While the gameplay is typical for the genre, it felt a bit novel due to the story and challenge. The tone felt a bit mature, the dialogue felt natural and the main character is an old man. The challenge is high due to playing with 2 characters who can’t use healing spells for a long time. And the enemies are no pushover. I enjoyed the 10-15 hours despite the lack of budget and polish. The game also has some bugs. You don’t need to play this but if you’re curious and can get it for cheap, then why not.

I played this on an iPad Pro using the touch screen. The graphics can look pretty impressive and the cutscenes have voice acting. The gameplay is okay but it doesn’t feel very satisfying. The challenge can change quickly, the story is not important since it’s chatting about random things, the equipment is a bit frustrating when you unlock things and suddenly they’re not available or you equipped something and the game doesn’t always remember this when you play again. It’s not a bad game but I don’t feel like plaything this was worth it.

The story is interesting, the twist is good and the dialogue can be fun. There are many QoL options such as teleportation, exit a dungeon button, increase the speed of battles and story summary. There are no glitches or bugs. The game runs smoothly. The only cons would be the low budget showing and changing your class. There is asset re-use. There are no fancy cutscenes and the music, while good, there isn’t a huge selection. In order to change your class, you always need to go to one town. While you can always teleport there, I would have preferred the option to change my class in the party menu. There is no challenge at the start but that changes with the last 30% or so. Especially if you do the optional content too. Overall, this game is decent. You know what you’re getting out of it and the developer knew how to use their budget right even if it’s not a lot. It costed me €5, so I understand why the budget can’t be high. This is my first Kemco RPG and it is a pleasant surprise. They always seem to have a somewhat bad reputation but I don’t see it with this game.

This little game surprised me. It’s an action dungeon crawler on a budget but it was fun the entire time. The ‘story mode’ takes a couple of hours but after completing it, you unlock tower and challenge mode. Tower mode, the real meat of the game, has 50 random generated floors and challenge mode is playing the story mode (shortened version) without your gear. You have to make due with what you find on the way, which can also be luck dependant. The objective is filling your bestiary, find the best weapon/gear/magic/food and make it out alive. You can play with the boy or girl. The balance really felt right. I spent at least 40 hours on this. Not bad for €3!

I’ve had a good time playing this game but it has some technical problems and some other aspects aren’t as good as the previous games. The problems include the game running sluggish, being a bit buggy and crashing twice on me. The crashes aren’t too bad since the game auto saves. As for the bugs, all of them are not game breaking but one was annoying because I had to reload my save to display an object I could interact with for the puzzle. Also it is not always clear which parts you can interact with or important spots/objects you can miss due to the way the camera works. But this only happened with me a few times (3 or 4 at most). Anyway, I enjoyed the puzzles, Kate’s journey and the atmosphere. If you’re a big fan of Syberia, then you’re ought to play it. But do lower your expectations and get it on sale.

The gameplay part is pretty fun and mechanically it works well. The graphics are functional and can look pretty cute. However, there is one major flaw: the grind. Every fifth level, the AI’s stats increase significantly that you have to grind. There is no room for anything else. It’s not like RPGs where you can be underleveled and still win with a solid strategy. I completed the game in 8 hours and 37 minutes and I think at least half of it went to grinding. Now the good news is, it’s not a big deal. You can replay the first level and can earn around 100 quickly to upgrade your stats. You can do this while reading or watching something else. I just think it’s a cheap way to lengthen the game. I would have preferred all the time spent on clearing new levels and thinking about how to beat them instead of holding grind sessions.

A far better game than CQ EX. It has more depth, interesting risk/reward system and the grind is not as ridiculous. You have more tools to decide how to grind and you don’t need to max all your stats to have a chance. That’s where risk/reward comes into place. Do you want better units to win fights? Then you’ll get less money when you win. How do you use morale? More at the start but less gradually or start low but with more defence? In this game, morale does influence the outcome of battles. I’ve completed the game in less than 7 hours (EX more than 8 hours and 30 minutes) and I had a far better experience. I’m looking forward to CQ Against now.

An interesting start to a spin off with flaws. I was especially annoyed with the early parts mainly because of the way the levels were designed. Lots of backtracking with frequent random encounters. The kind of backtracking where if you fail, you have to walk the same distance to get back where you were again. This does get better with the second half. Other flaws include the levels looking similar, especially the internet levels. That’s a different reason why you might backtrack too much. It’s also not possible to escape from battles properly. You can use an escape card, but what’s the chance of getting this card when you need it? Not much. What the game does right though is the battle system being novel and interesting for its time. The soundtrack kicks ass. The characters are distinct when it comes to design and I enjoy interacting with them even though there are no surprises. I do like the twist right before the last fight though. Overall, I’m glad to have given the game a chance to start with this spin off series and continue with the sequels but I’m not hooked enough to do the post game content or try to collect all the cards/upgrades. I’ll leave that for the sequels if they turn out better.