Playtime: 2 Hours
Score: 6/10

A cute little indie RPG game that is free to download and play on Steam, so I thought I'd give it a go. I will say its a decent game for a free title and it has multiple endings which does give it some replay value. The story was simple, but still emotional and effective. I love the art style too with a cool pixel art and it reminded me of Undertale in a way. It also has a nice progression system as you get spirit essence from all the ghosts you kill and can spend that on unlocking new abilities or upgrade your base stats. I found this to be very satisfying and I got a rush when I had collected enough to do a bunch of upgrades all at once.

Combat was where it gets interesting and in my case a little frustrating. Whenever you do basic attacks, you have a little gauge meter with a reticle moving and you have to hit it in the middle in order to perform successful attacks. You need to do this also to build up your magic meter so you can eventually perform your more powerful abilities. Enemies will attack and some attacks you will be able to dodge by way of the same gauge mechanic. Because of that its a game where you have to pay attention during combat otherwise you can easily get wiped. What I don't like about this battle system is that it tends to feel like a mix of turn based and real time, as sometimes when the menu you pops up for you to select your next move, enemies can still attack you. There were so many times where my menu would pop up, but I found it better to just wait a few extra seconds for the dodge mechanic to come up so I could do that first before attacking. It just got really frustrating after a while and sometimes it was inconsistent as I would hit the middle of the gauge but the enemy would still hit me or I would miss my attack. Plus at the end, during the final boss fight, they throw in a third mechanic that you have to contend with that I can't talk about because its a bit of a story spoiler. It got really irritating having to manage 3 different mechanics during an intense fight, where all I really wanted to do was just take my time and plan what my next move would be. I would have much preferred that they made it so that you dodge during the enemies turn and then do the attack mechanic during your turn.

Overall, its still a solid game to mess around with and its free so I won't knock it too much, despite my frustrations.