18 reviews liked by igniGOTY
Signalis
2022
Persona 3 Reload
2024
VIDEOGAMES!
Garten of Banban 6
2023
I understand the vision
No sé muy bien qué decir de este juego. Por un lado, me ha enganchado a toda la trama de asesinatos. Es muy visceral en como relata poco a poco todos los acontecimientos que desenvuelve la historia. Todo está guiado por unos personajes carismáticos y con personalidad. Se siente muy natural el establecer un vinculo con ellos. Por eso, cuando sucede los diferentes puntos de giro, te choca mucho el papel que toman en cada parte, lo que hace que quieras saber más y más. He llegado a poner en ciertos momentos la consola con la patita de atrás para sostenerla encima de la mesa y con el dialogo automático activado porque estaba super metido y quería disfrutarlo como si fuera una serie
Sin embargo, y este es el contrapunto- toda esta atmósfera de misterio se ve chafada en muchas ocasiones por un alivio cómico cochino, con una capa sexual un tanto problemática, sobre todo a lo que se refiere a las preferencias del personaje protagonista, que no me han gustado nada. Incluso, han podido convertirse en excusas narrativas para solucionar ciertos problemas que han sido más anticlimáticos que otra cosa. Y es una pena porque tiene momentos muy buenos fuera de estos comentarios. Sabe ser gracioso cuando quiere.
Por ejemplo, en algunos puzzles sabe gestionar el humor para relajar y ayudarte también a probar diferentes combinaciones. Creo que casa muy bien el explorar los somnium con la limitación temporal, aunque en algunos casos, como los ya finales, la formula de exploración y el prueba y error -porque tampoco sabes que efecto tiene las opciones que te dan- llegan a ser un tanto frustrantes porque no aplicas la lógica ni la estrategia para distribuir el tiempo que tienes, el juego no da esa posibilidad. Todo parece coincidir más con un factor aleatorio.
Tampoco parece coincidir bien la ramificación que han elegido para contar la historia y la extensión de cada una de ellas. Aunque esto se nota mucho mas casi al final del juego, cuando intentan bloquearte el camino del verdadero final si antes no pasas por ciertas rutas que solo sirve para estirar el misterio y de sobreexponer la trama.
No voy a negar que en algunos momentos he vivido este juego como un fever dream, pero todo el tema de los chistes de colegialas tetonas y los deus ex de ciertas rutas no le hacen bien. También me sorprende mucho que, para lo que es, esté regulinchi en temas de optimización para Switch. Además de algún que otro tirón en los diálogos -muy normal en juegos de la consola- le cuesta reproducir las animaciones complementarias, lo que provoca que la conversación tarde 3 o 4 segundos en responder porque no se ha cargado el vídeo.
Eso si, en algun futuro me jugaré al siguiente 🙄
Sin embargo, y este es el contrapunto- toda esta atmósfera de misterio se ve chafada en muchas ocasiones por un alivio cómico cochino, con una capa sexual un tanto problemática, sobre todo a lo que se refiere a las preferencias del personaje protagonista, que no me han gustado nada. Incluso, han podido convertirse en excusas narrativas para solucionar ciertos problemas que han sido más anticlimáticos que otra cosa. Y es una pena porque tiene momentos muy buenos fuera de estos comentarios. Sabe ser gracioso cuando quiere.
Por ejemplo, en algunos puzzles sabe gestionar el humor para relajar y ayudarte también a probar diferentes combinaciones. Creo que casa muy bien el explorar los somnium con la limitación temporal, aunque en algunos casos, como los ya finales, la formula de exploración y el prueba y error -porque tampoco sabes que efecto tiene las opciones que te dan- llegan a ser un tanto frustrantes porque no aplicas la lógica ni la estrategia para distribuir el tiempo que tienes, el juego no da esa posibilidad. Todo parece coincidir más con un factor aleatorio.
Tampoco parece coincidir bien la ramificación que han elegido para contar la historia y la extensión de cada una de ellas. Aunque esto se nota mucho mas casi al final del juego, cuando intentan bloquearte el camino del verdadero final si antes no pasas por ciertas rutas que solo sirve para estirar el misterio y de sobreexponer la trama.
No voy a negar que en algunos momentos he vivido este juego como un fever dream, pero todo el tema de los chistes de colegialas tetonas y los deus ex de ciertas rutas no le hacen bien. También me sorprende mucho que, para lo que es, esté regulinchi en temas de optimización para Switch. Además de algún que otro tirón en los diálogos -muy normal en juegos de la consola- le cuesta reproducir las animaciones complementarias, lo que provoca que la conversación tarde 3 o 4 segundos en responder porque no se ha cargado el vídeo.
Eso si, en algun futuro me jugaré al siguiente 🙄
Dark Souls III
2016
Have you ever been in the unfortunate position of reading someone say that Dark Souls III relies too heavily in "fanservice crammed with references from the first game" (or something similar)? If you have, try contacting whoever said it, and send them the link to this page!
You might be saving a life by doing this. Remember, only you can teach others on the internet how sequels work.
You might be saving a life by doing this. Remember, only you can teach others on the internet how sequels work.
Valorant
2020
It takes a special kind of game to make me hate it as much as AM hated humans in "I have no mouth and I must scream", every grueling second I spent playing Valorant was miserable, and it got so bad it took me to the point where I genuinely thought for a moment that playing League or Overwatch are better experiences than playing this fucking thing, HATE. HATE IS ALL I FEEL FOR VALORANT
Final Fantasy VI
1994
This review contains spoilers
“On that day… the world was changed forever…”
And they made this game within the span of a year??
Most cinematic game on the SNES, no contest. I knew this game was influential but I never realized to what degree until I actually made it through myself. After watching my brother play it here and there as a kid, to attempting a half dozen times between now and then, I never fully grasped it. Till now.
This is by a team at the top of their game. If every Final Fantasy before it had growing pains, this was the full culmination of what a JRPG or a Final Fantasy meant, plus bonus points for pushing into new directions. IV had the focus on story but not as much on gameplay, whereas V was the opposite. VI manages to (almost) be the in-between. There’s still a huge focus on story, but I think the magicite system and relics allow some level of customization for your otherwise very distinct characters. You can’t really have IV and V within the same game, but this is a very strong effort to bridge the gap.
I grew up thinking this game was extremely dark and it is… at times. The Doma scene in particular still lives rent free in my mind, but there’s also a ton of goofball humor, possibly even moreso, that balances out all the death and dismay. In addition, there are a lot of fun story scenarios, such as the opera, a town full of liars that you have to deduce the truth from, switching between parties till they meet up at their destination, etc. This cycles through a ton of JRPG standards that every game since has based entire games around.
Square really could have just made the World of Balance and everyone would have considered it a good if not great game, but they added an entire second half (back third?) just because they were ahead of schedule. Damn. And it’s not just some addendum, it’s an entirely new open world to explore and there are still tons of things to do in it (most of it being optional). I think this is what cements it in its place as an all-time classic. It essentially functions like FF IV: The After Years, except you didn’t beat the boss, the boss won.
Almost every dungeon has some weird or goofy gimmick going on, it’s not just run around and grind, there’s probably a puzzle of some kind or some other way to mix things up.
Back to the cinematic feel, this definitely feels like a stage play itself, as I’ve noticed a lot of JRPGs do, but it literally has one within it (okay opera). But there’s also a bunch of on-rails moments (one quite literally) which lends to a sense of urgency and scale.
I can feel the influence on a series like Suikoden, with a rogue band of marauders, some of which you might recruit optionally. If FF VII was “the” JRPG of all time (at least culturally), then this was the game that gave them the chutz pah to make that one as cinematic and as memorable as it was. But this one was still more ambitious. Don’t even get me into all the RPG Maker projects I’ve played that shamelessly ape elements from this game. Every single weird little nuance you can explore within a top-down JRPG was done here. This thoroughly wrote the book on all of it. How do you even follow that up? Well I guess with Chrono Trigger (arguably an even better game?!) and then move to 3D afterward. Square really was IT by the end of the SNES life cycle.
The graphics didn’t age amazingly, but it’s still one of the better looking games on the SNES and utilizes every sort of trick to achieve a cinematic feel on a system that could barely handle it. My only complaint is that some of the character animations could be more fluid, or the occasional crappy tile placement here and there. Honestly it’s just a nitpick and doesn’t bother me, but it’s proof this game isn’t perfect. It’s just pretty close.
And they made this game within the span of a year??
Most cinematic game on the SNES, no contest. I knew this game was influential but I never realized to what degree until I actually made it through myself. After watching my brother play it here and there as a kid, to attempting a half dozen times between now and then, I never fully grasped it. Till now.
This is by a team at the top of their game. If every Final Fantasy before it had growing pains, this was the full culmination of what a JRPG or a Final Fantasy meant, plus bonus points for pushing into new directions. IV had the focus on story but not as much on gameplay, whereas V was the opposite. VI manages to (almost) be the in-between. There’s still a huge focus on story, but I think the magicite system and relics allow some level of customization for your otherwise very distinct characters. You can’t really have IV and V within the same game, but this is a very strong effort to bridge the gap.
I grew up thinking this game was extremely dark and it is… at times. The Doma scene in particular still lives rent free in my mind, but there’s also a ton of goofball humor, possibly even moreso, that balances out all the death and dismay. In addition, there are a lot of fun story scenarios, such as the opera, a town full of liars that you have to deduce the truth from, switching between parties till they meet up at their destination, etc. This cycles through a ton of JRPG standards that every game since has based entire games around.
Square really could have just made the World of Balance and everyone would have considered it a good if not great game, but they added an entire second half (back third?) just because they were ahead of schedule. Damn. And it’s not just some addendum, it’s an entirely new open world to explore and there are still tons of things to do in it (most of it being optional). I think this is what cements it in its place as an all-time classic. It essentially functions like FF IV: The After Years, except you didn’t beat the boss, the boss won.
Almost every dungeon has some weird or goofy gimmick going on, it’s not just run around and grind, there’s probably a puzzle of some kind or some other way to mix things up.
Back to the cinematic feel, this definitely feels like a stage play itself, as I’ve noticed a lot of JRPGs do, but it literally has one within it (okay opera). But there’s also a bunch of on-rails moments (one quite literally) which lends to a sense of urgency and scale.
I can feel the influence on a series like Suikoden, with a rogue band of marauders, some of which you might recruit optionally. If FF VII was “the” JRPG of all time (at least culturally), then this was the game that gave them the chutz pah to make that one as cinematic and as memorable as it was. But this one was still more ambitious. Don’t even get me into all the RPG Maker projects I’ve played that shamelessly ape elements from this game. Every single weird little nuance you can explore within a top-down JRPG was done here. This thoroughly wrote the book on all of it. How do you even follow that up? Well I guess with Chrono Trigger (arguably an even better game?!) and then move to 3D afterward. Square really was IT by the end of the SNES life cycle.
The graphics didn’t age amazingly, but it’s still one of the better looking games on the SNES and utilizes every sort of trick to achieve a cinematic feel on a system that could barely handle it. My only complaint is that some of the character animations could be more fluid, or the occasional crappy tile placement here and there. Honestly it’s just a nitpick and doesn’t bother me, but it’s proof this game isn’t perfect. It’s just pretty close.
Persona 4 Golden
2020
The Persona high didn't go away after I finished Reload, so I decided to sit down and get additional achievements for a full playthrough of 4. I'm very happy I did, because I feel like my opinions on this game have solidified really well.
I find the gameplay here fine. It has controllable party members and a dungeon format instead of a 100 floor tower or subway system, but it lacks anything that adds a lot of depth to the game. I don't blame Golden for this, as it's mainly just due to how long ago the game came out. The life sim aspects are as fun and addicting as any other Persona, and the music grows on me each time I hear it. (Heartbeat, Heartbreak in particular is great).
What makes 4 slightly worse than 3 and 5 in my eyes, unfortunately, is the writing. That statement alone probably turned anyone reading this away, but I ask you hear me out. I don't really agree with sentiments you'd find on Twitter (I find Kanji and Naoto's arcs to be the best in the game), but that said I do feel that this game is extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY, dated. A better way to describe my feelings is I feel as though two different people wrote this game: one that cared about a murder mystery featuring high schoolers and an overwhelmingly stressful atmosphere, and another who wanted to write the most generic slice of life anime you've ever watched, gross tropes and all.
The members of the Investigation Team are all individually very enjoyable. Its when they share scenes, usually in the added golden content, that their annoying sides come out. Teddie is a character that deeply upsets me. I find that he has some genuinely good emotional moments throughout Golden's runtime, but a vast majority of his lines are creepy as all hell. I fucking despise the pervert trope, it's the main reason I don't really watch anime at all, and Teddie's perv energy is so massive that it infects the other characters while he runs his mouth. Yosuke in particular loses all of his brain cells as Golden's story goes on. Not only is he regulated to pervert comic relief with Teddie, but he's also really fucking rude to Kanji, like to an unfair degree. This is getting informal, but the dude literally accepted his magical dark shadow self by admitting that he isn't gay, just afraid of rejection, and yet Yosuke still gives him shit. Like I thought the whole point was to support your friends in accepting themselves, bad and all. Why tear into the dude about something that isn't even true and clearly tormented him. It sucks even more because Yosuke's writing before Kanji's dungeon and in his S-Link is really solid, and I REALLY want to like him more than I do.
As usual, I went on a rant. I want to end by saying that I feel the setting of Inaba is the strongest setting present in modern Persona. I'm not sure how, but Golden does a great job of making the scenery feel comfy and safe. I also, despite the creepy writing, can tell how much each member of the Investigation Team cares for one another, and to me they form a better group dynamic than S.E.E.S. and the Phantom Thieves. It's just a shame that when you inspect closer, ironically, the darker parts of some of these characters are hard to ignore.
I find the gameplay here fine. It has controllable party members and a dungeon format instead of a 100 floor tower or subway system, but it lacks anything that adds a lot of depth to the game. I don't blame Golden for this, as it's mainly just due to how long ago the game came out. The life sim aspects are as fun and addicting as any other Persona, and the music grows on me each time I hear it. (Heartbeat, Heartbreak in particular is great).
What makes 4 slightly worse than 3 and 5 in my eyes, unfortunately, is the writing. That statement alone probably turned anyone reading this away, but I ask you hear me out. I don't really agree with sentiments you'd find on Twitter (I find Kanji and Naoto's arcs to be the best in the game), but that said I do feel that this game is extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY, dated. A better way to describe my feelings is I feel as though two different people wrote this game: one that cared about a murder mystery featuring high schoolers and an overwhelmingly stressful atmosphere, and another who wanted to write the most generic slice of life anime you've ever watched, gross tropes and all.
The members of the Investigation Team are all individually very enjoyable. Its when they share scenes, usually in the added golden content, that their annoying sides come out. Teddie is a character that deeply upsets me. I find that he has some genuinely good emotional moments throughout Golden's runtime, but a vast majority of his lines are creepy as all hell. I fucking despise the pervert trope, it's the main reason I don't really watch anime at all, and Teddie's perv energy is so massive that it infects the other characters while he runs his mouth. Yosuke in particular loses all of his brain cells as Golden's story goes on. Not only is he regulated to pervert comic relief with Teddie, but he's also really fucking rude to Kanji, like to an unfair degree. This is getting informal, but the dude literally accepted his magical dark shadow self by admitting that he isn't gay, just afraid of rejection, and yet Yosuke still gives him shit. Like I thought the whole point was to support your friends in accepting themselves, bad and all. Why tear into the dude about something that isn't even true and clearly tormented him. It sucks even more because Yosuke's writing before Kanji's dungeon and in his S-Link is really solid, and I REALLY want to like him more than I do.
As usual, I went on a rant. I want to end by saying that I feel the setting of Inaba is the strongest setting present in modern Persona. I'm not sure how, but Golden does a great job of making the scenery feel comfy and safe. I also, despite the creepy writing, can tell how much each member of the Investigation Team cares for one another, and to me they form a better group dynamic than S.E.E.S. and the Phantom Thieves. It's just a shame that when you inspect closer, ironically, the darker parts of some of these characters are hard to ignore.
Mega Man 2
1989
Mega Man 2 es uno de los juegos más sobrevalorados no solamente de Mega Man, sino del todo el catálogo de la NES. No puedo quitarle todos los méritos pues a fin de cuentas es un rato decente y es verdad que tiene momentos bastante icónicos, un soundtrack envidiable y una fórmula tan buena que a Capcom le bastó con hacer copypaste al momento de desarrollar cada entrega, pero es de esos juegos cuyo prestigio recae más en la popularidad y la suerte de haber sido el juego por el cual la mayoría se introdujo a la franquicia en su tiempo que por algo que haga excepcionalmente bien frente a títulos posteriores, los cuáles son en su mayoría superiores en casi todos los sentidos. No me cabe cómo es que otros juegos de Mega Man clásico tienen un promedio menor a este en Backloggd cuando son lo mismo pero sin las cagadas que esta entrega tiene. Mencionaré sus fallas más cruciales.
-El balanceo es una mierda. He visto gente que se queja del arsenal en otras entregas de Mega Man pero aquí lo perdonan o pasan por alto cuando en general sigue siendo bastante mediocre y situacional. Pero lo más chocante acá es que básicamente cualquier arma queda inútil en comparación al Metal Blade. Es un arma tan potente que no te verás en la necesidad de usar el resto salvo en una que otra situación; rompe el juego, te puedes cagar a mitad de los jefes y al Dr. Wily en su primera etapa con ella sin esfuerzo y lo más gracioso de todo, la consigues a los primeros minutos.
-El diseño de niveles está...bien. Las fases de Metal Man y Bubble Man son las mejores mientras que fases como las de Flash Man o Air Man son algo repetitivas y carecen de complejidad pero funcionan. Quizá las peores entre las fases de los Robot Masters serían las de Heat Man y Quick Man, nada particularmente malo pero son niveles que giran entorno a una gimmick pedorra y no hay mucho más a destacar. La calidad se va en picada luego de la primera fase de Wily, con los niveles restantes siendo muy monótonos y simplones, algunos ven secciones vacías de estos niveles como un intento de crear atmósfera, yo lo veo como si ya hubieran querido terminar con el juego de una vez.
-El jefe de la cuarta fase de Wily es una porquería y el que le dio visto bueno a algo así merece ser despedido, genuinamente uno de las peores jefes que se hayan hecho en un videojuego. Es un intento de puzzle en el que debes usar la bomba de Crash Man para destruir unos muros y luego explotar a unos bichitos metálicos pegados por las paredes. El problema es que es un troleo de los malos; debes seguir un patrón de acciones muy específico y si se te acaba la munición del arma sólo te queda suicidarte múltiples veces hasta conseguir un game over y jugar todo el nivel de nuevo, porque al morir no se recargan las armas. Una cagada que parece no haber pasado por testeo alguno.
En resumen, Mega Man 2 es un juego que me gusta mucho.
-El balanceo es una mierda. He visto gente que se queja del arsenal en otras entregas de Mega Man pero aquí lo perdonan o pasan por alto cuando en general sigue siendo bastante mediocre y situacional. Pero lo más chocante acá es que básicamente cualquier arma queda inútil en comparación al Metal Blade. Es un arma tan potente que no te verás en la necesidad de usar el resto salvo en una que otra situación; rompe el juego, te puedes cagar a mitad de los jefes y al Dr. Wily en su primera etapa con ella sin esfuerzo y lo más gracioso de todo, la consigues a los primeros minutos.
-El diseño de niveles está...bien. Las fases de Metal Man y Bubble Man son las mejores mientras que fases como las de Flash Man o Air Man son algo repetitivas y carecen de complejidad pero funcionan. Quizá las peores entre las fases de los Robot Masters serían las de Heat Man y Quick Man, nada particularmente malo pero son niveles que giran entorno a una gimmick pedorra y no hay mucho más a destacar. La calidad se va en picada luego de la primera fase de Wily, con los niveles restantes siendo muy monótonos y simplones, algunos ven secciones vacías de estos niveles como un intento de crear atmósfera, yo lo veo como si ya hubieran querido terminar con el juego de una vez.
-El jefe de la cuarta fase de Wily es una porquería y el que le dio visto bueno a algo así merece ser despedido, genuinamente uno de las peores jefes que se hayan hecho en un videojuego. Es un intento de puzzle en el que debes usar la bomba de Crash Man para destruir unos muros y luego explotar a unos bichitos metálicos pegados por las paredes. El problema es que es un troleo de los malos; debes seguir un patrón de acciones muy específico y si se te acaba la munición del arma sólo te queda suicidarte múltiples veces hasta conseguir un game over y jugar todo el nivel de nuevo, porque al morir no se recargan las armas. Una cagada que parece no haber pasado por testeo alguno.
En resumen, Mega Man 2 es un juego que me gusta mucho.
Sea of Stars
2023
For a game that is ostensibly a send up to the classics of the genre, Sea of Stars seemingly does not understand a single thing about what makes those games so timeless.
There's a certain level of insincerity that permeates the whole experience. The writing feels very concerned with letting the player know that they're in on the fact that JRPGs are steeped in tropes and can be a bit silly, but all those winks at the camera inherently make me less invested in the world and characters, because it feels like the person writing this actually doesn't like what the genre is but rather what they perceive it to be. There wasn't any moment that I felt like the game was trying to say anything of any value, not even something as simple as "friendship is good" is articulated well, because the characters that are involved in those friendships aren't believable at all. Then out of nowhere they'll dump a bunch of lore on you that seems completely irrelevant to the actual plot or characters of this game, and I assume that's because large chunks of it are related to The Messenger or are setting up more threads to be continued in a later game? Either way the lore dumps aren't actually interesting and often times come off as extraordinarily edgy and completely at odds with the rest of the tone. All this without mentioning that virtually every plot beat of the game is 1:1 ripped from Chrono Trigger and rearranged in a way that only seems to undermine the efficacy of those moments.
The combat system likewise feels like it's a bunch of disparate mechanics stitched together from other games they liked without really considering why these elements haven't been combined before. The positioning mechanics lifted from Chrono Trigger and the action command system lifted from Super Mario RPG are obviously only included because the developers liked both of those mechanics on their own, and yes, both of those mechanics are fantastic in the games they originated in. However, it doesn't take long before you realize why these mechanics have never been combined, and that's because they are fundamentally at odds with each other. Action commands require action-game-like precision timing in order to execute at the maximum level of efficacy, but due to the random positioning of enemies you oftentimes end up missing timing because it wasn't clear where an enemy was in relation to you, or the timing of an attack was slightly different than usual because of the distance, or an enemy will completely obscure one of its comrades so you can't actually see their animation, or the UI will obscure an enemy, or an enemy or your party member will get stuck in a wall, and so on. This might not be such a big deal if the encounters were balanced in such a way that the action commands weren't completely essential to your survival, but unlike in a Mario RPG you're not dealing with tiny integers where the difference between a block and taking a hit is 1 HP, rather the difference between taking a block and a hit could be half of your life bar. It demands 100% of your attention from nearly every single encounter, and after a while that just becomes exhausting because each character only has 3 skills so you're never really getting any stronger so the entire experience just feels really flat.
The one thing that really did resonate with me was the dungeon design. I did find it really compelling overall, you can tell this is a team that cut their teeth on action games (for better and for worse). There's a constant forward momentum and while the puzzles aren't all that difficult to figure out, there's a certain joy in actually executing them that did feel like it came from that action game DNA.
All in all Sea of Stars really does feel like a tacky pastiche of better games made by a team that was really confident they understood what made the genre tick when in fact they did not. Love that pixel art doe.
There's a certain level of insincerity that permeates the whole experience. The writing feels very concerned with letting the player know that they're in on the fact that JRPGs are steeped in tropes and can be a bit silly, but all those winks at the camera inherently make me less invested in the world and characters, because it feels like the person writing this actually doesn't like what the genre is but rather what they perceive it to be. There wasn't any moment that I felt like the game was trying to say anything of any value, not even something as simple as "friendship is good" is articulated well, because the characters that are involved in those friendships aren't believable at all. Then out of nowhere they'll dump a bunch of lore on you that seems completely irrelevant to the actual plot or characters of this game, and I assume that's because large chunks of it are related to The Messenger or are setting up more threads to be continued in a later game? Either way the lore dumps aren't actually interesting and often times come off as extraordinarily edgy and completely at odds with the rest of the tone. All this without mentioning that virtually every plot beat of the game is 1:1 ripped from Chrono Trigger and rearranged in a way that only seems to undermine the efficacy of those moments.
The combat system likewise feels like it's a bunch of disparate mechanics stitched together from other games they liked without really considering why these elements haven't been combined before. The positioning mechanics lifted from Chrono Trigger and the action command system lifted from Super Mario RPG are obviously only included because the developers liked both of those mechanics on their own, and yes, both of those mechanics are fantastic in the games they originated in. However, it doesn't take long before you realize why these mechanics have never been combined, and that's because they are fundamentally at odds with each other. Action commands require action-game-like precision timing in order to execute at the maximum level of efficacy, but due to the random positioning of enemies you oftentimes end up missing timing because it wasn't clear where an enemy was in relation to you, or the timing of an attack was slightly different than usual because of the distance, or an enemy will completely obscure one of its comrades so you can't actually see their animation, or the UI will obscure an enemy, or an enemy or your party member will get stuck in a wall, and so on. This might not be such a big deal if the encounters were balanced in such a way that the action commands weren't completely essential to your survival, but unlike in a Mario RPG you're not dealing with tiny integers where the difference between a block and taking a hit is 1 HP, rather the difference between taking a block and a hit could be half of your life bar. It demands 100% of your attention from nearly every single encounter, and after a while that just becomes exhausting because each character only has 3 skills so you're never really getting any stronger so the entire experience just feels really flat.
The one thing that really did resonate with me was the dungeon design. I did find it really compelling overall, you can tell this is a team that cut their teeth on action games (for better and for worse). There's a constant forward momentum and while the puzzles aren't all that difficult to figure out, there's a certain joy in actually executing them that did feel like it came from that action game DNA.
All in all Sea of Stars really does feel like a tacky pastiche of better games made by a team that was really confident they understood what made the genre tick when in fact they did not. Love that pixel art doe.
