Upon my initial playthrough of Ikenfell I was left less than impressed. There are very few games that change my opinion from bad to good upon a second try, and if I'm being entirely honest, nine times out of ten, it's usually the opposite. Ikenfell must have left an impression on me because after playing it I couldn't seem to forget it and every time I saw it in the Gamepass catalogue I would have a strange urge to do another playthrough. Finally seeing it go on sale for Playstation I gave in and bought Ikenfell.

After finishing my second run of the game, I was left with a completely different experience than the first in almost every way. For starters, I wasn't too keen on the characters originally and felt they were kind of stereotypical and didn't have much to offer. I also didn't care too much for Ikenfell's narrative and that I felt it was a little over the top, melodramatic, and immature. Now, I feel the opposite because I find the characters charming and endearing. Even though I don't think they were written with great depth, the game does show the characters to have their own flaws and struggles to make them feel relatable. As far as the story, I still find it somewhat exaggerated and a little silly, but I grew to like it a lot more this time around.  Ikenfell's storytelling is a little simplistic, but also has more emotion than I gave it credit for.
 
Sadly, the only the thing I really didn't change my opinion on was the battle system, though I did give it more of a chance by playing legit this time. Being honest, I did turn off the timing for the attack/defend prompts because I found it to be tedious. Since I didn't choose to skip all the battles in a rush to get to the story, I was able to go through the all the characters spells and attacks which the games give you a lot of. The spells were something that I enjoyed experimenting with and it was fun to see what magic did what. Most of the battles are not that bad and can be finished somewhat quickly, especially if you know how to utilize your attacks, but as the game goes on the more the battles seem to draw out due to a lot of the enemies calling for reinforcements. About three fourths into the game I did turn on auto-victory because I just didn't want to spend a lot of time fighting random enemies.

Overall:
 
There is a lot about Ikenfell that I came to appreciate while playing this time and I might not have if I didn't give the game another chance. The game isn't perfect, but it's still a nice little indie game filled with heart.
 
Pros:
+likable cast of characters
+decent story
+charming art design
+fun world exploration and puzzles
+in game cheats to skip battles
+nice catchy soundtrack
 
Cons:
-characters/story can be a little over dramatic at times
-battles can be boring and drawn out

Reviewed on Dec 24, 2022


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