Le top niveau du Rogue-like, avec plusieurs personnages, des armes à n'en plus finir avec des effets surpuissants, loufoques, parfois nuls mais toujours différents. Des boss qui varient entre les runs et une difficulté accrue qui va vous pousser à devenir bon au jeu si vous voulez en venir à bout (ce qui n'est pas mon cas malgré 50 heures de jeu). Chaque personnage offre une fin qui lui est propre avec son propre boss. Le jeu contient aussi de nombreuses références, secrets, ainsi que des zones alternatives cachées pour toujours plus varier vos runs.

Stray Gods is a choice-based visual novel-esque adventure with a twist: in-game musicals! And they're good. Like, really good.

So, to start, let's go over the negatives, because there are a lot fewer of those than there are positives. To start, I think the story is a bit basic. I mean, it's definitely good, and compelling enough to have kept me going, but it was definitely one of the weaker elements of the game, which felt a bit weird for this type of game. I didn't think the mystery was particularly mysterious, and I think it might have been foreshadowed a bit too heavily. There's also some weird issues with the audio balancing, some lines are really quiet and others are really loud, seemingly unintentionally. It was never uncomfortable, but it was notable, and I was thankful for subtitles. And, of course, my absolute biggest criticism: I can't replay the songs. This one hurt! Even if it was only the versions I had actually chosen, that'd be fine! I want to hear them again, they're so freaking good!

Beyond that, the game's a little buggy. There were a few scenes where Grace's character art just kind of vanished for a few moments? It was a bit odd. The frame rate was also really wonky, occasionally running at my native refresh rate and sometimes locking at 30, but it wasn't really a big deal for this type of game. There was also one time where a line of dialogue got skipped over somehow. But that's about it for the issues.

Now for the positives... The art is great. Every character looked fantastic, almost every scene was incredibly pleasing to look at. The color shifts were done so well based on your choices during musicals, really emphasizing the type of music that Grace went for. The musicals are incredible. I was really shocked at how adaptive they felt, I expected minor changes at most based on your choices, but they actually seem to change a ton. It was a really nice surprise and makes me want to play through the game again almost immediately! It helps, of course, that almost all of them were just so damn good. It's really tough to pick a favorite!

Speaking of those characters - the characters are really well done in this game. I stepped away surprisingly happy with... All of their characterizations? It was incredible that there just simply wasn't a character I disliked. I couldn't even say that for some of my favorite games of all time! I loved the relationships that could form. And for what criticism I gave the story, it does really have its moments, in large part thanks to how good the characters were. My eyes welled up several times near the end; the emotional highs felt incredibly powerful.

I was initially debating between 4 and 4.5 for this, but the desire to immediately replay it and the strength of the emotional highs really made me inclined to go higher. It doesn't feel like a game for everyone, but damn if I didn't feel like they almost made the game with me in mind.

Cassette Beasts took a bit of time to get into. It has a pretty steep learning curve as the attack and monster types have a lot of different interactions. Before you have a good understanding of the battle system it can feel like every enemy is applying debuffs to you and you're constantly applying buffs to them. But if you stick it out and learn how it works, it becomes very deep and rewarding!

Anyone who grew up on Pokemon and is wishing for a more challenging and sophisticated version, this is it. You have all the core functionality that you'd expect from a Pokemon game, but the types interact is various unique ways beyond just more or less damage. Type interactions will lower defense, or give contact damage, or steal AP, or, my favorite, give multitarget (single-target attacks now hit the whole team).
One build that I'm very proud of involves a monster that has a passive which gets multitarget at the beginning of the turn, then using a move that deals a hit of electric and a hit of air damage, plus it's a rare move that deals splash damage. So we've got the entire team of 3 people getting hit 2 times each, which each of those hits also dealing splash damage to the other two enemies. For a total of 18 hits from one move.

Attacks are determined by Stickers which can be removed and placed onto different monsters at will (as long as they can use the move), allowing you to easily make very precise builds of exactly the moves and passives that you want. It also serves to make monsters viable from the moment you record (catch) them. Even a brand-new monster can have exactly the moves you want it to have. Stickers also can be uncommon or rare and have additional effects based on its rarity. Rare stickers can be very powerful and make for some great combos.

Recording is also improved over catching, as the game always starts the recording at the beginning of the turn, and your recording chance goes up every time you deal damage. Not only that, but you cannot kill a monster that you are actively trying to record. You are free to try to reduce its HP to 1 without fear of knocking it out.

I really like the art style of the monsters and NPCs, I do no care for the low-poly 3D environment of the overworld. I find that they clash. The music is good but too repetitive. Especially the song that plays in the town, which has lyrics and I really enjoy, but then it just plays on repeat for the entire game until you hate it. It's a bummer, because it's a great song. But I don't want to listen to it for 30 hours over the course of my playthrough.

♥ I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH! ♥

At first I played this game because I was like: "oh, cool! a game made in Godot, I'll check it out as I love the engine and it looks like it could be a fun cute game!", I was not prepared for what followed, the character creator... has PRONOUNS ♥ (and is pretty neat overall), move over pokemon, it's time for wokemon! another thing that shocked me early in the game: it has voice acting?? AND vocals in quite a lot of their music?? this is already blowing my expectations out of the water and I'm only a few minutes in at this point.

The concept of this game is really fun! It has fairly simple main story, but is at times quirky and doesn't take itself too seriously and just focuses on making the game an enjoyable experience which I hugely appreciate, it's designed as a game first with a story to match it. The companions are fun and interesting without being too annoying and you can make them into a BF/GF (Kayleigh ♥) The monsters are fun and silly with goofy names, but I still love them all! PLUS you can fuse ALL 120 of them for 14.400 different combinations! :0

The combat mechanics and features are just SO good! Types don't just determine damage numbers, they give different buffs and debuffs, which are SO cool and interesting and make the combat so fun and intricate. Also sometimes types can change, like for example hitting an ice type with a fire move, turns it to a water type for 3 turns and there's so many other things like that that make a lot of key fights very interesting with unique strategies and fun situations! also fusing your two monsters together combines their stats, moves and action points, but leave you with one move per turn which just adds another layer to this insanely impressive system!

The world at first felt very small as I explored a huge chunk of the map within the first hour, but there is so much content, each location (except for the starting beach) is memorable with unique vibes and it's own story, the world movement is nice and smooth, with monster ability upgrades slowly letting you traverse the world faster/ more easily and it's all insanely well paced imo. The town is nice and cosy and works as a place you often return to for supplies/ quests/ switching companions.

The MUSIC wow. It absolutely slays, every song fits the vibes and really just adds a lot to the experience. I mentioned songs with vocals earlier some music like the fight music, has DYNAMIC MUSIC, so whenever you fuse your monsters in a fight, it fades the vocals into the music and makes the moment feel really EPIC, that moment literally never gets old as the music is just that good!

The art is nice and cute, everything just fits, the 3D pixel voxel like world fits really well with the 2D pixel art. The more detailed art like the characters during conversations also fit in well, overall the vibes are fun and energetic.

The design is nice, because I can tell the devs actually just wanted to make a fun experience, there are so many little nice attentions to detail or sidequests that don't impact the game but have a nice story that just make the game feel more like a complete experience, rather than making decisions that feel more corporate like a lot of AAA games nowadays, this game has been made with love and care and the personality really just shines through in this game and that really makes it a special experience ♥

I will definitely play through this game again! it has built in speedrun timers and custom games that allow stuff like perma death which is so thoughtful.

Overall this game is actually so amazing, everything just works well so together and I really enjoy spending my time playing it, I really hope this game gets big as it absolutely deserves it. Worth the money, great experience, my favourite game in many years!

Thank you for reading! So sorry for the word vomit but I needed to share my thoughts on this amazing game!