Played a little over half of wailing death. Had to drop it cuz that shit was hella boring!! It definitely felt like more of a test run for the system as the game itself is more of a frame in which to make adventures rather than being an individual realized experience.

I'm really glad I decided to keep going with shadows of undrentide and hordes of the underdark, both of those were pretty great! I definitely lean more toward shadows of undrentide bc I more appreciate that mid level scope of tabletop play where you're a small part of the world while still having enough nuance and strength to your character to make interesting choices. That being said, hordes of the underdark is still pretty fantastic for a high to epic level campaign. I didn't feel terribly overwhelmed or bloated throughout and its sometimes pretty exhilarating to travel around all of the crazy ass high level locations you'll only find in those types of games. The final act of hordes though was pretty sloggy and I was just antsy to see how it'd end.

Its a rly common old criticism but the primitive early 3D did give the world kind of an empty rudimentary feeling. There is a great flatness to everywhere you go, just a simple plane with some props sticking out of it. Sure theres some slopes on some maps but its not enough to fully abate this bizarre sense of unease from the environs, it feels like wandering around the backrooms.

I'll probably continue playing some other modules here and there. Definitely plan on getting to darkness over daggerford

Its just really boring. You're more or less at the mercy of whatever is thrown at you while you pray that the most helpful character/items/skills/etc are coincidentally on hand. Even when you do try to stock up on shit, very little is actually demanded from you in terms of engagement. There's some mechanically meaningful decisions to be made here and there but none of them are actually interesting to make.

The actual horror of the game comes nowhere near landing. Its a series of eyeroll tier "You see a spooky ghost!" level stuff that repeats over and over regardless of what mystery you're on, its rare for them to have meaningful relevance to the mystery at hand and even when they do its just a nothingburger event, nothing interesting happens. You investigate whatever location you're at a few times, encounter some boring irrelevant spooks, then the mystery moves itself forward.

I'm really not amused at how the game seems more interested in referencing junji ito plots and aesthetics than it is in conveying its own vision of horror. It doesn't have anything to say besides "Junji Ito is so cool!!"

I initially abandoned this because I got irritated with the slowness and tediousness of the end game, but as time went on, I couldn't help but think back to this game again and again. Something about the dingy but lively art and soul-searching quests of the characters left a really powerful impression on me. There's a really lovely balance between moodiness and liveliness that I appreciate so much... The game is willing to be silly and fun sometimes despite the overall dour atmosphere.

The game plays fine enough. I don't have much to say about it besides that I appreciate the thematic relevance of allied actions and that the game really lacks polish and QoL in a lot of ways.

Extremely cumbersome feeling. Got very tired of fighting groups of 16 enemies at a time with decent HP that could occasionally debilitate my entire party with a single spell or ability. I don't care for hand holding myself but its easy to feel incredibly lost while meandering around in this world. Needing to use a guide almost never feels good.

I do appreciate how moving and living the world is! A fair amount of stuff happens independently of you, sometimes for the better or worse, but the game does have this feeling of stumbling around in a wonderland because of it.

The game is extremely ambitious, too much for its own good imo, but that seems to be what people like about it so power to you if this is your thing.

Straight improvement on the first in almost every way! I was worried that the overworld traveling would diminish the dungeon crawling but it just added to the overall experience by having very interesting navigation. The greatly increased customization of your character builds and whatnot is a gigantic improvement but the balancing that comes with it doesn't land as well as it could. Alchemists are ridiculously overpowered for example, there's never a reason to not have one. Game ate it up though!!