A cool concept that's hard for me to love because it kept annoying me juuust so.
First of all, the core gameplay rules. The rhythm combat feels good and the aesthetic is cool. I like the enemy designs a lot. They're all really readable, and hit a good sweet spot between silly and dangerous. Animating the cutscenes on the beat helps you stay in the groove and makes everything feel satisfyingly unified.
On the other hand, I hate the characters. Especially the done-to-death dynamic of absolute loser dipshit player character and hyper-competent lady support who's constantly exasperated with him. Cliche characters can be ok if you don't let them take focus, but by the end, they're trying to force me to have emotional investment in these people. Sorry! I don't care about this montage of their paper thin relationships, I just want to go fight the final boss.
Additionally, the gameplay hits some of my action game pet peeves.
1) Having to cycle through equipment in battle. Three support characters are exactly enough to lose track of which you have active. Very annoying to call the wrong person cause you mixed up the order. Also very solvable with any control scheme: call button + a button for each character
2) QTEs happening at the same time as a cool cutscene. This one confuses me. You know I'm looking at the QTE! Why would you put the cool action elsewhere on the screen?
So in the end, I enjoyed myself... fine. 3.5 feels low, but 4.0 feels high for a game where I basically loved the combat but have no interest in going back for more post credits. In summary, Backloggd, please allow me to rate things 3.9 for games that are good, but need to be punished for annoying me slightly, thank you.
First of all, the core gameplay rules. The rhythm combat feels good and the aesthetic is cool. I like the enemy designs a lot. They're all really readable, and hit a good sweet spot between silly and dangerous. Animating the cutscenes on the beat helps you stay in the groove and makes everything feel satisfyingly unified.
On the other hand, I hate the characters. Especially the done-to-death dynamic of absolute loser dipshit player character and hyper-competent lady support who's constantly exasperated with him. Cliche characters can be ok if you don't let them take focus, but by the end, they're trying to force me to have emotional investment in these people. Sorry! I don't care about this montage of their paper thin relationships, I just want to go fight the final boss.
Additionally, the gameplay hits some of my action game pet peeves.
1) Having to cycle through equipment in battle. Three support characters are exactly enough to lose track of which you have active. Very annoying to call the wrong person cause you mixed up the order. Also very solvable with any control scheme: call button + a button for each character
2) QTEs happening at the same time as a cool cutscene. This one confuses me. You know I'm looking at the QTE! Why would you put the cool action elsewhere on the screen?
So in the end, I enjoyed myself... fine. 3.5 feels low, but 4.0 feels high for a game where I basically loved the combat but have no interest in going back for more post credits. In summary, Backloggd, please allow me to rate things 3.9 for games that are good, but need to be punished for annoying me slightly, thank you.