I'm not sure what to think about this game.
The Earthbound/WarioWare/Mario RPG inspirations are apparent, and I was a fan of the combat at first, but it became more and more frustrating as time went on.
The concept of fighting and countering attacks using WarioWare-like minigames seemed brilliant on paper, but most minigames grew old fast. Not to mention that I was in a constant flux of feeling under-powered and over-powered at the same time. Fights tend to drag on a bit too long for comfort, due to the often low damage output from the player characters, the length of certain minigames, and most, if not all enemies act more than once per turn. Moreover, the minigames you play have multiple difficulty levels, which may be possible to beat unscathed at first, but become nigh-impossible to beat later on. This in combination with the fact that when you eventually fail these minigames and get hit by an attack, they hit like a goddamn truck, which further cements the feeling of constantly being weak. This issue can't be remediated by grinding either, since all enemies are static encounters that never respawn.
I did mention feeling over-powered too, right? Yeah, sometimes. The circle attack which is randomly selected among 3 normal attacks is more overpowered than it should be as pulling off a ridiculously high combo is way too easy. This trivialized the use of damaging skills entirely as these seldom reached the same damage output as the circle attack. There's also a super move that needs to be charged up passively that deals ridiculous amounts of damage. One use of the super move kills most enemies instantly and shaves off a great chunk of health off most bosses. The only downside is that it takes a really long time for it to charge. This becomes a problem during boss fights as it's seemingly expected that you're gonna use it at least once during the fight, due to the massive HP pools that they are given. This means that boss fights turn into a waiting game where you shave off what little HP you can while trying to stay alive until you can use your super.
So, I'm obviously not too happy with the combat, but what about the rest of the game? I'll start off with what I liked, and that would be the music and aesthetics. It has the general weird and quirky Earthbound feel, and I'm all for it. However, one quirk from Earthbound which shouldn't have been brought over is the limited inventory. It kind of worked in Earthbound without too much of a hassle, but it's just absurd here. I never bought anything in shops because I knew that I'd just have to throw whatever I bought away later to make room for something more important.
What about the story? I wish I could tell you about it, but it was such a mess that most of it slipped my mind. There's something something conspiracy, something something evil gang, something something solving the mystery, but I couldn't tell you more than that. All in all, it didn't strike a cord with me.
This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023, and I'm sad to say that I almost quit on it halfway through out of frustration and lack of engagement. There's so much potential and charm here, but a lot of it falls flat on its ass.
The Earthbound/WarioWare/Mario RPG inspirations are apparent, and I was a fan of the combat at first, but it became more and more frustrating as time went on.
The concept of fighting and countering attacks using WarioWare-like minigames seemed brilliant on paper, but most minigames grew old fast. Not to mention that I was in a constant flux of feeling under-powered and over-powered at the same time. Fights tend to drag on a bit too long for comfort, due to the often low damage output from the player characters, the length of certain minigames, and most, if not all enemies act more than once per turn. Moreover, the minigames you play have multiple difficulty levels, which may be possible to beat unscathed at first, but become nigh-impossible to beat later on. This in combination with the fact that when you eventually fail these minigames and get hit by an attack, they hit like a goddamn truck, which further cements the feeling of constantly being weak. This issue can't be remediated by grinding either, since all enemies are static encounters that never respawn.
I did mention feeling over-powered too, right? Yeah, sometimes. The circle attack which is randomly selected among 3 normal attacks is more overpowered than it should be as pulling off a ridiculously high combo is way too easy. This trivialized the use of damaging skills entirely as these seldom reached the same damage output as the circle attack. There's also a super move that needs to be charged up passively that deals ridiculous amounts of damage. One use of the super move kills most enemies instantly and shaves off a great chunk of health off most bosses. The only downside is that it takes a really long time for it to charge. This becomes a problem during boss fights as it's seemingly expected that you're gonna use it at least once during the fight, due to the massive HP pools that they are given. This means that boss fights turn into a waiting game where you shave off what little HP you can while trying to stay alive until you can use your super.
So, I'm obviously not too happy with the combat, but what about the rest of the game? I'll start off with what I liked, and that would be the music and aesthetics. It has the general weird and quirky Earthbound feel, and I'm all for it. However, one quirk from Earthbound which shouldn't have been brought over is the limited inventory. It kind of worked in Earthbound without too much of a hassle, but it's just absurd here. I never bought anything in shops because I knew that I'd just have to throw whatever I bought away later to make room for something more important.
What about the story? I wish I could tell you about it, but it was such a mess that most of it slipped my mind. There's something something conspiracy, something something evil gang, something something solving the mystery, but I couldn't tell you more than that. All in all, it didn't strike a cord with me.
This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023, and I'm sad to say that I almost quit on it halfway through out of frustration and lack of engagement. There's so much potential and charm here, but a lot of it falls flat on its ass.