This is less of a review and more of an ongoing journal and my immediate impressions of the game.

This game is really blowing my mind. The dialogue isn't awful like most modern JRPGs, and the characters are not actively pissing me off by existing.

The ability to set priority tables with conditions for skill usage is simply awesome. This is only the 2nd game I've ever seen that offers this feature, and it really allows you to take advantage of the game in very unique ways.

It has a relationship system that lets you grow your relationships between your characters, with certain milestones triggering cutscenes and events. Presumably these relationships will later affect the story. Very cool.

Once you get past the introduction, you shockingly are put into a free-roam overworld where you can freely visit towns and outposts, buy and sell, hire and fire units, and even do quests. There are units on the overworld that you can talk to, some of them giving you items and equipment, and other even giving you access to side quests.

There are also nodes for certain resources that replenish themselves, one-time treasure locations, and even hidden items on the world map for you to discover.

This is one of the first games in a long time that I'm excited to play.

I wrote a more thoughtful review but accidentally deleted it.

Long story short - I don't like the way this game makes you get invested in multiple characters' stories totally independent of the other characters. It's like playing multiple different single player games at the same time. It's mentally exhausting.

Octopath Traveler 1 also had this problem.

I will try to do some single-character runs eventually. Might suit me better.

I don't dislike this game. In fact, I like the presentation, the style, maybe even the characters a little bit. Unfortunately, I can't compel myself to keep playing it.

The card/deck nature of the game is what put me off. I put it on hardmode to ensure it was a bit of a challenge, but after dying to the 2nd boss 5~ times, I noticed one of the major reasons for failing was not getting the cards that would have been immediately useful. At this point, I also noticed one of the things I would have to be doing was min-maxing the character decks for individual encounters. Some cards are just not useful at all in certain encounters. AoE cards in fights where there's not reliably multiple enemies to hit is a major one.

This is unnecessary busy work as far as I'm concerned. One can think of this feature as having to pick and choose your cards carefully, making sure you have a good mix of power and utility in order to ensure success. I don't see it that way at all. I never once felt like I had to sacrifice anything. I felt like there was merely a perfect set of cards for every encounter, and it was extremely easy to choose.

So while I don't dislike the game, I do dislike everything the cards and deck-building contributes. I gave it about 3 hours of my time before giving up. My understanding is this game is quite short, so I could probably have just pushed through it. But... I don't want to.

One of the more boring and annoying Dragon Quest games, which is honestly astounding. I went in with extremely high hopes, just to be met with one of the worst Dragon Quest stories.

The entire game is kind of like playing a children's cartoon. Imagine playing the Inuyasha show, where each episode is just the main characters getting involved in some random village's troubles and then solving them. Every once in awhile, one of the episodes exposes some details about the big bad evil demon lord of hell, but the next episode just continues the endless loop of solving random problems for random people.

The actual episodes themselves are ultimately inconsequential. The characters you meet and struggles you go through in each one amount to essentially nothing in the end.

I can't believe I invested over 10 hours of my life into this game.

A very low-budget and transparent attempt to ape the style, concept, and mechanics of the Persona series.

While the plot is kind of whatever, the characters are flat, and absolutely nothing about the story is captivating. I tried really hard to slog through the early sections of this game because I knew it had all the ingredients necessary to keep my attention. Unfortunately, the moment where I am gripped by the story just never comes. It's a constant struggle just to keep me from turning the game off -- one I ultimately failed.

I ended up looking up more information about the game just to learn it ends with a cliffhanger that will never be resolved. After learning this, and watching the ending, I don't think it's possible to really recommend this game to anyone ever. It offers nothing of value. The story is a dead end, and the gameplay is legitimately as good or worse than every other dungeon crawler JRPG you can find.

While I don't hate this game, I can't bring myself to actually continue playing it. I actually enjoy the premise a lot, but the gameplay is extremely unenjoyable.

For starters, it was fun re-playing Raging Loop again. Both the looping, the specific humans/wolves killing game, and every single facet of the killing game is present in this game.

As the elements of the killing game are revealed, more and more of your ability to draw inferences based on behavior are eliminated, until eventually there really is no way to draw any useful inferences.

With no ability to draw meaningful inferences, the game ultimately hinges on leveling your RPG stats, as they give you psychic powers like the ability to tell when someone is lying, or boosting your ability to convince people, or your ability to lie persuasively. Because of this, it becomes a grinding game where you loop over and over again in order to unlock these psychic powers.

The first few hours I played, I was enjoying myself. At a specific point, a character unlocks the full game, and it stops being fun. If the grinding took 1/10th as long, I might have stuck through it.

My impression is that after making Undernauts, Experience Inc. pumped out another game in pretty short order using the exact same engine with a new coat of paint. The combat and systems are lifted right out of Undernauts. It has 1:1 the exact same combat, the same classes, the same skills, the same progression systems, and it even has boosts. The only thing really unique about it is the art style, which I would classify as a pedo-aesthetic.

While the story isn't bad, it barely warrants commentary. Almost nothing happens in the game, and there's basically only 3 characters that exist in the entire universe.

I would really only recommend this game to DRPG obsessives who have already played all the other ones. If you haven't played Undernauts, just play Undernauts. If you have played Undernauts, you can probably just skip this one.

I tried to play this, but it's just not possible for me. I don't understand the combat system at all -- it's mostly a joke in terms of providing difficulty. Even on Hard mode. I really don't know why anything is happening or what I should be doing in response. I just press buttons and succeed -- though I don't even know what my reward is for winning.

I also don't understand the systems regarding recruiting characters or why I want to or don't want to do certain things with them.

Looks really good though...

I enjoyed Elden Ring significantly more than the Dark Souls series, but a lot less than Bloodbourne or Sekiro.

I'm pretty convinced the open-world aspect of Elden Ring is just a gimmick that isn't even very well incorporated. All the From Soft titles have a linear progression that it expects you to take, and it provides you with tools that you need right around the time you will need them.

In Elden Ring, you have this weird situation where it seems to have an expected linear progression, but doesn't really tell you. If instead of taking the obvious route in front of you, you veer off and kill a few bosses, by the time you come back to continue the main storyline, you'll have outleveled all of content by a ridiculous degree.

I definitely had this experience. The first thing I did was kill 2 bosses the game didn't expect you to kill -- the Tree Sentinel and Margit. Then I went off and fought a dozen mini bosses before continuing the main storyline, which made the entire game a walk in the park from then on.

As usual, it has an amazing story and interesting characters that I loved to follow along. Unfortunately the gameplay just fell flat due to bad design. I didn't end up finishing it myself -- I just watched someone else beat it. Which probably gave me a lot more enjoyment than playing it myself.

This is the first Dragon Quest game that I enjoyed, and as such, I have a soft spot for it. I have never beaten it, and I doubt I ever will at this point. While it suffers from the same endless trope of dark evil magicians and evil dragon lords in the Dragon Quest series, it was easy to ignore.

The story, characters, and environments are a treat to explore. The progression system is quite unique for a console game of its era, allowing you to assign points to a weapon skillset, unlocking new abilities as you go. I can't really think of a JRPG that exists to this day that has a similar system. It's bordering on experimental, which is impressive on its own.

This one is easy to recommend.

Despite being told by everyone how amazing this game is and how groundbreaking it is, playing it in retrospect is pretty difficult. It has all the problems of the other Dragon Warrior tiles on the NES (terrible story, progression), but it kind of pioneers the whole job system that would later go on to be used to great success in Final Fantasy III and Final Fantasy V.

I really can't recommend playing this one when those other 2 games exist, though. Especially Final Fantasy V, which is just an objectively better use of your time.