Cute, but very shallow game. It looks and sounds great, but whenever you pay more attention to anything deeper, from writing to gameplay, there's just nothing there.
I might be spoiled by Baldur's Gate 3 a bit, but for an RPG this game is extremely railroaded. I've played about 10 hours, and there was zero opportunity for exploration, RP choices, build choices, progression branches.
You can't choose where to go, because there's nowhere to go outside the main progression line. You can't choose what to do, because there are no side quests or anything worth exploring in any of the locations. You can't choose how your characters play, because on the only choice you have is what stat will gain a superficial boost on leveling up. There are no abilities, no equipment to choose from.
Even combat is railroaded to one correct strategy. You need to hit enemies with the element they are vulnerable to and break their attacks by hitting them with a combination of elements. This is the only thing the game wants you to do in combat, there are no alternative strategies or other decisions to consider.
This would be forgivable if the game railroaded you through an amazing story with characters worth sinking your time in. This is not the case. The story and the characters are the same shallow pastiche of JRPGs as everything else about the game. I quickly started skipping through dialog because of how superficial and poorly written it was, something I almost never do in RPGs.
The artists and the composer deserve the highest praise in this game, it's really a joy to look at and listen to. A shame that this cool aesthetic has no structural support whatsoever.
I might be spoiled by Baldur's Gate 3 a bit, but for an RPG this game is extremely railroaded. I've played about 10 hours, and there was zero opportunity for exploration, RP choices, build choices, progression branches.
You can't choose where to go, because there's nowhere to go outside the main progression line. You can't choose what to do, because there are no side quests or anything worth exploring in any of the locations. You can't choose how your characters play, because on the only choice you have is what stat will gain a superficial boost on leveling up. There are no abilities, no equipment to choose from.
Even combat is railroaded to one correct strategy. You need to hit enemies with the element they are vulnerable to and break their attacks by hitting them with a combination of elements. This is the only thing the game wants you to do in combat, there are no alternative strategies or other decisions to consider.
This would be forgivable if the game railroaded you through an amazing story with characters worth sinking your time in. This is not the case. The story and the characters are the same shallow pastiche of JRPGs as everything else about the game. I quickly started skipping through dialog because of how superficial and poorly written it was, something I almost never do in RPGs.
The artists and the composer deserve the highest praise in this game, it's really a joy to look at and listen to. A shame that this cool aesthetic has no structural support whatsoever.