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Sea of Stars
2023
Sea of Stars was a uniquely mediocre experience, mainly because I was almost fooled into thinking it was great simply because of its visual presentation.
I enjoyed the art direction and music from beginning to end, but just about everything else fell apart further and further as the game went on. And in hindsight, it wasn’t really put together all that well to begin with. Puzzles were so easy that they felt burdensome rather than rewarding. The tools and mechanics presented to me were pretty fun, but overly simple and rarely utilized. I would have preferred more complex puzzles in place of some of the filler battles that seemingly existed only to increase my playtime.
The characters were likable, if not a little bland, and there were definitely some moments that made me smile and laugh, but ultimately the storyline they were a part of dragged on for so long I just didn’t care anymore. I really liked Seraï however, and her character and twist was definitely a highlight of the game for me.
During the first few hours after escaping flashback hell, I happily coasted through repetitive dungeons with 2 moves per character, solving the same styles of puzzles to get from one level to another, because I really wanted to see how good it got.
It never got good.
You essentially hop from small lifeless town to small lifeless town, split up by slogging through 3 or more consecutive dungeon levels, filled with time consuming fights that impede on you trying to rush a piss easy puzzle just to get the hell out of there.
You do this for 20 hours. No downtime for side-quests, fun puzzles, or NPCs that repeat more than 1 line to you. It feels like a near-empty world with roughly 10 good guys and 10 bad guys, like a matchmade game of ground war turned into an RPG. Everytime I spoke to anyone outside of the main cast I felt like Tom Hanks in Cast Away talking to Wilson.
Credit where credit is due though, it is really beautiful, even if the colours and red-tinted black point can be a bit jarring at times. But it's just not beautiful enough for me to disregard its glaring issues.
I’m going to uninstall this and download a real JRPG and experience PEAK rather than weak.
I enjoyed the art direction and music from beginning to end, but just about everything else fell apart further and further as the game went on. And in hindsight, it wasn’t really put together all that well to begin with. Puzzles were so easy that they felt burdensome rather than rewarding. The tools and mechanics presented to me were pretty fun, but overly simple and rarely utilized. I would have preferred more complex puzzles in place of some of the filler battles that seemingly existed only to increase my playtime.
The characters were likable, if not a little bland, and there were definitely some moments that made me smile and laugh, but ultimately the storyline they were a part of dragged on for so long I just didn’t care anymore. I really liked Seraï however, and her character and twist was definitely a highlight of the game for me.
During the first few hours after escaping flashback hell, I happily coasted through repetitive dungeons with 2 moves per character, solving the same styles of puzzles to get from one level to another, because I really wanted to see how good it got.
It never got good.
You essentially hop from small lifeless town to small lifeless town, split up by slogging through 3 or more consecutive dungeon levels, filled with time consuming fights that impede on you trying to rush a piss easy puzzle just to get the hell out of there.
You do this for 20 hours. No downtime for side-quests, fun puzzles, or NPCs that repeat more than 1 line to you. It feels like a near-empty world with roughly 10 good guys and 10 bad guys, like a matchmade game of ground war turned into an RPG. Everytime I spoke to anyone outside of the main cast I felt like Tom Hanks in Cast Away talking to Wilson.
Credit where credit is due though, it is really beautiful, even if the colours and red-tinted black point can be a bit jarring at times. But it's just not beautiful enough for me to disregard its glaring issues.
I’m going to uninstall this and download a real JRPG and experience PEAK rather than weak.
Sea of Stars
2023
The bottom line is that Sea of Stars is an ultimately mediocre title that manages to cobble together its form by stealing things from a dozen other, older, better titles. Each thing it steals is implemented worse than the game it steals from, but still good enough to not be bad. The act of playing the game is fine. It's Fine. It is the ultimate definition of Mid. Mid of Stars.
To list all this game's faults on a lower level than "wow it looks pretty" would to be sit here all day, but I can't help but go over some of the biggest issues I had during my time with it.
The first and foremost is the writing and plot--the plot by itself is pretty standard, just your basic "go kill the demon king" storyline when you get down to it, but its building off lore from a game pretty notorious for having nonsense lore(The Messenger) so it ends up being nonsense here as well--none of the worldbuilding details or twists really ever land because you never get the sense that this world is anything more than levels in a video game. There's like maybe five actual towns in the game, for gods sake. This is compounded by the character writing that manages to be completely uninteresting at best, and positively dreadful at worst. The worst of it is a major side-character in act 1 that speaks exclusively in video game references, who basically ruins every scene she is in and kill what little pathos there can be in this game. Once she steps aside, it gets a little better and I'd even say act 2 cooks for a short time, but then they do the very bold decision to put the only two characters with any sort of internality on a bus until literally the final boss door. Its frustrating. That's not to speak of the other issue with the game not respecting itself, every scene that gets a little tropey immediately gets a Marvel quip to kill any tension and remind you you're seeing scenes played out in a dozen older games with way more self-respect. It sucks.
Then, there's the game pacing. As mentioned, the game has I think six actual "towns" in it, and you only visit each of them at a single point in your journey which means you consistently go 4+ dungeons at a time without any "downtime" where you can sidequest, play minigames, talk to npcs etc. They completely missed the memo on the "vibes" of a jrpg in spite of aping these games so hard--those points where you're just sort of idly walking around town are important and this game just doesn't have any of that. This is compounded by what I'd call location issues--backtracking even after you get to the end of the game with all movement options is painful, consistently involving traversing old dungeons or going through two-three extra screens to get to where you need to go, so the game actively disincentivizes you from trying to do anything besides progress the main quest.
The actual gameplay is split into two--puzzle dungeons generously described as "Crosscode but worse" and combat described as "Mario RPG but worse", double-hampered by piss-easy difficulty. Like, this game has 8 different accessibility options but I struggle to find how anyone would need them when the game difficulty is toggled so low.
Which sucks, because the one place the game excels in is the economy/item management, you have a very limited inventory that heavily incentivizes consumable usage, and also the gold is a really tight resource that you have to manage. In theory, this is great and adds an attrition factor the long dungeon dives mentioned earlier--in practice, the difficulty tuning being so low means you never interact with those systems because you can easily go through the game never using consumables which means you can sell all the crafting supplies for a surplus of money.
Even the OST manages to not really be striking, like its perfectly serviceable but I never really found myself humming a tune or getting hyped by a song. Its just, rpg music. You could replace it with the rpgmaker default soundpack and I think the experience would have been exactly the same.
And yet, in spite of all this, I still finished the game including the true ending that demands like 95% completion because it was juuuust that not bad enough that I could sunk cost fallacy my way through it.
The final thing I'd leave you with that speaks to the shoddy nature of the game is the opening--after the framing device, the game opens with our new heroes going off to their first mission. You fight exactly one tutorial battle vs a goblin, then it forces you into a flashback where you see their backstory. This last an hour and leads up to exactly the beginning of the game. Why did they have the flashback? Why would you not just start the game from the backstory sequence? Its the sort of thing literally any editor would notice and rectify immediately.
Truly, the Mid of Stars.
To list all this game's faults on a lower level than "wow it looks pretty" would to be sit here all day, but I can't help but go over some of the biggest issues I had during my time with it.
The first and foremost is the writing and plot--the plot by itself is pretty standard, just your basic "go kill the demon king" storyline when you get down to it, but its building off lore from a game pretty notorious for having nonsense lore(The Messenger) so it ends up being nonsense here as well--none of the worldbuilding details or twists really ever land because you never get the sense that this world is anything more than levels in a video game. There's like maybe five actual towns in the game, for gods sake. This is compounded by the character writing that manages to be completely uninteresting at best, and positively dreadful at worst. The worst of it is a major side-character in act 1 that speaks exclusively in video game references, who basically ruins every scene she is in and kill what little pathos there can be in this game. Once she steps aside, it gets a little better and I'd even say act 2 cooks for a short time, but then they do the very bold decision to put the only two characters with any sort of internality on a bus until literally the final boss door. Its frustrating. That's not to speak of the other issue with the game not respecting itself, every scene that gets a little tropey immediately gets a Marvel quip to kill any tension and remind you you're seeing scenes played out in a dozen older games with way more self-respect. It sucks.
Then, there's the game pacing. As mentioned, the game has I think six actual "towns" in it, and you only visit each of them at a single point in your journey which means you consistently go 4+ dungeons at a time without any "downtime" where you can sidequest, play minigames, talk to npcs etc. They completely missed the memo on the "vibes" of a jrpg in spite of aping these games so hard--those points where you're just sort of idly walking around town are important and this game just doesn't have any of that. This is compounded by what I'd call location issues--backtracking even after you get to the end of the game with all movement options is painful, consistently involving traversing old dungeons or going through two-three extra screens to get to where you need to go, so the game actively disincentivizes you from trying to do anything besides progress the main quest.
The actual gameplay is split into two--puzzle dungeons generously described as "Crosscode but worse" and combat described as "Mario RPG but worse", double-hampered by piss-easy difficulty. Like, this game has 8 different accessibility options but I struggle to find how anyone would need them when the game difficulty is toggled so low.
Which sucks, because the one place the game excels in is the economy/item management, you have a very limited inventory that heavily incentivizes consumable usage, and also the gold is a really tight resource that you have to manage. In theory, this is great and adds an attrition factor the long dungeon dives mentioned earlier--in practice, the difficulty tuning being so low means you never interact with those systems because you can easily go through the game never using consumables which means you can sell all the crafting supplies for a surplus of money.
Even the OST manages to not really be striking, like its perfectly serviceable but I never really found myself humming a tune or getting hyped by a song. Its just, rpg music. You could replace it with the rpgmaker default soundpack and I think the experience would have been exactly the same.
And yet, in spite of all this, I still finished the game including the true ending that demands like 95% completion because it was juuuust that not bad enough that I could sunk cost fallacy my way through it.
The final thing I'd leave you with that speaks to the shoddy nature of the game is the opening--after the framing device, the game opens with our new heroes going off to their first mission. You fight exactly one tutorial battle vs a goblin, then it forces you into a flashback where you see their backstory. This last an hour and leads up to exactly the beginning of the game. Why did they have the flashback? Why would you not just start the game from the backstory sequence? Its the sort of thing literally any editor would notice and rectify immediately.
Truly, the Mid of Stars.
Sea of Stars
2023
Sea of Stars isn't particularly bad it's just mediocre (a common word in critical reviews). It starts off in a really bad way that takes the wind out of its sails early on. It's an extended intro cutscene that introduces our exceedingly bland main cast, then transitions into the simple gameplay that will hold you hostage for the next 20 hours. This game was a 2/5 at best until the late game. When the map opens up you can fight challenging bosses and use your party members to their full potential. It was only then that I was really having fun. What isn't fun is the uninteresting story and consecutive dungeons with baby mode puzzles and exhausting combat encounters. The action commands don't do the combat any favors because it's rarely incorporated into attacks in any interesting ways. You will be using the same moonerang spell for the whole ass game.
I'm not smart enough to comprehend why the writing is so uncanny but multiple people have expressed the same sentiment that it doesn't feel right. I specifically despise when they make meta jokes about jrpg tropes and stuff like "the GOAT boat."
Game looks wonderful I just wish the art was attached to a better game. I bought the game but I would recommend using gamepass for it.
I'm not smart enough to comprehend why the writing is so uncanny but multiple people have expressed the same sentiment that it doesn't feel right. I specifically despise when they make meta jokes about jrpg tropes and stuff like "the GOAT boat."
Game looks wonderful I just wish the art was attached to a better game. I bought the game but I would recommend using gamepass for it.
Sea of Stars
2023
This review contains spoilers
A beautiful and perfunctory RPG experience. Perhaps the most disappointing experience you will have this year.
Sea of Stars has no good reason to be an rpg other than back of the napkin ideas the devs must have had since childhood. Equipment are all small incremental flat stat increases, with only certain accessories even broaching the idea of customizability. One of them (the abacus, which lets you see enemy HP) is so vital though that there is little point in thinking about it. Characters are flat and largely unexciting, dialogue is uninventive and exists in the same space as settlements in this game. They need to exist, and in large quantities, to check the right rpg boxes, but they're superficial pitstops with little to admire besides the art. Eastward and Chained Echoes do so much more in a similar genre space with their settlements that I cannot give Sea of Stars a pass.
Combat itself is serviceable, but SoS gives neither the tension of difficulty or resource management, nor the thrill of customization and experimentation (your characters will still only have about 3 skills to use apiece by the end of the game). If this was a simple action rpg it might have received lower scores, but it would be a healthier game simply from the surgical removal of unnecessary fat.
Boss encounters are actually structured cleverly enough but even on Hard they never hit hard enough to seriously endanger your party, healing is plentiful, and even a stray KO is only a temporary inconvenience since your party member will self-revive with half health after only a couple of turns.
Dungeons and puzzles, such as they are, are busywork lovingly crafted to trigger the bespoke animations that are the actual heart of the game. More often it felt like I was plodding through Mario Maker autorunner levels, or a Sony game's climbing section.
The story is atrocious. Anything attached to the writing is nails on a chalkboard. It is in desperate search of conflict of any kind, but refuses to develop its MCs and their buoyant tagalong sidekick as anything other than the most bland genre versions of themselves. So you get a situation, with no conflict and no pushback, where the game has to pull conflict directly from its rear in deeply unsatisfying ways, falling into jrpg tropes disseminated, dissembled, and parodied decades ago and doing them in the most bland ways you can imagine. The character assassination required to do this is YiiKian in nature but even YiiK had the foresight to engender some kind of conflict to move the story forward, instead of just-so macguffin scenarios and jiu jitsu ass pulls.
The journey becomes predictable in its unpredictableness, a stale bowl of refried bean jrpg pastiche.
So, now the positives (with caveats).
Sea of Stars is the prettiest game released this year. I don't think it's particularly close. If you want to play a spectacle game, avoid FF16 and play this. It is arguably the best looking 2d rpg I have played.
But there are two exceptions to SoS immaculate graphics. First, the portraits are amateur, ill-fitting and immersion breaking. The problem is not necessarily the artistic skill at work, but the game's entire lack of identity. Chrono Cross has a divisive art style for its portraits, as an example, but it all coheres much better than SoS. Second, animated cutscenes play at random intervals of the story. They remind me of the CGI cutscenes inserted into SNES classics by Square when they ported the games to the PSX. Unnecessary and distracting. The pixels can more than speak for themselves and with how underwhelming the rest of the game is, they have to.
Sea of Stars has no good reason to be an rpg other than back of the napkin ideas the devs must have had since childhood. Equipment are all small incremental flat stat increases, with only certain accessories even broaching the idea of customizability. One of them (the abacus, which lets you see enemy HP) is so vital though that there is little point in thinking about it. Characters are flat and largely unexciting, dialogue is uninventive and exists in the same space as settlements in this game. They need to exist, and in large quantities, to check the right rpg boxes, but they're superficial pitstops with little to admire besides the art. Eastward and Chained Echoes do so much more in a similar genre space with their settlements that I cannot give Sea of Stars a pass.
Combat itself is serviceable, but SoS gives neither the tension of difficulty or resource management, nor the thrill of customization and experimentation (your characters will still only have about 3 skills to use apiece by the end of the game). If this was a simple action rpg it might have received lower scores, but it would be a healthier game simply from the surgical removal of unnecessary fat.
Boss encounters are actually structured cleverly enough but even on Hard they never hit hard enough to seriously endanger your party, healing is plentiful, and even a stray KO is only a temporary inconvenience since your party member will self-revive with half health after only a couple of turns.
Dungeons and puzzles, such as they are, are busywork lovingly crafted to trigger the bespoke animations that are the actual heart of the game. More often it felt like I was plodding through Mario Maker autorunner levels, or a Sony game's climbing section.
The story is atrocious. Anything attached to the writing is nails on a chalkboard. It is in desperate search of conflict of any kind, but refuses to develop its MCs and their buoyant tagalong sidekick as anything other than the most bland genre versions of themselves. So you get a situation, with no conflict and no pushback, where the game has to pull conflict directly from its rear in deeply unsatisfying ways, falling into jrpg tropes disseminated, dissembled, and parodied decades ago and doing them in the most bland ways you can imagine. The character assassination required to do this is YiiKian in nature but even YiiK had the foresight to engender some kind of conflict to move the story forward, instead of just-so macguffin scenarios and jiu jitsu ass pulls.
The journey becomes predictable in its unpredictableness, a stale bowl of refried bean jrpg pastiche.
So, now the positives (with caveats).
Sea of Stars is the prettiest game released this year. I don't think it's particularly close. If you want to play a spectacle game, avoid FF16 and play this. It is arguably the best looking 2d rpg I have played.
But there are two exceptions to SoS immaculate graphics. First, the portraits are amateur, ill-fitting and immersion breaking. The problem is not necessarily the artistic skill at work, but the game's entire lack of identity. Chrono Cross has a divisive art style for its portraits, as an example, but it all coheres much better than SoS. Second, animated cutscenes play at random intervals of the story. They remind me of the CGI cutscenes inserted into SNES classics by Square when they ported the games to the PSX. Unnecessary and distracting. The pixels can more than speak for themselves and with how underwhelming the rest of the game is, they have to.
Sea of Stars
2023
+ Fun turn-based combat with beaufiful visuals and audio.
- Dropped it after the game oblidged me to "prove my worth" in a temple so that I can go to another temple where I must "prove my worth." The game really needs a voucher that reads "Worth proven, they're good to go!"
- Dropped it after the game oblidged me to "prove my worth" in a temple so that I can go to another temple where I must "prove my worth." The game really needs a voucher that reads "Worth proven, they're good to go!"
Strayed Lights
2023
Feels more like a proof of concept than a finished product. There's potential but in no way does it feel like a 1.0 release.
Strayed Lights
2023
way too clunky to be fun
Strayed Lights
2023
It was short and unique with the color-changing system during combat. I didn't really care for the lack of story, and I'm not sure it gives quite enough for the asking price.
Check out the entire review here: https://youtu.be/0YKUMdfi6Z4
Check out the entire review here: https://youtu.be/0YKUMdfi6Z4
Strayed Lights
2023
Short and sweet, although the length seems due to the combat, while very fun and rewarding, not having much depth to it. This feels almost like a prototype for this kind of combat, as it's pretty enjoyable, but everything else lacks meat on its bones.
There's little combat customization, the skill tree appears to be the solution but it's so small and the changes aren't drastic enough to warrant being called customization.
The story definitely existed, and while I enjoyed the moment-to-moment story beats of helping the siblings and overcoming their fears, the overarching narrative was vague and uninteresting.
The boss fights are where the game shines, very much akin to soulslike-designs, although much more forgiving. Predicting their patterns and parrying their hits is satisfying, and the addition of the trials mode makes mastering those fights a lot of fun. The challenge mode was a little too much for me, those purple attacks that must be dodged just throw me off too much, but I'm glad its an option for those that want even more out of the game. But again, because of the lack of combat depth, it's just about mastering the very simple system, rather than experimentation, which is somewhat disappointing.
It is a gorgeous game, the usage of color is great and I especially liked the illusory garden area. I also appreciate the spectacle of the fights mixed with this art style, it's exactly what I love about flashy action.
Overall, a good core gameplay loop, but needed way more depth in other areas to be really great.
There's little combat customization, the skill tree appears to be the solution but it's so small and the changes aren't drastic enough to warrant being called customization.
The story definitely existed, and while I enjoyed the moment-to-moment story beats of helping the siblings and overcoming their fears, the overarching narrative was vague and uninteresting.
The boss fights are where the game shines, very much akin to soulslike-designs, although much more forgiving. Predicting their patterns and parrying their hits is satisfying, and the addition of the trials mode makes mastering those fights a lot of fun. The challenge mode was a little too much for me, those purple attacks that must be dodged just throw me off too much, but I'm glad its an option for those that want even more out of the game. But again, because of the lack of combat depth, it's just about mastering the very simple system, rather than experimentation, which is somewhat disappointing.
It is a gorgeous game, the usage of color is great and I especially liked the illusory garden area. I also appreciate the spectacle of the fights mixed with this art style, it's exactly what I love about flashy action.
Overall, a good core gameplay loop, but needed way more depth in other areas to be really great.
Strayed Lights
2023
an asura's wrath without the substance to be an asura's wrath
this game takes a lot of inspiration from that one god capcom game, meaning that most of the cool stuff will be done in QTE and cutscenes, meanwhile youre playing simon says through the entire game, the combat is done through blocking correct colors to both give damage and heal damage but it gets boring so fast, not because its easy but because its the only thing you will do through the entire game, even if it short it will still feel like it drags.
there are some weird bugs like geometry clutching you, enemies throwing you off the map, fall death in like 1 feet from the floor because thats where the character is supposed to die (?)
my biggest grip is that in the cutscenes and QTE youre making 2 extra arms to fight a giant monkey, bodymorphing to match the strenght of a giant gorilla, fighting light with darkness while in game youre just matching colors at the right time, by god it gets dull.
because enemies are designed to always hit you unless you parry, you often see enemies do a quick 190 turn to hit you even if you used the dodge, there is an attack button but it does so little damage compared to defending the right color, it might as well only be there to remind you that parrying is the only thing you should go for in this game, at some point i just ran past enemies to get to the boss fight because all the enemies do is increase game lenght of something that already feeling dull.
it has visuals going for it i'll give it that, its a shame i didn't like it as i went on because it has some amazing designs, cute visuals and a nice non-vocal storytelling.
i specially love the design of the bosses and their attacks, its a shame all the fight revolves around is color matching parrying.
this game takes a lot of inspiration from that one god capcom game, meaning that most of the cool stuff will be done in QTE and cutscenes, meanwhile youre playing simon says through the entire game, the combat is done through blocking correct colors to both give damage and heal damage but it gets boring so fast, not because its easy but because its the only thing you will do through the entire game, even if it short it will still feel like it drags.
there are some weird bugs like geometry clutching you, enemies throwing you off the map, fall death in like 1 feet from the floor because thats where the character is supposed to die (?)
my biggest grip is that in the cutscenes and QTE youre making 2 extra arms to fight a giant monkey, bodymorphing to match the strenght of a giant gorilla, fighting light with darkness while in game youre just matching colors at the right time, by god it gets dull.
because enemies are designed to always hit you unless you parry, you often see enemies do a quick 190 turn to hit you even if you used the dodge, there is an attack button but it does so little damage compared to defending the right color, it might as well only be there to remind you that parrying is the only thing you should go for in this game, at some point i just ran past enemies to get to the boss fight because all the enemies do is increase game lenght of something that already feeling dull.
it has visuals going for it i'll give it that, its a shame i didn't like it as i went on because it has some amazing designs, cute visuals and a nice non-vocal storytelling.
i specially love the design of the bosses and their attacks, its a shame all the fight revolves around is color matching parrying.
Strayed Lights
2023
The only thing I didn't understand is why they left the "soulslike" tag on the Steam page of this game. It makes no sense whatsoever. That being said, the game is enjoyable, and if you play with a more attentive eye, you'll realize that the game can tell a surprisingly deep and emotional story, even without any dialogue lines between the characters.
Darksiders Genesis
2019
I like that this exists just to round out the Darksiders franchise. Now, all 4 horsemen have gotten a spotlight. So like, that's cool. I also liked the light collectathon elements and how they tie into the upgrade system. I'm pretty picky about both collectibles and rpg mechanics in the modern day and those two being okay here kept this from being too miserable. Still nothing great but I'll take gaining buffs from a variety of enemy soul drops and hidden collectibles over "Do a trash fetch quest and now u can unlock the next node on the skill tree" type slop.
Still can't say this left me feeling much of anything. Combat is mashy and unsatisfying. Not a lot of impact is felt when hitting most things. My eyes glaze over whenever I see a modern game that's heavily reliant on a dodge roll/dash button...But at least Strife and War's dodges are both slightly different. Being able to swap between the two at any time makes playing both feel a bit better than the sum of their parts. Some levels drag on, some of 'em open up a bit and are pretty alright. The different enemies aren't super well defined so most of the time it's just the same interaction every time a fight starts. Bosses are mostly just stat checks which is kinda dull but is the one time I was really forced to engage with the upgrades in any meaningful way. Otherwise it's press dodge button right before attack hits, spam attack, repeat until win. I'd slay for an action game a tad more creative, at this point I'm so bored by this kind of thing.
The story is uneventful - and this may be the most abrupt end to a game I've seen...ever. Was legitimately caught off guard when the credits started rolling.
The music and presentation is often pretty dry. Funny enough when the main characters are behind a wall, you see a bright outline of them so you're not blind. The action looks so much more interesting in this flat rendition than it does when you can clearly see. Not a lot of strong visual flairs otherwise.
Fortunately for this game despite a few levels dragging a bit, as a whole it doesn't overstay its welcome. The mercifully short length keeps me from really having any truly negative feelings towards it. A lot of games would have gone for three times the level count and I'd be mashing my head against my desk wondering why I'm still playing. This game stays in its place and for that I'm glad to say it's perfectly average.
Still can't say this left me feeling much of anything. Combat is mashy and unsatisfying. Not a lot of impact is felt when hitting most things. My eyes glaze over whenever I see a modern game that's heavily reliant on a dodge roll/dash button...But at least Strife and War's dodges are both slightly different. Being able to swap between the two at any time makes playing both feel a bit better than the sum of their parts. Some levels drag on, some of 'em open up a bit and are pretty alright. The different enemies aren't super well defined so most of the time it's just the same interaction every time a fight starts. Bosses are mostly just stat checks which is kinda dull but is the one time I was really forced to engage with the upgrades in any meaningful way. Otherwise it's press dodge button right before attack hits, spam attack, repeat until win. I'd slay for an action game a tad more creative, at this point I'm so bored by this kind of thing.
The story is uneventful - and this may be the most abrupt end to a game I've seen...ever. Was legitimately caught off guard when the credits started rolling.
The music and presentation is often pretty dry. Funny enough when the main characters are behind a wall, you see a bright outline of them so you're not blind. The action looks so much more interesting in this flat rendition than it does when you can clearly see. Not a lot of strong visual flairs otherwise.
Fortunately for this game despite a few levels dragging a bit, as a whole it doesn't overstay its welcome. The mercifully short length keeps me from really having any truly negative feelings towards it. A lot of games would have gone for three times the level count and I'd be mashing my head against my desk wondering why I'm still playing. This game stays in its place and for that I'm glad to say it's perfectly average.
I went into this game having really enjoyed Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion. They decided to make this one a rouge lite and I think that hurts it significantly. It's not as interesting as CTE. The ending requires beating all of the bosses in one run, then defeating the final boss. If you die, you have to defeat all of the bosses AGAIN to face the final boss even though story-wise that doesn't make sense. I might be ok with this, if you could get OP, but there's a cap to your max health and damage output. On top of that, the final boss fight has issues. My game crashed out during it three separate times. CTE was so good, because it was a fully crafted story with things to explore. This gets repetitive quickly.
First game was more prefeble for me because of gameplay design choices. Rogue lite isn't for me, sorry graffiti games.
I think it’s safe to say that 2021’s “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion” caught everyone by surprise by blending competent 2D Zelda-like gameplay with quirky, plant-based humor and a pleasant visual style. I enjoyed it quite a bit and was looking forward to its sequel. And I was caught by surprise yet again, because it turned out that the devs decided to switch the genre from an old-school adventure game to a roguelite mixed with bullet hell. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work as well as the original.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of roguelites, and this is no exception. Running over and over through the same couple of areas and mowing down the same enemies gets old really quick for me, and Turnip Boy doesn’t provide enough scope or variety to make traversing through the map a truly enjoyable experience. Most of my time playing the game was searching for NPCs that I had an outstanding quest with - there are a lot of characters you can help throughout the 5 hours or so that it takes to finish the story. Honestly, I mostly walked aimlessly searching for an NPC whose location I had completely forgotten (the map is utterly useless) or simply because I had confused one NPC with another. This can be frustrating not only because there is no good way to memorize this (and some NPCs only show up in rooms that spawn at random, so you can be looking for a guy and never stumble upon him simply because his room didn’t spawn for this particular run), but also because you’re always under a time constraint. At one point I found myself with a long list of NPCs to interact with, a map that doesn’t help at all in finding them and a thought “yeah, I don’t remember where any of those characters are”.
Perhaps this problem is exacerbated by the writing. The trademark quirkiness is still there and some NPCs’ lines should make you smile, but either the novelty factor has worn off or the writing simply isn’t as sharp because I found the NPCs in “Tax Evasion” funnier, more memorable and their plotlines easier to follow than the ones in “Robs a Bank”.
Overall, I enjoyed the gunplay - I think there is a good selection of weapons available (a lot of them, obviously, are very comedic in nature) and they’re fun to use, but the fact that you can’t really store them conveniently (there’s one particular room where you can keep them for your next run, but it’s an extremely tedious mechanic) and that the only weapons that you have permanent access to in your hub are the most standard shotgun/rifle/bazooka spoils the fun of trying out new weapons.
Two other issues I’d like to mention are underwhelming boss fights (they’re all very similar and at the very end you have to repeat them all in one go, which is a chore) and the fact that about halfway through the game you find a way to earn tons of cash quickly and run out of things you can spend them on. I think the upgrade system could’ve been expanded to account for that.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fan of roguelites, and this is no exception. Running over and over through the same couple of areas and mowing down the same enemies gets old really quick for me, and Turnip Boy doesn’t provide enough scope or variety to make traversing through the map a truly enjoyable experience. Most of my time playing the game was searching for NPCs that I had an outstanding quest with - there are a lot of characters you can help throughout the 5 hours or so that it takes to finish the story. Honestly, I mostly walked aimlessly searching for an NPC whose location I had completely forgotten (the map is utterly useless) or simply because I had confused one NPC with another. This can be frustrating not only because there is no good way to memorize this (and some NPCs only show up in rooms that spawn at random, so you can be looking for a guy and never stumble upon him simply because his room didn’t spawn for this particular run), but also because you’re always under a time constraint. At one point I found myself with a long list of NPCs to interact with, a map that doesn’t help at all in finding them and a thought “yeah, I don’t remember where any of those characters are”.
Perhaps this problem is exacerbated by the writing. The trademark quirkiness is still there and some NPCs’ lines should make you smile, but either the novelty factor has worn off or the writing simply isn’t as sharp because I found the NPCs in “Tax Evasion” funnier, more memorable and their plotlines easier to follow than the ones in “Robs a Bank”.
Overall, I enjoyed the gunplay - I think there is a good selection of weapons available (a lot of them, obviously, are very comedic in nature) and they’re fun to use, but the fact that you can’t really store them conveniently (there’s one particular room where you can keep them for your next run, but it’s an extremely tedious mechanic) and that the only weapons that you have permanent access to in your hub are the most standard shotgun/rifle/bazooka spoils the fun of trying out new weapons.
Two other issues I’d like to mention are underwhelming boss fights (they’re all very similar and at the very end you have to repeat them all in one go, which is a chore) and the fact that about halfway through the game you find a way to earn tons of cash quickly and run out of things you can spend them on. I think the upgrade system could’ve been expanded to account for that.