I'll start this review off by saying, firstly, I am a fan of mmos, Ive played a lot of them, am aware of the conventions they tend to rely on and I accept them. Secondly, this is kind of just my jumbled thoughts, but mostly follows my experience playing up until I got stuck.

And I can safely say that this game has potential but it feels as if they've squandered it. Gameplay is weird, might be a bit delayed if servers aren't out for where I live, but overall it feels fine, I played as a fighter and I didn't mind it, not being restricted to one class is always refreshing, especially when I can switch whenever I want, it let me experiment with classes a bit even if I primarily played as a fighter, just switching my subclass more then anything.

Character creation is easy to get through, pick a race, a look, a class, no trouble at all. Then I get presented with the story, and a - in my opinion - big issue, gear is just handed to me on a silver platter, gear far far stronger then what I currently have, alright, I equip it, progress with the story.

Systems will just show up, be explained, and then not really elaborated on, I think it'd be better to either give these systems to me slowly over time, or don't introduce them until I start to look in to something that relates to those system, e.g I want to enhance a weapon so I go inspect, and then there's some option which will guide me to where to do that and explain it to me.

Alright, keep moving through the story, so far so good, lots of characters that I don't particularly care about showing up, and soon after I had finished the first chapter or area or whatever, by now I was actually enjoying the game I was in to it and eager to play it all the way to end game, or at least post story. Then I clear the second chapter with some similar issues as the first, but overall still fine.

Then comes the start of the third chapter, suddenly I'm under levelled, all the gear the game had been so gracefully gifting me along the way had worn out it's welcome, and I need new gear, the game explains some methods to getting more power, but doesn't point me in the direction of powerful enough gear at their base level just ways to enhance, and the gains I make are quite small.

Now needing to enhance gear to progress is very... Mobile game-esque, but not inherently bad, but giving me a drip feed attached to an IV of equipment that carries me through the game gives me the impression that the game will do this the whole way through, and I'm suddenly left high and dry. And my only thoughts are how I want to progress the story.

My memory is a bit hazy, but I did give getting equipment a go, I scoured the map, collected points on the map, tried enhancing my gear until I just... Stopped playing, this game had potential but honestly squandered it by doing this. They should really dedicate either to 100% holding my hand all the way, or make me work for equipment and upgrades from the start so I don't get an information overload when I need it. Maybe I'll jump on eventually and play again and try to finish the story that's currently out.

==At the time of writing this, I've finished the main story, but haven't finish all of the achievements, something I would like to go back and do.==

This is just a cute little puzzle game, delightfully designed, really really intriguing, and quite frankly an amazing concept, just assorting random objects to fit the "theme" of each prompt, like matching colours, patterns, sizes, shapes, really I enjoyed my time with this game, some puzzles stumped me, but I didn't press it any further, which brings me to another strong positive, is that none of these have to be done in order, there is no new mechanic introduced if you skip levels, there isn't anything you miss out on bar the level itself, you can just tackle the game in any order you want, an amazing puzzle game for certain.

I am of two minds when I think of this game. With one, I am one who gets no bitches so to speak, I enjoy games with romance in them, which is why I'm partially such a sucker for persona games, that and they're also really really good games. This game offers a similar thing as the persona games, for one with no bitches like myself, which is the chance to talk to women, or rather talk suggestively? Or as if you're trying to become more then friends, and choose waifus.

But I am also one impatient motherfucker or rather I don't like wasting my time, which is why having the entire dungeon section basically just be a waste of time is infuriating, this game is like, all grind no sigma. Iirc the second game has a choice for difficulty which allows the player to gain more exp while also making combat less difficult, honestly if I could customise it like persona 4 golden on steam, then that'd be pretty much perfect as I don't wish to trivialize combat, just grinding.

So far I've enjoyed talking with the characters and getting to know them as I hang out with them, even if some are just unbelievably annoying (like Mahiru) but it's still nice having such a diverse cast of characters, it's just a shame that the dungeon crawling is easily the most boring part of this game.

- Plays the game until around 2022 when they massively rework every system
- Game has basically been replaced by a somehow more viciously greedy and soulless gatcha game
- Company abandons game due to low sales and moves on to create ai slop.

The people up above, like executives and the like, need to give a formal, public apology to the devs, the artists, the sound designers, everyone who worked on this game.

This game actually meant a lot to me, it's just another garbage gatcha game that I actually was lulled into spending money on which is unusual for me as normally gatcha games don't have that kind of pull, but I spent money, I invested myself into the world, I loved the characters, character designs, team crafting, itemization of characters, I'd gladly spend hours doing some dumbass activity if only so I could make my team stronger.

I genuinely loved this game, and then that fateful day occurred, I actually spent money on this game, and even worse then it only getting me anime characters that I could drool over or bigger numbers, stupid stuff like that, it got me nothing, because they removed all of the important passives from characters and replaced them with way watered down versions of them.

They took the main reason to strive to acquire certain characters and put it on a whole new gatcha system, basically screwing over anyone who only spent a small amount of money or was entirely f2p in place of if any one just newbies, they entirely reworked equipment, which was an alright change but it meant all of the old equipment was worthless. The one saving grace is that iirc equipment and things invested into characters were refunded at the very least.

Despite all of this I can't help but see how much potential the game had, talented animators and artists, quite honestly masterful character designs, both for stupid ass fanservice and actual serious characters, it all fell in line with the game's themes unlike some other gatcha games. All and all, it had the potential, especially if they made a non-gatcha version of this game, at the very least I would have played it.

I don't think I could ever forgive the exec's or whoever was in charge of such a monumentally massive fuck up, and for ruining what was actually a highly rated game of mine, even if I had stopped playing it cause it had gotten quite dull.

Rip Exos Heroes