So I played Bandle Tale, the league of legends cozy game, you know as a long time league fan I really had high hopes for this game especially cause I'm a huge yordle fanatic, and that's why it really breaks my heart to say this game undelivers big time, it starts out well enough but by the mid to late game it gets really tedious, you're always short on resources, going back and fourth between places all the time, moving your workstations around and waiting for arbitrary timers to finish, all the while not having much fun at all, making progress was not relaxing, nor did it make me feel cool or accomplished, it just made me relieved I was one step closer to being done with it all, maybe someone out there can find the fun in Bandle Tale, for me it was too elusive.

Anno is a very funny japanese word. What oh you mean the game? Sorry, Right then! Anno: Mutationem is a 2D Cyberpunk Hack and Slash with a ton of charm, soul and shortcomings.

To start off with the good stuff, the games art-style is incredibly unique, the mix of 2D and 3D elements combined with the great environment design creates a very beautiful and interesting world that I had great fun exploring, the character sprites are very emotive and animate a lot even during casual conversation, weapon animations are fast and fluid and beating foes feels great, there's also a ton of weapons to choose from, like simple swords, great-swords, guns, particle cannons and rocket launchers.

The Combat loop is pretty simple, you can get by just fine by mashing square, personally i don't mind this but if you do then that sucks obviously, something I did mind was the games difficulty, it doesn't ramp up enough until very late, now there is a hard mode but you have to beat the game first to unlock it which I think is stupid and only serves to take enjoyment away from certain players, seriously why.

The games soundtrack is alright, not of all the tracks stand out on their own but they each fit the scene they accompany, I often found myself listening to the main menu theme for a bit before starting, definitely my favorite.

The story and the characters start off pretty harmless, in fact it starts off pretty interesting and then just completely goes off the rails by the end, it doesn't help that most of the endgame cutscenes just don't have voice acting, which leads to a lot of characters just standing around doing nothing and emoting at each other, not cool.

Also on the topic of not cool... While the game runs just fine for most people during my playthrough I encountered a ton of minor bugs that really killed my immersion, now some of them were pretty funny like my characters orientation getting completely messed up which led to Ann looking like she'd been featured on the hydraulic press channel. But ultimately they did kill my immersion which sucks because the vibe this game has going for it when everything works is insane.

I think that's it, I can't think of anything else to add anyways so let's call it here, in short Anno is a great game with an even greater vibe that has a lot of potential but ends up falling short when it really matters most, I would still heavily recommend this to anyone looking for a fun sci-fi fix over the weekend. Thanks for reading!