2020

This review contains spoilers

Good:
-Absolutely adore the main cast.
-Art style is very unique and suits the game very well, the hand-drawn animated style and the nostalgic photography really distinguishes the childhood world.
-Great soundtrack, while not every song is super memorable there are defo some bangers here and there.
-Really pulls at the heartstrings, some scenes capture some really powerful emotional moments.
-Certain battles were done pretty well and hold a lot of emotional weight, such as the Church encounter with Aubrey.
-Combats ok for what it is, using emotions as an RPS system works quite well.

Bad:
-Pacing is a bit shit, I get that theyre trying tell a story with the real world and the child world but the "unusual" moments inbetween sort get in way of the pacing. You never really know if its Omori or Sunny dealing with which traumatic experiences.
-Some of the heavy moments are teased for way too long.
-The quirky "imaginary" characters are a tad forgettable, some of their stages were a bit too long as well.
-Tedious puzzles such as the sprout queue and Humphreys
-These characters also seemed to have little to do with the main cast outside of "oh we played/watched/read that as kids". (Also what the hell was the Whale/Witches about?)
-Why was there so much focus on Sweethearts character arc that went nowhere?

-decent combat system could have been explored more with deeper fights.
-bit too many "credits roll" moments, many scenes hinted "that was it" but it just kinda kept going.
-"disturbing earthboundy-ness" game feel with these kind of rpgs has been done to death at this point. A lot of it was necessary and is good in its context but a lot of the disturbing parts felt like they were just there for the hell of it (the black space doors). I get that the game started development 6 years ago so it wasn't as overdone at that point, it's an unfortunate timing with the release. In fact I imagine if this was released a few years ago the "earthboundy" problem wouldn't be much of an issue.
-final fight was kinda unfullfilling, there was very little strategy or skill to it compare to say Undertale where it is monumental gameplay wise as well as story wise.

What I'd do different:
-Make some of the quirky headspacs worlds and levels a tad shorter, have the fictional characters that they grew up with relate more to their realworld selves. Example: The Space Captain character could reprimand Omori for distracting himself with his Cartoon universe instead of dealing with his trauma properly.
--This will in a sense make the "headspace" world's story more worthwhile, because its beginning to reflect the actions/consequences of what the characters did in the real world.

-Include much more harder fights that aren't just paced to conveniantly to tie in with character dialogue. Really test the player in the heat of an emotional moment.
-Have a full blown encounter between the childworld chars and their real world selves. Or better yet have the main cast in the realworld temporarily use their childhood powers one last time. This could be your moment to really test the player on everything they've learned about your game.
-Give more flashbacks and context as to why Mari/Sunny had the argument which eventually led to "that moment". This is arguably the most crucial moment of the entire story, clearly there was some animosity growing between Mari/Sunny yet we never see any of it?
-Spend less time on "lol gruesome Basil imagery" and more time on explaining/describing why he does the things he does. What's his motive? Why does he feel the way he does outside of "we dun fucked up Sunny".
-Have Aubrey beat the ever loving shit outta Basil after the end credits for the good ending

Personal note:
I've been following Omocats progress on this for about 3 years and I'm really happy that they managed to get this done. One day I hope to share this same feeling with my own project!