A strange mix between a bullet-hell and a typing game, The Textorcist appears to be a video game UFO, the existence of which one might even doubt. The game offers a dozen enemies to take down, with the principle of evoking an exorcism that you have to type yourself. Very quickly, the task appears complex, insofar as it is difficult to dodge and type at the same time, unless you are particularly skilled at typing with only your left hand. From this point of view, the title does well, with some amusing variations (mixing letters, adding characters), but there are a few mistakes along the road. Indeed, the mechanic to drop the shield seems like a useless waste of time. The same applies to the narrative sequences. Several exploration passages seem poorly constructed: the enigma of the code forces us to go back and forth inelegantly, while the observation of the convent is tedious, as the key elements are never clearly indicated. Under its very bantering tone, the title tries to develop the personality of our protagonist; I would even have liked the game to be more incisive and serious on this subject, but the choice to keep a light tone is not unjustifiable. As for the side content, I wonder if obtaining items should be so tedious: it is necessary to restart the fights at least three times to obtain the three items from the enemies, turning the game into a rather unpleasant farm. The hardcore mode is rather interesting, but lacks subtlety in its implementation. Overall, The Textorcist is a truly strange game. Its gameplay relies on the player's inability to be effective at both dodging and typing: the game seeks to be unbalanced and uncomfortable. Yet, it is quite pleasant, once you get used to its controls, especially since it has a nice art direction, with charming pixel-art and a catchy soundtrack.

i am obsessed with the ending of this game. i think about the ending of this game daily. the ending of this game made me feel so many things at the same time. the ending of this game made me laugh loudly. the ending of this game made me cry. the ending of this game is absolutely stupid. the ending of this game is brilliant. the ending of this game <3

but on a more serious note, this game is amazing. it has great, lovable characters. it tells a story that seems very simple at first, but the further you get in this game, the more insane everything gets. you can't trust anyone, you can't trust yourself. you start questioning everything and once you believe to have found the answer, you might find out everything was a lie. or maybe it wasn't. every route is worth playing. even if you don't solve the case in this route, you might just make one of the many great characters happy and help them overcome their struggles. and honestly, that is enough closure for me. the true ending of the game is great, but even the different endings for the different routes are amazing!

i really enjoyed playing this game, but when compared to the first game, i find it quite difficult to rank. the story this time around was a bit weaker and yet had grabbed my attention more than the first game did. characters from the first game appear again in this game and the new additions to the cast were almost all a delight to have around - except for more villainous characters, of course. the protagonists especially were really great and the timeline was rather easy to follow, until a certain point in the game. i even prefere the soundtrack of this game over the first game, certain somnium themes really standing out to me.
and yet, i struggle with making my mind up about this game. the ending didn't hit me as hard as the first game did, since i was expecting it already. certain plot points were rather silly and didn't lead to anything. the somniums in this game were weaker than in the first one, but the addition of free psynch was rather nice. the side content was a delight as well, the outfits were funny to spice up scenes you were replaying and i especially adore that they turned the first class cabin from 999 into a somnium, even if it's just optional content. while the main ending was rather lacking in my opinion, the secret ending was really great.

to my suprise, my opinion on the game changed after learning more about the original japanese version of it.

i hated the ending of the game, since it's a disgrace to what the first two games have build up. but after finding out that this game played in an entirely different universe and was not connected to the events of the first two games whatsoever, i really started to enjoy it!

the characters are very hit or miss for me. i adore gonta, kaeda, rantaro or ryoma. but i despise kaito, angie or himiko. all of the monokubs are absolute awful characters as well, even if that was probably a bit intentional.

the executions of this game are by far the best. i especially love the second execution, since i love the character dying that much and they did something new and unique with that execution. the fifth execution was really good as well, being a callback to a famous execution.

the trials were also pretty good! especially the first and second one stood out to me. the third and fourth trial have some moments that i don't really like but are overall fine and the fifth and sixth are decent as well.

i had a few problems with the performance of the game on my switch, as it crashed maybe 3-4 times in total and only during the trials. i had to re-do certain parts of them, adding a few extra hours to my playthrough.

the sprites look good and i enjoy the character designs, even the ones we see a glimpse of in the beginning. that really caught me off guard!

the plot of the game is somehow the weirdest fucking thing out there, while still being very reasonable and even something i had had as an idea myself. of course not everything played out just as i imagined, which i am glad about but still dislike how certain things were handled.

overall, i had a good time with this game. not my favourite danganronpa game, but i also don't hate it as much as i used to. this is the type of game that will grow on you over time.

Played For Backloggd Game of the Week 07/02 - 14/02
A lot of negative feelings all around it seems. I guess its my job to defend this game as someone who actually rather enjoyed it.

I don't really enjoy deckbuilders very much, in fact seeing "card battler" on a game's tags is a surefire way for me to skip said game just below "roguelike/lite". So it was a surprise that I rather enjoyed the gameplay loop of Majin, playing around with the different spells and their effects, gathering a new one every floor and clearing all the enemies before moving on to the next. Alright its nothing transcendental but it kept me pretty hooked for the hour or so it took to finish it.

Otherwise I really enjoyed the aesthetic, the colour palette is so appealingly ... monochrome? Im not entirely sure what the official name for what its trying to do is but just look at some screenshots it speaks for itself. The Models too I found so charming the way they look like they've been made with modelling clay for the weirdest episode of Wallace and Gromit yet. The music does get kind of repetitive which is an achievement for such a brief game.

The plot is told piecemeal through very brief dialogue (like one line) every floor slowly clueing you in to the ultimate goal of the game and I found it a good enough narrative hook for what it was, paced appropriately. Until that is you get to the utterly abrupt ending which just sort of presents the final boss and then gives you an odd addendum sort of explaining what was going on ; very much a game that didnt know how to finish.

Person who's only played one mystery VN (zero escape) playing a second VN : "Getting a lot of Zero Escape vibes from this". Obviously I'm being facetious but seriously, especially towards the end there is a lot of overlap between this and the plot of 999. Which is not a problem of course, 999 is one of my favourite games of all time.

Anyways I'm doing this thing where Im trying to play more games made in China and Taiwan/Taipei(whatever you think of that whole situation IDC) and whilst I'm getting around emulating old RPGs I decided to check this adventure game out. Its mostly good, the translation leaves a lot to be desired, which I'm sure will become a common thing in my quest to play chinese games without knowing Mandarin.

I'm not the biggest fan of having very transparent branching especially in mystery games. Zero Escape gets away with it because the branching is clearly signposted and diegetic but it does slightly take me out of it when I read "You can't say this thing cause you dont have enough trust points with character X, locking you out of this route".

The intention seems to be for the short (6 hours is sort of short for this type of thing I think) runtime to be ameliorated through multiple endings with tons of different relationships to keep track of and, weirdly how many of the extra Professor Layton Esque puzzle boxes you can complete by picking up optional pieces of inventory during investigation sequences? Unfortunately I cannot really be bothered and moreover there are no english walkthroughs online that I have seen so It would be an uphill struggle.

I do get a slightly sour taste in my mouth cause the ending I got was shit. Which is probably to taunt me into replaying and being a completionist and whatnot but it doesn't really work like that, game. Oh well, maybe another time

This game sucks. Everyone knows it sucks, even its creator who is going to prison (though not for making Balan unfortunately).
However this being Backloggd and indeed the Internet generally, in a couple years times everyone is going to pretend that actually Balan is secretly genius and cool and smart you guys.

So I am going to play the long game and pre empt the re evaluation of Balan (or reebalanuation I should say) before anyone else does.

Balan Wonderworld is good, actually! The one button control scheme is a great attempt at making platformers more accessible. The Balan bouts are actually an intentional metaphor for the unforgiving nature of punching emo willy wonka across space in this Late Capitalist hellworld we call earth. The BoxFox is actuallly a really funny joke and if you didnt find it funny youre stupid! The framerate drops are actually an accessibility feature allowing kids to nail tricky jumps with bullet time. The story written by a dude who said he worked out how to write stories by reading hero with a thousand faces once is actually really deep and smart and something something, theatre of the mind, carl jung, subconscious, pychonauts etc. I take off half a star for the CGI cutscenes, their polish clash against the intentional roughness of the graphics for thematic reasons (People are sad and dont clean their brains)

Now you may shower me with praise for being ahead of the curve, contrarians of the future