It is now January 21st, 2021. I have just defeated the final boss of this game. I am numb. I have no desire to do much of anything at the moment. David Bowie is sweetly serenading me with his sultry voice as I type this out. Because as much as I don't want to put any effort into typing out a review right now, I feel obligated to before I forget. This game has destroyed me. The mental strain and frustration I felt throughout most of it is something that I hope I don't have to experience ever again. That said, why the 3/10 then? Surely, this game deserves the lowest rating possible for breaking me, right? Well, not necessarily. There's a lot to dislike here for sure, but I can't bring myself to completely hate it.
I'm not going to get into plot details here (because to be quite honest, the game lost me around Chapter 5 out of 7). I can say, however that if you are a fan of zany and some light dark humor, you might still find the dialogue and story to be silly enough to keep your attention. I was all for it at first. I liked the 'Tim Burton-esque' art design and the characters are mostly cute and likeable, with the Shadow King (shown on the cover) being a great source of comedic relief. Quick laughs and nice art direction can only get you so far, though. Almost everything else about this game fails to deliver to a certain degree.
I feel like this review would be far too long if I decide to thoroughly explain everything I found wrong with this title. Instead, I'll list some of its glaring issues:
- Boring and repetitive dungeon design
- Simplistic battle system that gets redundant real quick
- Optional overworld encounters are not so optional... (more on that later)
- Unintuative party switch system (where you have to backtrack to an inn just to switch out party members)
- Limited areas to explore which leads to...
- Excessive backtracking with an annoying quick travel system
- Ridiculous difficulty curve during later boss fights (Unless you grind a ton and/or stockpile a lot of consumables, you are at the mercy of the terrible RNG)
That last point is honestly the biggest source of my frustration with this game. Up until the 4th boss, I think, the game had been relatively easy. As long as I just fought whatever enemies I came across, it seems I was ready for anything. But then the game decided it wasn't gonna be a scrawny little 'kids' RPG anymore and became Dark Souls (please excuse the overused comparison). But yeah, it seemed that suddenly your whole adventure became a game of chance, where winning boss fights relied on obtuse tactics or sluggish grinding and item stockpiling. What little sense of enjoyment I had was gone after that. Basically, what I'm saying is that the game was enjoyable up until it wasn't...
I was actually gonna go into detail about one boss in particular... but I don't wanna spoil it. All I can say is, you'll know when you get there if you decide to play this. Good luck. I say that assuming you were playing this game casually and not grinding from the start, of course. But anyway, I finally got to Chapter 7 earlier. The final chapter. I was almost done. I felt relieved... but that didn't last. The final dungeon is one of the most complicated and annoying examples of poor level design I have ever seen. It's not fun. It requires traversing a drab maze of bookshelves and tight corridors where everything looks the same, which makes it hard to navigate. You're expected to navigate this God-forsaken place while struggling with the aggressive enemy AI. I mentioned earlier that I was gonna talk about those pesky encounters. They are especially bad here. Basically, the way that encounters work in this game is that enemies first appear as these clouds with eyes on the overworld... but they appear randomly and at close proximity. The longer you avoid them, the more aggressive they get. You'll eventually get touched by one because you have no time to react and move out of the way, and in the case of the final 'dungeon,' you often have nowhere to go because you're trapped by the narrow corridors.
By the time I finished the game, my in-game playtime was around 21 hours or so, but that doesn't account for the amount of times I had to restart battles (at one point just to get a stupid rare drop for a Playstation trophy). It would have also been less if I didn't have so much downtime trying to figure out what to do at certain points. Talking to people, walking around in circles, backtracking, blah blah. It's a shame that I had such a bad time, because again, the aesthetics and presentation were interesting in certain areas, and I can't deny that bosses could still be exhilarating whenever I was properly prepared. But the game has too many issues that make it a very incompetent RPG. To all of its fans, I salute thee. You guys are warriors and it makes me wonder if maybe this is all just a skill issue.
P.S. Ending was pretty cute, though.
I'm not going to get into plot details here (because to be quite honest, the game lost me around Chapter 5 out of 7). I can say, however that if you are a fan of zany and some light dark humor, you might still find the dialogue and story to be silly enough to keep your attention. I was all for it at first. I liked the 'Tim Burton-esque' art design and the characters are mostly cute and likeable, with the Shadow King (shown on the cover) being a great source of comedic relief. Quick laughs and nice art direction can only get you so far, though. Almost everything else about this game fails to deliver to a certain degree.
I feel like this review would be far too long if I decide to thoroughly explain everything I found wrong with this title. Instead, I'll list some of its glaring issues:
- Boring and repetitive dungeon design
- Simplistic battle system that gets redundant real quick
- Optional overworld encounters are not so optional... (more on that later)
- Unintuative party switch system (where you have to backtrack to an inn just to switch out party members)
- Limited areas to explore which leads to...
- Excessive backtracking with an annoying quick travel system
- Ridiculous difficulty curve during later boss fights (Unless you grind a ton and/or stockpile a lot of consumables, you are at the mercy of the terrible RNG)
That last point is honestly the biggest source of my frustration with this game. Up until the 4th boss, I think, the game had been relatively easy. As long as I just fought whatever enemies I came across, it seems I was ready for anything. But then the game decided it wasn't gonna be a scrawny little 'kids' RPG anymore and became Dark Souls (please excuse the overused comparison). But yeah, it seemed that suddenly your whole adventure became a game of chance, where winning boss fights relied on obtuse tactics or sluggish grinding and item stockpiling. What little sense of enjoyment I had was gone after that. Basically, what I'm saying is that the game was enjoyable up until it wasn't...
I was actually gonna go into detail about one boss in particular... but I don't wanna spoil it. All I can say is, you'll know when you get there if you decide to play this. Good luck. I say that assuming you were playing this game casually and not grinding from the start, of course. But anyway, I finally got to Chapter 7 earlier. The final chapter. I was almost done. I felt relieved... but that didn't last. The final dungeon is one of the most complicated and annoying examples of poor level design I have ever seen. It's not fun. It requires traversing a drab maze of bookshelves and tight corridors where everything looks the same, which makes it hard to navigate. You're expected to navigate this God-forsaken place while struggling with the aggressive enemy AI. I mentioned earlier that I was gonna talk about those pesky encounters. They are especially bad here. Basically, the way that encounters work in this game is that enemies first appear as these clouds with eyes on the overworld... but they appear randomly and at close proximity. The longer you avoid them, the more aggressive they get. You'll eventually get touched by one because you have no time to react and move out of the way, and in the case of the final 'dungeon,' you often have nowhere to go because you're trapped by the narrow corridors.
By the time I finished the game, my in-game playtime was around 21 hours or so, but that doesn't account for the amount of times I had to restart battles (at one point just to get a stupid rare drop for a Playstation trophy). It would have also been less if I didn't have so much downtime trying to figure out what to do at certain points. Talking to people, walking around in circles, backtracking, blah blah. It's a shame that I had such a bad time, because again, the aesthetics and presentation were interesting in certain areas, and I can't deny that bosses could still be exhilarating whenever I was properly prepared. But the game has too many issues that make it a very incompetent RPG. To all of its fans, I salute thee. You guys are warriors and it makes me wonder if maybe this is all just a skill issue.
P.S. Ending was pretty cute, though.