible for this," which she's been trying to figure out the entire game. Prima, at first, addresses the fact that there is no "one person" responsible for this. You think for a moment that she's pointing out that there is no "final boss of capitalism." It's a system. That might've saved it for me. But no. Prima is responsible for this. It's just her. She's the CEO of Capitalism, actually.
I'm still thinking about the hook.
Maybe it's actually fair to criticize the game for that hook. It had gold on a platter, showed it to me, then tossed it out in favor of semi-coherent surreal shenanigans. It's less of a "criticizing the game for what it isn't." That's more akin to watching a horror film and complaining it isn't funny enough. The film is about horror. Unless it makes itself known as a horror comedy, you can't really get mad that it isn't funny.
But attempting to be funny and failing in a horror movie would be perfectly reasonable grounds for criticizing it for that, in the same way introducing horror into a comedic game can be done poorly. If the horror is barely developed, either failing to be integrated into the game's comedy or failing to transform into its own, terrifying monster, then it fails.
You shouldn't have introduced it to begin with.
well
im gonna lie down. this was miserable. it's hard to convey how sullen this whole experience has made me.
sorry, andrew brophy
maybe next time
this game makes me feel like an australian
"My body is a temple... And you just stepped in with your shoes on."
been waiting a while for this one, and it came out really good! but it's a little underbaked in some areas. if you're anything like me the gameplay mechanics probably caught your eye (superstar saga turn-based combat with warioware minigames and rhythm heaven elements), and it feels pretty dang good to play overall, but the balancing is inconsistent and honestly kind of frustrating at times. for example, there are 3 different types of minigames that play for your regular attack at random, two of them are a bpm based minigame where you have to tap in time with a prompt and it gets faster as you keep going, and the third where a cursor slides past a damage meter, like a lot of other turn-based games. this third attack seems to do the most damage, however, like i said the minigame you get is random. on top of this, the protagonist can be weaaaak in a lot of fights and his skills aren't usually worth using either due to damage outputs which means you'll have to rely on your party member to do all the heavy hitting, which is probably a big factor of why this game has such a steep difficulty curve in later chapters, especially if you don't feel like killing every enemy you encounter (though you can reduce different difficulty aspects in the settings, which is a nice feature)
overall knuckle sandwich is a peculiar experience that reminded me why i love this medium of game development so much. its not a perfect game by any means but it has a nice visual style, a lot of laugh out loud moments and a great soundtrack to boot that make it memorable. so yeaaa i reccomend it if you're into rpgs or quirky indies #swag...
been waiting a while for this one, and it came out really good! but it's a little underbaked in some areas. if you're anything like me the gameplay mechanics probably caught your eye (superstar saga turn-based combat with warioware minigames and rhythm heaven elements), and it feels pretty dang good to play overall, but the balancing is inconsistent and honestly kind of frustrating at times. for example, there are 3 different types of minigames that play for your regular attack at random, two of them are a bpm based minigame where you have to tap in time with a prompt and it gets faster as you keep going, and the third where a cursor slides past a damage meter, like a lot of other turn-based games. this third attack seems to do the most damage, however, like i said the minigame you get is random. on top of this, the protagonist can be weaaaak in a lot of fights and his skills aren't usually worth using either due to damage outputs which means you'll have to rely on your party member to do all the heavy hitting, which is probably a big factor of why this game has such a steep difficulty curve in later chapters, especially if you don't feel like killing every enemy you encounter (though you can reduce different difficulty aspects in the settings, which is a nice feature)
overall knuckle sandwich is a peculiar experience that reminded me why i love this medium of game development so much. its not a perfect game by any means but it has a nice visual style, a lot of laugh out loud moments and a great soundtrack to boot that make it memorable. so yeaaa i reccomend it if you're into rpgs or quirky indies #swag...
Knuckle Sandwhich is a JRPG developed by Andrew Brophy and the game is his own attempt at a love letter for video games. It stars a silent protagonist, moving to Bright City to find a job, only to have Weird Shit constantly happen. You also commit a murder. Fun. What adventures await our Protagonist as he solves the mysteries of Bright City?
Combat was fun and was the standout part of the game for me. KS uses a take on Paper Mario’s Action Command battle system, and this one uses Wario Ware inspired microgames to determine if you’re successful or not on Attack or Defense. Usually these games last anywhere from 3-8 seconds, which gives a lot of room for battles to get to a point where they can drag, and it has for some players. But for me and my playthrough I didn’t really have that problem, even with the bosses most fights ended pretty quickly (thanks, Goblins!), and some cases TOO quickly (thanks, Gobilins!).
I’ve also seen complaints about the minigames getting to repetitive, but for the most part the "repetition" didn't really hit me. There’s a decent variety of mini games from the attacking enemies, and most of them were as enjoyable as playing a Microgame in Warioware complete with the difficulty of the Minigame going up when you succeed at one, so it kept the challenge fresh and engagement fun. There was a fatigue towards the end of the game, namely from the fact there's not a lot of variety in your own party's attacks and bosses and enemies attacks start to repeat, but luckily the game was in the final stages so it wasn't too hard for me to finish up.
On to the plot which is...fun? I’m not sure how to describe it. The game starts off running, combining a decent sense of mystery, supernatural and quirky comedy all assisted by an assortment of charismatic characters throughout, that kept me entertained and wanting to see what came next throughout the middle parts. And while it kept me entertained, the onslaught of new faces and details each chapter, while only hinting at answers started making the plot drag a bit, only for everything to be explained with a dump of information and twists in the last hour.
Though this is still saved by the fact that Bright City is just kind of a vibe. While there’s not a TON of secrets that’ll keep you busy for hours, there’s a fair bit of world here to explore and interact with that just feels comfy. I do wis there was more to do and see, more lines for the NPCs or even more secrets to find to flesh out the world, but whats here is enjoyable, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people who will get more out of it than I did.
This game is a bit of puzzling one to talk about. I think it’s a standout game, but I don’t think it’s a great game. Brophy's talent is apparent as it's sper easy to get drawn into the combat and world here I do get and even empathize with a lot of disappointment in this game, but I found the overall GBA cadence of the storytelling and gameplay to be comforting and enjoyable.
Combat was fun and was the standout part of the game for me. KS uses a take on Paper Mario’s Action Command battle system, and this one uses Wario Ware inspired microgames to determine if you’re successful or not on Attack or Defense. Usually these games last anywhere from 3-8 seconds, which gives a lot of room for battles to get to a point where they can drag, and it has for some players. But for me and my playthrough I didn’t really have that problem, even with the bosses most fights ended pretty quickly (thanks, Goblins!), and some cases TOO quickly (thanks, Gobilins!).
I’ve also seen complaints about the minigames getting to repetitive, but for the most part the "repetition" didn't really hit me. There’s a decent variety of mini games from the attacking enemies, and most of them were as enjoyable as playing a Microgame in Warioware complete with the difficulty of the Minigame going up when you succeed at one, so it kept the challenge fresh and engagement fun. There was a fatigue towards the end of the game, namely from the fact there's not a lot of variety in your own party's attacks and bosses and enemies attacks start to repeat, but luckily the game was in the final stages so it wasn't too hard for me to finish up.
On to the plot which is...fun? I’m not sure how to describe it. The game starts off running, combining a decent sense of mystery, supernatural and quirky comedy all assisted by an assortment of charismatic characters throughout, that kept me entertained and wanting to see what came next throughout the middle parts. And while it kept me entertained, the onslaught of new faces and details each chapter, while only hinting at answers started making the plot drag a bit, only for everything to be explained with a dump of information and twists in the last hour.
Though this is still saved by the fact that Bright City is just kind of a vibe. While there’s not a TON of secrets that’ll keep you busy for hours, there’s a fair bit of world here to explore and interact with that just feels comfy. I do wis there was more to do and see, more lines for the NPCs or even more secrets to find to flesh out the world, but whats here is enjoyable, and I’m sure there’s plenty of people who will get more out of it than I did.
This game is a bit of puzzling one to talk about. I think it’s a standout game, but I don’t think it’s a great game. Brophy's talent is apparent as it's sper easy to get drawn into the combat and world here I do get and even empathize with a lot of disappointment in this game, but I found the overall GBA cadence of the storytelling and gameplay to be comforting and enjoyable.
Really loved this title! It has a very solid identity and the reveals in the plot are quite fun. At a first look, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that this is another "depression earthbound-like" game, but that's not quite right. The gameplay is an extremely fun combo of traditional RPG elements and MANY WarioWare-like mini games. I'll leave more detailed thoughts below:
Combat in this game is genuinely so smart. The game cleverly rewards players for interacting with its mini-games by offering big amounts of damage from perfecting them - especially enemy attacks. This means you are always on the offensive in combat, making battles very exciting for those that may not be "into" the turn based format. I love that statuses are also new and exciting in this game. Long gone are the days of turn based poison damage, here statuses effect you're ability to interact with the mini-games, which effects your damage. However if you are a skilled player, you will be able to overcome these hurdles - I really like this, the game is always finding ways of rewarding the player for playing it well.
The art style is very charming - I've genuinely not seen a game that looks quite like it. It's not afraid to throw little doodles in your face for a laugh and the switch from 2D sprites to 3D models in cutscenes is really interesting! It artistically separates the areas of interest very very well. A lot of the animations are also interesting in this game? They are strangely fluid in a way that scratches my brain lmao. The 2D sprites have non-tile based animation in battle, giving them a particularly lively look. (i really love how the applebat moves for instance)
The music knocks it out of the park, I really love all the tracks of the game and I'll be adding quite a few to my playlist soon : ]
I really only have a few criticisms - I think in the first 3-4 hours of the game there are quite a lot of cutscenes. I think it could do well to cut down on a few or allow the player to explore a little earlier. I also wish the girl characters in this game were allowed to be sillier - none of them really reach the silliness in design or personality of B-side, Dolus, Mr. Apricot, etc.
Otherwise, I really adored this game - I could definitely find myself coming back to it to replay one of these days. I really don't see where the lower scores are coming from - but one word of warning, please make sure to pick up the game again once you beat it!
Combat in this game is genuinely so smart. The game cleverly rewards players for interacting with its mini-games by offering big amounts of damage from perfecting them - especially enemy attacks. This means you are always on the offensive in combat, making battles very exciting for those that may not be "into" the turn based format. I love that statuses are also new and exciting in this game. Long gone are the days of turn based poison damage, here statuses effect you're ability to interact with the mini-games, which effects your damage. However if you are a skilled player, you will be able to overcome these hurdles - I really like this, the game is always finding ways of rewarding the player for playing it well.
The art style is very charming - I've genuinely not seen a game that looks quite like it. It's not afraid to throw little doodles in your face for a laugh and the switch from 2D sprites to 3D models in cutscenes is really interesting! It artistically separates the areas of interest very very well. A lot of the animations are also interesting in this game? They are strangely fluid in a way that scratches my brain lmao. The 2D sprites have non-tile based animation in battle, giving them a particularly lively look. (i really love how the applebat moves for instance)
The music knocks it out of the park, I really love all the tracks of the game and I'll be adding quite a few to my playlist soon : ]
I really only have a few criticisms - I think in the first 3-4 hours of the game there are quite a lot of cutscenes. I think it could do well to cut down on a few or allow the player to explore a little earlier. I also wish the girl characters in this game were allowed to be sillier - none of them really reach the silliness in design or personality of B-side, Dolus, Mr. Apricot, etc.
Otherwise, I really adored this game - I could definitely find myself coming back to it to replay one of these days. I really don't see where the lower scores are coming from - but one word of warning, please make sure to pick up the game again once you beat it!
Dolus.
god i feel like i had so many things i wanted to say about this game but now that i'm actually writing this review i'm left kinda speechless lol
visually, the game is phenomenal. it has all of these mediums it uses throughout and they all look awesome. i especially love the little animation the cursor does when a minigame starts and ends.
speaking of the minigames, they were pretty fun! except the bullet hell ones but i'm also just bad at dodging lol. they weren't too difficult to complete, but even if they were, the dev put in little settings you can adjust if the gameplay is too hard.
the story was...alright? i mean it wasn't especially moving to me, and the epilogue was a lil weird. it did have some moments that got a reaction out of me though so it's pretty good.
all in all it was fun to notice the little easter eggs and inspiration from other video games, and i'd totally love to see a dev commentary or something along the lines of that!
visually, the game is phenomenal. it has all of these mediums it uses throughout and they all look awesome. i especially love the little animation the cursor does when a minigame starts and ends.
speaking of the minigames, they were pretty fun! except the bullet hell ones but i'm also just bad at dodging lol. they weren't too difficult to complete, but even if they were, the dev put in little settings you can adjust if the gameplay is too hard.
the story was...alright? i mean it wasn't especially moving to me, and the epilogue was a lil weird. it did have some moments that got a reaction out of me though so it's pretty good.
all in all it was fun to notice the little easter eggs and inspiration from other video games, and i'd totally love to see a dev commentary or something along the lines of that!
Knuckle Sandwich was an exceptionally fun and easy game to run through. Despite the intriguing premise being dropped in favor of a scattered mystery plot contrived to send you around the game’s main island, I really enjoyed the individual chapters thanks in large part to the superb cast of characters Brophy cultivated as well as the exhilarating soundtrack and boss fights scattered throughout. Despite concerns with battles and their minigames growing stale, I found myself engaged with each and every encounter and was very satisfied in the end with my experience. I highly recommend you give this game a shot.
QUE PIKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
delightful earthbound-like with combat that's also mario&luigi mashed up with warioware microgames, and way more pokemon references than you'd even guess
the combat balance is... completely wacky to be honest, the offensive skills seem just completely worse than hitting Fight every turn and racking up combo bonus damage.
the story and writing are fun, but not much more than that. i wish it went a bit more deeper on character development and depth especially in regards to their relationships to you/the protag.
still makes for a great time though! full of secrets too if you're into that stuff. wanted a bit more out of it but still happy with what it was.
the combat balance is... completely wacky to be honest, the offensive skills seem just completely worse than hitting Fight every turn and racking up combo bonus damage.
the story and writing are fun, but not much more than that. i wish it went a bit more deeper on character development and depth especially in regards to their relationships to you/the protag.
still makes for a great time though! full of secrets too if you're into that stuff. wanted a bit more out of it but still happy with what it was.
i think i like this game
incredible start, great core loop( sorta? ), good tunes, fun mini sections and bosses, but the last third dragged and failed to live up to expectations.
kept going in weird new directions different than what it was going for up to that point which got tiring and unfun. when i realized i only paid $7 by backing early on kickstarter it bumped it up to a mid review but for a while i kinda hated it !!
incredible start, great core loop( sorta? ), good tunes, fun mini sections and bosses, but the last third dragged and failed to live up to expectations.
kept going in weird new directions different than what it was going for up to that point which got tiring and unfun. when i realized i only paid $7 by backing early on kickstarter it bumped it up to a mid review but for a while i kinda hated it !!
Was waiting for this game for ages and I was pretty excited based on the demo and music. I want to like it a lot, but unfortunately it just didn't hit the expectations I had for it. I would still say it's exactly what I expected it to be, but the execution of everything but its presentation just feels off. It's very obvious what the game is taking inspiration from but the way it emulates them just isn't on the same level.
I'm no expert on storytelling but the game puts so much emphasis on being weird at the start that I feel like it skips over some steps in character and world building. As a result, some later parts of the game fell flat for me. There are opportunities to explore the map beyond the story bits, but I had zero drive to do so.
The combat is fun but I fear some of the fights go on for a bit too long. A lot of the special skills felt only marginally better than just doing the normal attack mini-games. Stat changes didn't feel impactful at all and offensive consumables never felt useful. Normal attacks get one of three seemingly random forms, but the circle one always felt like the weakest for the most effort.
The inventory is limited in this game which is BY FAR the worst part. Maybe the intent is for me to be using consumables more regularly, but it never felt necessary so my limited slots we're full 90% of the time. You get enough items that I kept finding myself having to decide which one I'm going to throw out. There are times where you find an item and you don't even know what it does, but you have to decide if you want to toss something for it or not. Even worse, sometimes you have to drop an item to pick up a necessary key item. There is an item storage system, but they're too few and far between even after a patch meant to fix it.
Didn't dislike the game, but I wish it resonated with me a bit more. As a full work of art it's really amazing, but the game itself is just okay. Music is really incredible though, and that'll stick with me.
I'm no expert on storytelling but the game puts so much emphasis on being weird at the start that I feel like it skips over some steps in character and world building. As a result, some later parts of the game fell flat for me. There are opportunities to explore the map beyond the story bits, but I had zero drive to do so.
The combat is fun but I fear some of the fights go on for a bit too long. A lot of the special skills felt only marginally better than just doing the normal attack mini-games. Stat changes didn't feel impactful at all and offensive consumables never felt useful. Normal attacks get one of three seemingly random forms, but the circle one always felt like the weakest for the most effort.
The inventory is limited in this game which is BY FAR the worst part. Maybe the intent is for me to be using consumables more regularly, but it never felt necessary so my limited slots we're full 90% of the time. You get enough items that I kept finding myself having to decide which one I'm going to throw out. There are times where you find an item and you don't even know what it does, but you have to decide if you want to toss something for it or not. Even worse, sometimes you have to drop an item to pick up a necessary key item. There is an item storage system, but they're too few and far between even after a patch meant to fix it.
Didn't dislike the game, but I wish it resonated with me a bit more. As a full work of art it's really amazing, but the game itself is just okay. Music is really incredible though, and that'll stick with me.
I think it was really the combat it was just so frustrating. It felt like the enemies did more damage during their mini game attack than when you do yours. Also coming back a few months later to write this and I don't remember much about this game at all. It's very sporadic and imo not worth the price point. I wanted to love it but I think the RPG aspects were poorly thought out and end up being overly difficult as some enemies end up just being damage sponges even after you feel you've overleveled. Anyways has potential but it's safe to say that Andy might as well bring the knowledge from this game to another.
real tough one to rate, seems that's a common thread. It's stylish as fuck and I love the minigames battle system (not perfect, but infinitely more engaging and interesting than "hit attack and hope you don't miss"). There's just a sense of missed potential with this game. tldr i did really like it, it's artistically inspiring, it does a lot of things well...which just makes the shortcomings more obvious.
Your character never seems to be able to make any choices, and with the extremely limited inventory there aren't even many decisions to be made regarding battles, you either get good at the minigames or you don't. grinding seems pointless, since non-boss battles award you a pittance of Fortune Coins (if any!) and my level capped out before I beat the game. Normally in games like this I enjoy looking for little hidden items or character actions, but the stuff you do find seems inconsequential (found a new goblin? well you don't get to choose which one comes out during battle and they all behave the same...) or just fills up your inventory with garbage. Would've loved to see more side-quests, optional content, branching paths, character relationships, and for a game with this much love and charisma it's heartbreaking that in the end it's a pretty bland story, and digging any deeper yielded more frustration than awe.
Your character never seems to be able to make any choices, and with the extremely limited inventory there aren't even many decisions to be made regarding battles, you either get good at the minigames or you don't. grinding seems pointless, since non-boss battles award you a pittance of Fortune Coins (if any!) and my level capped out before I beat the game. Normally in games like this I enjoy looking for little hidden items or character actions, but the stuff you do find seems inconsequential (found a new goblin? well you don't get to choose which one comes out during battle and they all behave the same...) or just fills up your inventory with garbage. Would've loved to see more side-quests, optional content, branching paths, character relationships, and for a game with this much love and charisma it's heartbreaking that in the end it's a pretty bland story, and digging any deeper yielded more frustration than awe.
A labor of love, for better and for worse.
Really wanted to enjoy this. I have a lot of fondness for any indie product, particularly one as ambitious as this. The gameplay is incredibly elaborate, with WarioWare style minigames personalized for hundreds of enemy types. Charming character design. Extreme detail put into all sorts of chance dialogue and encounters. Beautiful pixel art, fun music. A visual spectacle.
But the story... leaves me cold. Protagonist arrives in a new city, gets a miserable job, and follows the pathway flags of the plot. The character goals, the wider stakes, the motivations of the characters... it just kind of blends together into following directions. I have always adored stories where one hapless protagonist is dragged into an increasingly stressful and absurd series of circumstances against their will. But the silent nature of the protagonist means they don't get to really react to the world around them. Undertale works a lot because of how much the cast kind of projects onto Frisk. Characters in Knuckle Sandwich kinda go "damn, that was crazy. Don't really know your deal btw, let's get drinks when you're free." That in itself would be compelling, but the characters never get that chance to get drinks and let personalities shine. Events occur, in an order, without much heart in them. The dev team clearly cared about what they were making- all the effort and craft demonstrates that love for this genre and game! But its hard to feel the foundational beating heart in the story to propel the narrative. Characters follow the plot checkpoints when their personalities should be driving the plot forward on its own.
It sucks because I really do enjoy the gameplay but when I've committed nine hours, am only half way through, and I still don't care about the characters, I'm just sort of... done. I couldn't invest myself in someone's silly little world and its hard to tell if they failed me or I failed them.
Really wanted to enjoy this. I have a lot of fondness for any indie product, particularly one as ambitious as this. The gameplay is incredibly elaborate, with WarioWare style minigames personalized for hundreds of enemy types. Charming character design. Extreme detail put into all sorts of chance dialogue and encounters. Beautiful pixel art, fun music. A visual spectacle.
But the story... leaves me cold. Protagonist arrives in a new city, gets a miserable job, and follows the pathway flags of the plot. The character goals, the wider stakes, the motivations of the characters... it just kind of blends together into following directions. I have always adored stories where one hapless protagonist is dragged into an increasingly stressful and absurd series of circumstances against their will. But the silent nature of the protagonist means they don't get to really react to the world around them. Undertale works a lot because of how much the cast kind of projects onto Frisk. Characters in Knuckle Sandwich kinda go "damn, that was crazy. Don't really know your deal btw, let's get drinks when you're free." That in itself would be compelling, but the characters never get that chance to get drinks and let personalities shine. Events occur, in an order, without much heart in them. The dev team clearly cared about what they were making- all the effort and craft demonstrates that love for this genre and game! But its hard to feel the foundational beating heart in the story to propel the narrative. Characters follow the plot checkpoints when their personalities should be driving the plot forward on its own.
It sucks because I really do enjoy the gameplay but when I've committed nine hours, am only half way through, and I still don't care about the characters, I'm just sort of... done. I couldn't invest myself in someone's silly little world and its hard to tell if they failed me or I failed them.
i might go back one day just to confirm my suspicions but the age old adage, "if the game's not fun, why bother?" is having me uninstall.
knuckle sandwich is an obvious labor of love with pleasant spritework/visuals and a great ost. that's all the praise i've got for it though. the worst thing that can happen as a "quirky earthbound-inspired rpg" developer is for a quirky earthbound-inspired rpg enjoyer to play your game.
on paper the idea of playing warioware-like minigames to spice up the monotony of rpg combat sounds awesome. in practice, it makes for even MORE tedium. get ready to play the same space shooter minigame multiple times even only in the first 3 hours. but i could stand a lack of variety if basic battles weren't unnecessarily drawn out because of this mechanic.
and i could also stand mediocre battles and gameplay if the writing carried its weight, but it doesn't. an interesting conceit is instantly tossed out for chaotic plot point after plot point, introducing seemingly unrelated characters and ideas that don't stick around long enough for you to develop any sort of attachment to. i fully admit that because i have not finished, this could change. but based on other reviews who share my sentiments even a quarter of the way through the game, i'm not optimistic it will.
simply put, i don't find it funny or charming on a base level, regardless of the overarching plot. it doesn't feel sincere; this feels like an rpg written and designed by someone who doesn't like or play rpgs. sweeping in with the promise of delivering your audience from the notorious tedium of jrpgs... but having padded battle times, mechanics that inspire even MORE tedium than your average rpgmaker grind game, a mind-bogglingly small inventory system (even smaller than earthbound's--that's crazy) requiring constant management, overcrowded dungeons that imply exploration will be rewarded (but it won't!), every kind of annoying dungeon puzzle you can think of... well, i don't know. feels like at some point you tapped out and were just going down a checklist.
knuckle sandwich is an obvious labor of love with pleasant spritework/visuals and a great ost. that's all the praise i've got for it though. the worst thing that can happen as a "quirky earthbound-inspired rpg" developer is for a quirky earthbound-inspired rpg enjoyer to play your game.
on paper the idea of playing warioware-like minigames to spice up the monotony of rpg combat sounds awesome. in practice, it makes for even MORE tedium. get ready to play the same space shooter minigame multiple times even only in the first 3 hours. but i could stand a lack of variety if basic battles weren't unnecessarily drawn out because of this mechanic.
and i could also stand mediocre battles and gameplay if the writing carried its weight, but it doesn't. an interesting conceit is instantly tossed out for chaotic plot point after plot point, introducing seemingly unrelated characters and ideas that don't stick around long enough for you to develop any sort of attachment to. i fully admit that because i have not finished, this could change. but based on other reviews who share my sentiments even a quarter of the way through the game, i'm not optimistic it will.
simply put, i don't find it funny or charming on a base level, regardless of the overarching plot. it doesn't feel sincere; this feels like an rpg written and designed by someone who doesn't like or play rpgs. sweeping in with the promise of delivering your audience from the notorious tedium of jrpgs... but having padded battle times, mechanics that inspire even MORE tedium than your average rpgmaker grind game, a mind-bogglingly small inventory system (even smaller than earthbound's--that's crazy) requiring constant management, overcrowded dungeons that imply exploration will be rewarded (but it won't!), every kind of annoying dungeon puzzle you can think of... well, i don't know. feels like at some point you tapped out and were just going down a checklist.
First I'm gonna say this, unlike a lot of early players for this game, I was not a backer or a religious follower. Some time ago I saw that a silly indie RPG in a modern setting with a unique concept for combat was being made and I wishlisted it. Outside of a few snippets, I didn't know much before playing it.
This game starts off really wacky and I love it. Its simply throwing joke after joke, minigame after minigame, and its all really fun while establishing the game's really silly and hyper sense of humor and wacky variety in gameplay. And I'll say it now, the humor is the highlight of the game for me. It consistently had me laughing at almost every cutscene that attempted funnies and a good chunk of NPC dialog got a solid nose exhale out of me. So in terms of being weird and goofy, the game gets an A+ for me.
Then it just, and I'll keep this vague for spoiler reasons, randomly pulls a... Very dark twist out of nowhere. It's completely jarring, and I don't think it was supposed to be a joke. For a minute it kind of plays up the guilt and scale of what happened. "Okay" I thought, "this isn't what I expected at all but, hey, I wasn't immediately into how dark Omori got, and that's one of my favorite games ever." The only problem is that Knuckle Sandwich doesn't really focus on that. Knuckle Sandwich doesn't really focus on... Anything, unfortunately. Right around here, completely contrasting that, you get a big exposition dump about some sci-fi fantastical nonsense on how the world works as we explore some weird glitch world. So already I'm a bit confused on what they want to explore, and then when you get out the game begins to set up a mysterious conspiracy sort of maybe loosely related to what was dumped on you probably, Bus Driver isn't entirely sure at least.
Like, okay? Is this a grim comedy with dark themes, a modern fantasy adventure, or a conspiracy mystery story? It feels like the game tries to do all three at once and can't really focus on any of them. Even outside of story content, the required overworld minigames pretty much vanish after you get party members and not too long after the burger joint the game is named after just goes into the background until near the ending. This game is so dissociated it feels entirely different at the beginning, middle, and ending. The dark stuff after the mystery properly begins outside of a couple vague references completely vanishes until and I'm not joking the last section of the last proper dungeon of the game. The weird fantastical stuff also vanishes for large chunks of the middle of the game as you're exploring more of Bright City, my man Bus Driver stops hooking you up with info outside of a few set points once you get far enough, and even then all he usually has to say is "Maybe the info is here? Idk."
The conspiracy angle I guess fits this game the best, but it just doesn't explore it well enough. You spend a huge chunk of the game chasing a rival party that ends up meaning very little in the grand scheme of things. And god the actual twist on what's really going on is so freaking silly and hardly set-up since the game spent so much time exploring other stuff. The main "foreshadowing" is a running gag where I can't even tell how it would work in-universe. This would be fine if the game was all silly and goofy, but no right after the villain does some disastrous crap that's so freaking jarring, and then the game just... Moves on! Like yeah sure nothing to explore there.
I just did not care for the endgame of Knuckle Sandwich at all. It pulls back in the other two concepts it was exploring in a haphazard way that just seems so confused. Elaborating on the dark stuff after hours of not acknowledging it, pushing the fantastical elements front and center to the point where after the final boss the game just delves into complete goofy nonsense that while pretty funny feels like it undermines the game, and again, has a really unsatisfying twist of a conclusion.
So yeah... I'm not very big on the story if that isn't clear enough. However, I don't really have only bad to say about "story" scenes surprisingly enough.
Once again the humor is excellent, whenever the game is doing dumb Mario & Luigi-type shenanigans, I was fully into it. The many scenarios that crowded the middle of the game were also pretty amusing or interesting. Yeah doing random crap around this cruise ship is pretty much filler, but it's fun, and that's what I was looking for. I liked some of the characters, too. None of them are explored all that much, but I was happy when Echo, Thea, Bus Driver, and especially Brightside were around. The overworld was nice too, NPCs are great, sometimes they feel like they have their own little punchlines and progression as they appear throughout the game. The dungeons were fun too, nothing crazy but I think they struck a good balance of puzzles versus combat. I didn't find much in the overworld to explore outside of those, but what I did find was neat. Got really into the arcade minigames especially.
But hey, the story isn't what got me interested in the game. It was the combat, and... Yeah, it's pretty good! WarioWare is a series that has a special place in my heart and the idea of combining it with a typical turn-based RPG sounds ridiculous yet sort of genius. Dodging enemy attacks never got old to me, I love how sometimes the minigames make sense for what the enemy is and sometimes it's just "Play golf and avoid hitting the cow." While most are pretty basic with ideas I've seen many times before, they were still fun with very few exceptions.
This is where I start nitpicking.
First off, attacking. There are three minigames for regular attacks, which are all fun, but the circle one is way too strong. It's just easier and has way more damage potential and often for me resulted in getting wins way earlier. There's also the minigames for special attacks which are fun but man you just don't get that many. Each character gets like two? I was getting really sick of using beat up on the protagonist, hell, he doesn't get many skills at all considering you have him the whole game. Equipping skills as items is an option but those are limited by your small, occasionally annoying inventory, and even smaller amount of equipment options.
Party member balance seems to be an issue in general. You don't get to choose your partner until the late game but I don't know why you would choose anyone aside from Thea, it took me a while to realize it but her flare up skill just freaking breaks her with how strong she can get on gop of her pretty easy skill attack minigames. Thankfully though I think the difficulty is handled well to (mostly) offset that and most other things in the game. You can customize minigame difficulty and how much damage you take in percentages of 10 perfectly to fit how hard you want the game to be, on top of other options like autoheal or disabling EXP all together. I thought a lot of this game was too easy but after customizing it it felt just right. Only thing that seems annoying with challenge runs using those are those undodgeable attacks that hit everyone, those just feel cheap. Only other complaint I think worth mentioning is that I think a lot of bosses go on just a tad bit too long, but don't let that distract from the fact that overall, I had fun battling in this game. It's fast-paced, fun, and always kept my attention with what they were going to throw at me next. I was never flat-out sick of battling, which even happens for combat systems I love, and I think this game's fast pace is to thank for that.
And this all makes me feel really conflicted. I was having a good time running through this game, laughing at all the ridiculous scenes, getting into fun battles with the goofiest systems, and absolutely digging the GBA-inspired aesthetic and music which is just overall really solid. However, now when I think about this game having beaten it, my thoughts are just soured by just how disappointed I was with the story and how unhappy I am with how it unraveled in the ending. I mean how much of this review was just me being confused on what it was even going for? I don't know, I feel like I'm being too harsh. This game clearly had a lot of heart put into it, but it almost feels as if the game was so excited to put out all of its ideas that it got kind of lost on the way of doing it. I guess it's decent overall? I do see a lot of potential here, and Andy Brophy seems like a lovable dude, so I'm definitely interested in seeing what he cooks up in the future.
This game starts off really wacky and I love it. Its simply throwing joke after joke, minigame after minigame, and its all really fun while establishing the game's really silly and hyper sense of humor and wacky variety in gameplay. And I'll say it now, the humor is the highlight of the game for me. It consistently had me laughing at almost every cutscene that attempted funnies and a good chunk of NPC dialog got a solid nose exhale out of me. So in terms of being weird and goofy, the game gets an A+ for me.
Then it just, and I'll keep this vague for spoiler reasons, randomly pulls a... Very dark twist out of nowhere. It's completely jarring, and I don't think it was supposed to be a joke. For a minute it kind of plays up the guilt and scale of what happened. "Okay" I thought, "this isn't what I expected at all but, hey, I wasn't immediately into how dark Omori got, and that's one of my favorite games ever." The only problem is that Knuckle Sandwich doesn't really focus on that. Knuckle Sandwich doesn't really focus on... Anything, unfortunately. Right around here, completely contrasting that, you get a big exposition dump about some sci-fi fantastical nonsense on how the world works as we explore some weird glitch world. So already I'm a bit confused on what they want to explore, and then when you get out the game begins to set up a mysterious conspiracy sort of maybe loosely related to what was dumped on you probably, Bus Driver isn't entirely sure at least.
Like, okay? Is this a grim comedy with dark themes, a modern fantasy adventure, or a conspiracy mystery story? It feels like the game tries to do all three at once and can't really focus on any of them. Even outside of story content, the required overworld minigames pretty much vanish after you get party members and not too long after the burger joint the game is named after just goes into the background until near the ending. This game is so dissociated it feels entirely different at the beginning, middle, and ending. The dark stuff after the mystery properly begins outside of a couple vague references completely vanishes until and I'm not joking the last section of the last proper dungeon of the game. The weird fantastical stuff also vanishes for large chunks of the middle of the game as you're exploring more of Bright City, my man Bus Driver stops hooking you up with info outside of a few set points once you get far enough, and even then all he usually has to say is "Maybe the info is here? Idk."
The conspiracy angle I guess fits this game the best, but it just doesn't explore it well enough. You spend a huge chunk of the game chasing a rival party that ends up meaning very little in the grand scheme of things. And god the actual twist on what's really going on is so freaking silly and hardly set-up since the game spent so much time exploring other stuff. The main "foreshadowing" is a running gag where I can't even tell how it would work in-universe. This would be fine if the game was all silly and goofy, but no right after the villain does some disastrous crap that's so freaking jarring, and then the game just... Moves on! Like yeah sure nothing to explore there.
I just did not care for the endgame of Knuckle Sandwich at all. It pulls back in the other two concepts it was exploring in a haphazard way that just seems so confused. Elaborating on the dark stuff after hours of not acknowledging it, pushing the fantastical elements front and center to the point where after the final boss the game just delves into complete goofy nonsense that while pretty funny feels like it undermines the game, and again, has a really unsatisfying twist of a conclusion.
So yeah... I'm not very big on the story if that isn't clear enough. However, I don't really have only bad to say about "story" scenes surprisingly enough.
Once again the humor is excellent, whenever the game is doing dumb Mario & Luigi-type shenanigans, I was fully into it. The many scenarios that crowded the middle of the game were also pretty amusing or interesting. Yeah doing random crap around this cruise ship is pretty much filler, but it's fun, and that's what I was looking for. I liked some of the characters, too. None of them are explored all that much, but I was happy when Echo, Thea, Bus Driver, and especially Brightside were around. The overworld was nice too, NPCs are great, sometimes they feel like they have their own little punchlines and progression as they appear throughout the game. The dungeons were fun too, nothing crazy but I think they struck a good balance of puzzles versus combat. I didn't find much in the overworld to explore outside of those, but what I did find was neat. Got really into the arcade minigames especially.
But hey, the story isn't what got me interested in the game. It was the combat, and... Yeah, it's pretty good! WarioWare is a series that has a special place in my heart and the idea of combining it with a typical turn-based RPG sounds ridiculous yet sort of genius. Dodging enemy attacks never got old to me, I love how sometimes the minigames make sense for what the enemy is and sometimes it's just "Play golf and avoid hitting the cow." While most are pretty basic with ideas I've seen many times before, they were still fun with very few exceptions.
This is where I start nitpicking.
First off, attacking. There are three minigames for regular attacks, which are all fun, but the circle one is way too strong. It's just easier and has way more damage potential and often for me resulted in getting wins way earlier. There's also the minigames for special attacks which are fun but man you just don't get that many. Each character gets like two? I was getting really sick of using beat up on the protagonist, hell, he doesn't get many skills at all considering you have him the whole game. Equipping skills as items is an option but those are limited by your small, occasionally annoying inventory, and even smaller amount of equipment options.
Party member balance seems to be an issue in general. You don't get to choose your partner until the late game but I don't know why you would choose anyone aside from Thea, it took me a while to realize it but her flare up skill just freaking breaks her with how strong she can get on gop of her pretty easy skill attack minigames. Thankfully though I think the difficulty is handled well to (mostly) offset that and most other things in the game. You can customize minigame difficulty and how much damage you take in percentages of 10 perfectly to fit how hard you want the game to be, on top of other options like autoheal or disabling EXP all together. I thought a lot of this game was too easy but after customizing it it felt just right. Only thing that seems annoying with challenge runs using those are those undodgeable attacks that hit everyone, those just feel cheap. Only other complaint I think worth mentioning is that I think a lot of bosses go on just a tad bit too long, but don't let that distract from the fact that overall, I had fun battling in this game. It's fast-paced, fun, and always kept my attention with what they were going to throw at me next. I was never flat-out sick of battling, which even happens for combat systems I love, and I think this game's fast pace is to thank for that.
And this all makes me feel really conflicted. I was having a good time running through this game, laughing at all the ridiculous scenes, getting into fun battles with the goofiest systems, and absolutely digging the GBA-inspired aesthetic and music which is just overall really solid. However, now when I think about this game having beaten it, my thoughts are just soured by just how disappointed I was with the story and how unhappy I am with how it unraveled in the ending. I mean how much of this review was just me being confused on what it was even going for? I don't know, I feel like I'm being too harsh. This game clearly had a lot of heart put into it, but it almost feels as if the game was so excited to put out all of its ideas that it got kind of lost on the way of doing it. I guess it's decent overall? I do see a lot of potential here, and Andy Brophy seems like a lovable dude, so I'm definitely interested in seeing what he cooks up in the future.
I'm not sure what to think about this game.
The Earthbound/WarioWare/Mario RPG inspirations are apparent, and I was a fan of the combat at first, but it became more and more frustrating as time went on.
The concept of fighting and countering attacks using WarioWare-like minigames seemed brilliant on paper, but most minigames grew old fast. Not to mention that I was in a constant flux of feeling under-powered and over-powered at the same time. Fights tend to drag on a bit too long for comfort, due to the often low damage output from the player characters, the length of certain minigames, and most, if not all enemies act more than once per turn. Moreover, the minigames you play have multiple difficulty levels, which may be possible to beat unscathed at first, but become nigh-impossible to beat later on. This in combination with the fact that when you eventually fail these minigames and get hit by an attack, they hit like a goddamn truck, which further cements the feeling of constantly being weak. This issue can't be remediated by grinding either, since all enemies are static encounters that never respawn.
I did mention feeling over-powered too, right? Yeah, sometimes. The circle attack which is randomly selected among 3 normal attacks is more overpowered than it should be as pulling off a ridiculously high combo is way too easy. This trivialized the use of damaging skills entirely as these seldom reached the same damage output as the circle attack. There's also a super move that needs to be charged up passively that deals ridiculous amounts of damage. One use of the super move kills most enemies instantly and shaves off a great chunk of health off most bosses. The only downside is that it takes a really long time for it to charge. This becomes a problem during boss fights as it's seemingly expected that you're gonna use it at least once during the fight, due to the massive HP pools that they are given. This means that boss fights turn into a waiting game where you shave off what little HP you can while trying to stay alive until you can use your super.
So, I'm obviously not too happy with the combat, but what about the rest of the game? I'll start off with what I liked, and that would be the music and aesthetics. It has the general weird and quirky Earthbound feel, and I'm all for it. However, one quirk from Earthbound which shouldn't have been brought over is the limited inventory. It kind of worked in Earthbound without too much of a hassle, but it's just absurd here. I never bought anything in shops because I knew that I'd just have to throw whatever I bought away later to make room for something more important.
What about the story? I wish I could tell you about it, but it was such a mess that most of it slipped my mind. There's something something conspiracy, something something evil gang, something something solving the mystery, but I couldn't tell you more than that. All in all, it didn't strike a cord with me.
This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023, and I'm sad to say that I almost quit on it halfway through out of frustration and lack of engagement. There's so much potential and charm here, but a lot of it falls flat on its ass.
The Earthbound/WarioWare/Mario RPG inspirations are apparent, and I was a fan of the combat at first, but it became more and more frustrating as time went on.
The concept of fighting and countering attacks using WarioWare-like minigames seemed brilliant on paper, but most minigames grew old fast. Not to mention that I was in a constant flux of feeling under-powered and over-powered at the same time. Fights tend to drag on a bit too long for comfort, due to the often low damage output from the player characters, the length of certain minigames, and most, if not all enemies act more than once per turn. Moreover, the minigames you play have multiple difficulty levels, which may be possible to beat unscathed at first, but become nigh-impossible to beat later on. This in combination with the fact that when you eventually fail these minigames and get hit by an attack, they hit like a goddamn truck, which further cements the feeling of constantly being weak. This issue can't be remediated by grinding either, since all enemies are static encounters that never respawn.
I did mention feeling over-powered too, right? Yeah, sometimes. The circle attack which is randomly selected among 3 normal attacks is more overpowered than it should be as pulling off a ridiculously high combo is way too easy. This trivialized the use of damaging skills entirely as these seldom reached the same damage output as the circle attack. There's also a super move that needs to be charged up passively that deals ridiculous amounts of damage. One use of the super move kills most enemies instantly and shaves off a great chunk of health off most bosses. The only downside is that it takes a really long time for it to charge. This becomes a problem during boss fights as it's seemingly expected that you're gonna use it at least once during the fight, due to the massive HP pools that they are given. This means that boss fights turn into a waiting game where you shave off what little HP you can while trying to stay alive until you can use your super.
So, I'm obviously not too happy with the combat, but what about the rest of the game? I'll start off with what I liked, and that would be the music and aesthetics. It has the general weird and quirky Earthbound feel, and I'm all for it. However, one quirk from Earthbound which shouldn't have been brought over is the limited inventory. It kind of worked in Earthbound without too much of a hassle, but it's just absurd here. I never bought anything in shops because I knew that I'd just have to throw whatever I bought away later to make room for something more important.
What about the story? I wish I could tell you about it, but it was such a mess that most of it slipped my mind. There's something something conspiracy, something something evil gang, something something solving the mystery, but I couldn't tell you more than that. All in all, it didn't strike a cord with me.
This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023, and I'm sad to say that I almost quit on it halfway through out of frustration and lack of engagement. There's so much potential and charm here, but a lot of it falls flat on its ass.
The negative implications of Undertale being the most popular anti turn-based RPG are starting to show
there's a bug where the game plays faster if your monitor has a high refresh rate
so i played the whole game on 2.5x speed
and honestly? it ruled. more games should be 2.5x faster than they should be
so i played the whole game on 2.5x speed
and honestly? it ruled. more games should be 2.5x faster than they should be
Warioware x Earthbound sign me up
I'm really happy to say that knuckle sandwich was not a casualty of its decade long development cycle. The amount of time spent on this game shows in the density of novelty, one-off mechanics, visual gags and high effort set pieces, especially in the combat encounters, comparable to that of deltarune chapter 2, a game made by a man with infinite money.
Those combat encounters are, in many ways, the highlight of the entire experience. Between the unique mini games given to almost every enemy and definitely every boss, the psychedelic procedural backgrounds that accommodate them, and the regular breaks from format to make a single joke, knuckle sandwich is a breezy experience that rarely overstays its welcome even if you feel as conflicted about other parts of it as I do (more later). I did find the game's maths to be confusing and kind of unpolished, with numerous skills shockingly under tuned, others over tuned, and a really inconsistent approach two enemies health and defence stats that make it very difficult to tell if you're actually doing decent damage for any particular encounter.
I'd like to give particular praise to the game's OST, created by a bunch of independent artists who aren't necessarily in games, and God does it show! Swagger and personality oozes out of every track and manages to make even some of the least interesting locations shine through sound. Special props to the standard battle tracks "Handsome Humans" and "Fearsome Freaks" as well as "Nothing Sweeter" and "Brightfang Lash".
In broad spoiler free terms, the story and writing writ large is the biggest letdown of the game. Knuckle sandwich has whimsy, much like many indie RPGs of its lineage, but it doesn't have much in the way of emotion. Your party characters barely allow you to endear yourself to them by letting you know basically anything about them (the most i ever got was one character being a former athlete who struggles with chronic health issues, said once in optional dialogue). All characters in general could serve to be A bit more intense and punchy than they are? For the simpler archetypes to land. The strong thematic basis of "being a young person working sucks" doesn't last, and with the story being almost entirely driven by a very simple plot, knuckle sandwich is left feeling like it's about nothing but very, VERY gentle satire for most of its runtime. That's about all I can say without delving into plot details.
Ultimately, knuckle sandwich is a very light and breezy time, at a crisp 10-15 hours, full of novelty and virtuosic presentation, but struggles to be a story worth the grandiosity of the JRPG format. In other words, it's a really good Mario and Luigi game.
Those combat encounters are, in many ways, the highlight of the entire experience. Between the unique mini games given to almost every enemy and definitely every boss, the psychedelic procedural backgrounds that accommodate them, and the regular breaks from format to make a single joke, knuckle sandwich is a breezy experience that rarely overstays its welcome even if you feel as conflicted about other parts of it as I do (more later). I did find the game's maths to be confusing and kind of unpolished, with numerous skills shockingly under tuned, others over tuned, and a really inconsistent approach two enemies health and defence stats that make it very difficult to tell if you're actually doing decent damage for any particular encounter.
I'd like to give particular praise to the game's OST, created by a bunch of independent artists who aren't necessarily in games, and God does it show! Swagger and personality oozes out of every track and manages to make even some of the least interesting locations shine through sound. Special props to the standard battle tracks "Handsome Humans" and "Fearsome Freaks" as well as "Nothing Sweeter" and "Brightfang Lash".
In broad spoiler free terms, the story and writing writ large is the biggest letdown of the game. Knuckle sandwich has whimsy, much like many indie RPGs of its lineage, but it doesn't have much in the way of emotion. Your party characters barely allow you to endear yourself to them by letting you know basically anything about them (the most i ever got was one character being a former athlete who struggles with chronic health issues, said once in optional dialogue). All characters in general could serve to be A bit more intense and punchy than they are? For the simpler archetypes to land. The strong thematic basis of "being a young person working sucks" doesn't last, and with the story being almost entirely driven by a very simple plot, knuckle sandwich is left feeling like it's about nothing but very, VERY gentle satire for most of its runtime. That's about all I can say without delving into plot details.
Ultimately, knuckle sandwich is a very light and breezy time, at a crisp 10-15 hours, full of novelty and virtuosic presentation, but struggles to be a story worth the grandiosity of the JRPG format. In other words, it's a really good Mario and Luigi game.
Es un juego que tiene muchísimas buenas intenciones, que se ve quiere dar homenaje y mostrar amor por sus muy claras influencias, pero por problemas como su dirección casi que completamente perdida, mecánicas de rpg sin un solo pensamiento de balanceo (cosas como que la mayoría de los stats no cambian absolutamente nada el daño que haces o recibes en los combates, está tan mal que el juego directamente te da la opción de saltarte casi todos los combates) y una historia con unos personajes que el juego quiere que le importen al jugador pero que nunca lo logra pues hace que cueste bastante de recomendar.
Millennials gonna love the dialogue in this game 😰
AKA We need to call Earthbound clones something else because this is Something Else
A solid Earthbound-like with minigame combat and a bizarre aesthetic. A fun romp but not quite enough to hold my attention to the end.
A solid Earthbound-like with minigame combat and a bizarre aesthetic. A fun romp but not quite enough to hold my attention to the end.
good game, just weak in some areas.
edit: the more I think about this game the more I really enjoyed it.
edit: the more I think about this game the more I really enjoyed it.
Knuckle Sandwich is REALLY close to being an absolutely perfectly uneven game. If it pulled one or two fewer punches near the end I'd totally forgive it for how much the plot meanders from one rushed plot thread to another rushed plot thread, hell I'd even see the game's sometimes clumsy sometimes downright abrasive design as a plus not a minus. It's like, already in the range of simulating the confusing absurd agency-killing sometimes brutal mundanities of service industry life, if it could just take that laaaast stretch over the whole thing would fit like a glove and I'd call it a miracle game whose disparate pieces somehow manage to line up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Christ, it's not like the game doesn't deserve it, every bit of it is brimming with this loving attention to detail, all these new and fun and lively bits that just keep winning you back in every time the game feels like it's daring you to lose interest in it outright. I want for nothing else than for Knuckle Sandwich to be the kinda sleeper hit that filters everyone but the Realest Kinosseurs of true Ludonarrative Mastery.
... but the future refused to change.
... but the future refused to change.
This is such a cool game. I wish it was good.
Like, there are so many banger moments and I love the surreal vibe, but the archaic inventory management, scattershot storyline, and Super Paper Mario tier level design holds it back significantly.
Still, the surreal nature, endearing main cast, and the absolutely bonkers battle system keep this game in the green for me.
Like, there are so many banger moments and I love the surreal vibe, but the archaic inventory management, scattershot storyline, and Super Paper Mario tier level design holds it back significantly.
Still, the surreal nature, endearing main cast, and the absolutely bonkers battle system keep this game in the green for me.
A labor of love. It is easily apparent how much thought and care went into every aspect of this game. The visuals, OST, and writing are absolutely incredible. I think the story could use a little tightening up, however it's apparent the writer was pulling inspiration from many different places and I can respect that. This game is an easy recommend for the price and I hope you like Busdriver as much as I did. Thanks, Andy!