I love half of this game and hate half of the other.

The part I love is the story and social simulation. I really feel like I'm living in a town full of personality, charm, and intrigue as I follow the murder spree as well as the lives of those around me. My favorite characters are Nanako Dojima, the main character's niece and overall adorable kid, and Kanji Tatsumi, a lovable dork with the physique of a tough guy. There's other great characters like Adachi Tohru the weird rookie detective, Rise Kujikawa the idol, and Teddie the occasionally un-bear-able mascot of the game.

The music is super great too. There's literally zero songs on the soundtrack I dislike and even the most "meh" song on the soundtrack (Castle, the first dungeon theme) is a 6/10 still.

I hate the dungeon crawling so much. It's so boring. Every dungeon is practically the same: go through a third person perspective trying to navigate to the stairs of the next floor. While doing this, you can encounter enemies in the overworld and choose to fight or avoid them. This is a fine concept but hampered by the terrible pacing.
1. The dungeons overstay their welcome and keep stacking floor upon floor. This would be more tolerable if the method for easy heals without items requires completions of sidequests for a fox character that I have zero idea how to get without a guide. Without those sidequests, the fox's healing services are way too steep.
2. The floors themselves are too long. Including battles, each floor takes roughly about 5-10 minutes to find the stairs and possibly some loot on the way. Again, this would be fine if the dungeons didn't get 20+ floors long as soon as the second or third dungeon. This combination makes every dungeon needlessly long.
Dungeons also gate social link progress for most characters so you can't even get that up until you finish everything, with some social links being required for the best ending. It's something that really breaks the flow of the game for me.
I also find the combat extremely boring. There's interesting stuff with Persona switching and generation, but I'd honestly much rather play Digimon Cyber Sleuth if I want combat like SMT/Persona.

I put this game down at the third dungeon and I don't see myself picking this back up for a long time. From what I'd told, I'd probably really enjoy the Persona 4 anime and really enjoy playing Persona 5 since the former circumvents the obnoxious dungeons and the latter refines the dungeon crawling. As is, 2.5 stars is perfectly fitting for a game I have polar opposite feelings toward.

It feels so criminal this game is overlooked so much.

Wandersong is a game where you use music to platform and solve puzzles that never manages to be unengaging even with its strange premise. You play as a bard, [INSERT NAME HERE], trying to save the universe from its oncoming death by collecting the pieces of the Earthsong. Along the way, you meet a cast of really quirky characters whose problems you try to fix with the power of SINGING!

It's a really charming game with a lot of narrative themes about the power of positivity and idealism while also being entirely unafraid to throw in deeper subject matter when it wants to like depression and inadequacy.

This game at its core is very charming and quirky with everywhere you go and everyone you meet being unique and distinctly memorable. There wasn't one character I saw later and didn't say, "Oh, I remember you!"

The game takes a lot of cues from Paper Mario in terms of art style, writing, and surprisingly enough platforming. If you like those games, you'll have no issues with Wandersong.

Well, I do have a few issues with Wandersong. While the song system is mostly integrated really well, it can make some sections really awkward like some moments that need quick reactions or precision. You're pretty much playing a twin stick while platforming and that's an inherently weird concept. Some of the puzzles can be a bit obtuse, but it's nothing I needed a guide on aside from the secret dance locations.

If there's any reason to buy this game, you can make your character do the Caramelldansen in the final boss fight. And that's amazing.

Hahahahaha screw this game

This game sets such an amazing intro with its first case. It's fluidly paced, the twists and turns in it are genuinely intriguing, the aesthetics and music work wonderfully, and the cast is fun with setting down a foundation for their growth later on.

The game's core strength is its presentation. The designs of the characters, the settings, the art style, the music, everything is so distinct. It's all really charming and memorable and the aesthetic alone does a lot for this game. It even tricked me into having a fun time with this game which gets worse and worse in hindsight.

The game's writing is dumb. The characters will take forever to get to basic conclusions the player got to a long time ago, there's frequent moments that defy common sense that don't even make sense in character, nobody but exactly three characters actually progress the investigations/cases with everyone else seeming like wastes of space there to give testimony or be there to be argumentative, a lot of things feel like contrived like Case 2 with the Genocide Jack stuff and Case 3 with the hammers and Case 4 with the multiple pointless suspects and Case 5/6 with the very obvious fake nails, the characters get zero development outside of one getting genuine development and a few others either getting posthumous fleshing out or very barebones development, and the plot twist at the end feeling really forced.

Case 2 is a case I enjoy for the neat twists and turns but also kind of hate for having a lot of deeply uncomfortable transphobic stuff. Case 3 and 4 are just boring, and Cases 5 and 6 are genuinely infuriating to me.

I'm trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible so all I can really say is that the game peaks at the first case and curves downward the more you go into the game. Maybe if this game had more intelligent writing or better characters I'd be more forgiving, but nope. This game is the wet dream of an edgy Hot Topic tweenager who thinks anime tropes are interesting personalities.

Man, now this is the game that uses the medium of video games as a means of storytelling the absolute best. I really don't want to spoil anything, so I'll go as absolutely barebones as I can. You, the player, are God. It's your job to guide the messiah, a child named Niko, through their quest to restore a lightbulb known as the world's Sun to its rightful place to save it. However, your guidance will have to rely on use of your computer such as utilizing files to help progress the puzzles (so play in windowed mode for maximum convenience).

The genuine bond with Niko the player develops makes or breaks this game. They're a very charming and enjoyable character with their naive and childish worldview clashing with the dour and near apocalyptic surroundings. Guiding them through everything and seeing their interactions with the world and its inhabitants invests you, the player, into both Niko and the world. To spoil as least as possible, this is the most important thing the game does to build up towards its climax.

The paid version comes with a new area compared to the first game and a..."postgame." Let's call it that. While the experience is still great without these, I feel the paid version adds to the experience notably enough to make this by far the definitive version.

This game made me cry four or five different times. I love this game so much. I genuinely think it's a more solid game than Undertale which also goes for a personal meta experience. I feel like the interesting ways OneShot uses itself as a game is so, so interesting and warrant a playthrough even if this kind of game isn't your thing.

I wish the game was longer though. I want the game to be longer so, so bad. I wish some characters had some more time to shine which makes some characters feel kind of forgettable even though they're important. Still, some of that is intentional and some of that is this game being made by like two or three people.

I heavily recommend this game. Go play it. Now. You can beat it in a day, now go.