Overall, Sephonie is a delightful experience and feels unique and well-crafted. I think it falls short somewhat, due to issues with the movement mechanics and some clunky-ish dialogue. But even in those areas, I would say it's more that that they're good but not great, especially in comparison to other games in a similar category.

Before I expand on the flaws, I wanna just mention the really good bits. The enviroments are wonderful and really sell the setting (along with the music, which is fantastic), and the plot is heartfelt, thoughtful, and has some cool ideas. I especially loved all the creatures they came up with for you to link with - I found myself wishing a lot of them were real, haha. And despite the issues with the mechanics, the level design nonetheless feels tight and focused, and the linking puzzles were always fun without being too difficult.

As for my criticisms - my issues with the dialogue were really just that a lot of it felt awkward or clumsy (and not like, in an intentional way) - just in need of refining. I feel I should emphasize that it's still much better than most games - depsite the flaws, I found myself really invested in the characters and rarely felt the urge to just skip through any of the text. But it definitely felt a bit lackluster.

As for the control issues, this one is a little more nuanced. The wallrunning is a great idea in theory and in practice it mostly works. But I find that the natural-looking environments really harm readability and navigability. It's hard to figure out what angle to hit a curved wall, and its hard to tell when the curved wall will get "too curved" and you'll fall off, and if the wall is curving away from the camera, its hard to even see where you're wallrunning to. This problem extends a little to platforming in general - sometimes the collision is matched to oddly shaped walls or platforms and they just feel unnecessarily funky to move around on. I also had some control issues with the dash not working as expect but at this point I'm probably just rambling lol. That said, none of these were a huge issue for beating the main game, just because they never require you to be too perfect to get past anything. I definitely noticed it but I could live with it. It did get to be a real problem after I beat the game and went for the bonus challenges, though - I still did a lot of them, but others I completely gave up on just because of the control issues I was having. Which is not a huge deal since they're optional, its just unfortunate because the controls are interesting enough that I really want to fall in love with them.

So, bottom line - I strongly recommend playing it unless you're super picky about smooth movement or dialogue writing. Melos and Marina have done a great job crafting a beautiful little game, despite its flaws.

I love the idea behind this game (and of course, the goofy title), but in the end, most of the puzzles are sadly just not that interesting. The pin pulling one is the best one - I actually played most of the levels and felt like they were solidly designed, with the harder levels taking extra thought to complete. But the rest of the games feel like there's no real challenge to them, and the last levels are just as easy as the first levels, they just take more time. The money carrying game is kind of interesting just because it has like a gambling element to it, but there's still just not much there.

In the end, I guess I get why the mobile game ads only use these games as advertisements and don't actually make these games, lol.

Man, I really wanted to like this game, but it just didn't do it for me. The art, writing, the general theme are all super charming, and for the most part it was never bad. But in the end I found the experience... hollow, I guess.

I got quite far through the game - I did all the main chapters and then most of Nyakuza Metro - but as I was finishing up Nyakuza Metro I kind of realized that the game was rarely ever interesting to play and I was kind of just going through it out of habit. Most of the levels and optional objectives I completely breezed through with near-zero effort, and what difficulty there was usually just the result of bad design.

That, I think, is the core issue I had with the game, but I there were also some other design issues. In particular, the hats themselves felt like they needed a rethink - they do a weird mix of things, with some of them being general-use abilities and others just basically being keys to unlock a certain type of door, and others sort of being both. Regardless, having to switch between them always felt clunky. The first chapter (Mafia Town) is really hard to navigate, and some other levels' designs feel iffy as well (I especially didn't like The Big Parade - it felt like it was designed to look realistic rather than play well). I think there were also a couple mechanics which were introduced in Mafia Town but then never show up again? I could probably go on but suffice to say it has a fair share of jank and/or clunk.

All in all, it feels like a bit of a mess, which I think I could overlook if it had a lot of fun gameplay, but the gameplay is just really unexciting. So it comes away with not much to offer.

I love the game's stupid sense of humor, its goofy and charming designs, and its excellent animation. Gameplay-wise, it has a lot of neat ideas which it sometimes really pulls off. But it gets held back by a lot of frustrating control issues and design decisions, which just got more and more annoying as I got further into the game. (And I suppose in some ways, if BogoSoft is trying to emulate the feeling of playing a PS1/N64 platformer, they've succeeded in that respect :P). I think I'd be willing to play more (like, if they made a sequel or DLC), but it's hard for me to call it "great".

For context, I never played the original Overwatch - when 2 came out, since it was F2P I started playing it regularly with some friends who were fans of OW1. I was super impressed with it when I started, but my opinion of it has really fallen since then. Maybe it's because of changes they've made since release, or maybe it's just because I made it past the initial excitement of trying out something new, but regardless, in its current state I just don't really get that excited about playing it anymore.

From my perspective, I see two major issues with the gameplay. The first is that despite how many characters, maps, and modes there are, matches are just very samey. You're strongly encouraged to always stick together as a whole team, which means that no matter what the map layout or game state is, gameplay always boils down to "spawn, go to the place where everyone is fighting, and then fight until you die". Sometimes you win, in which case you get to wait around for the other team to show up again so you can start the cycle again (thrilling!). But there's not really any opportunity to, say, split up into two groups, or go off on your own to try for a sneak attack, or do some separate game action that earns you extra points or abilities or anything like that. Or at least, you can do some of those things, but they're rare and risky, or they require being really good with a specific character. In general it just feels like the gameplay lacks the flexibility of something like Halo or Splatoon, where you can change up your approach a dozen times in the course of a single game.

The other major issue, which is perhaps more fundamental, is that matches go on for too long without feeling worth it. In my experience, most matches last the maximum amount of time they could - i.e. every timer extension gets triggered - and on top of that, they pretty often go into overtime. This really makes the majority of a match feel pointless - all that matters is the last minute or so, right? If it's a foregone conclusion that they're gonna get the payload to the last checkpoint before the end... why doesn't the payload just start there? What's the point of playing well if it's all gonna come down to the coin toss of "can we get a guy to contest the point in overtime" at the end? But of course, you still have to fight super hard for the full 15 minutes of game, because that's just how it works.

Maybe an addendum to the previous two points is that matches also feel very swingy, because the game doesn't really have any long-term advantages you can get as a team. Winning a skirmish doesn't get you anything except a few moments to breathe, and the other team can easily come back and wipe the floor with you next time. (I think they want things like the robot and the payload to function as permanent advantages. But in my experience it usually doesn't feel like they matter that much, maybe largely because of overtime?)

The last thing I'll mention - it's a smaller issue, but something that still contributes to my lack of excitement is that I eventually realized that despite the level of technical polish on all the art and animations, it all feels kind of... sterile. I dunno, the art style just feels very safe, and the characters are all obvious tropes -- nothing really pops, you know?