I love ninja kiwi and I love the bloons franchise but god this was such a letdown. the exp grind to unlocking tower upgrades to use in pvp duels is the worst slog ever. ninjakiwi has made minor attempts to fix the issue in the past but this system is a nightmare to deal with as a new player which only makes the already high barrier to entry worse. the love put into this game's appearance and personality is apparent, which makes the glaring issues in this game feel so much worse. the game is rarely updated with anything meaningful, locked behind the speed of which btd 6 gets a new tower or upgrade, which is close to never. all you have to look forward to while playing are patch notes and balance changes which make the game feel stale. luckily, many of the meta issues that arose during its launch month have since been fixed and the variation in loadouts makes the ranked grind much more fun than it was initially, but i can't in good faith recommend it and it's dwindling player base seems to agree with me.

this game makes me want to bash my head into a wall from the writing of its story alone. i could look past the poor release solely because of the hype i had from a fnaf installment with arguably one of the best environments. this game is gorgeous, ray tracing or not. unfortunately, a bright and stylish mall isn't the most terrifying location which really hurts the "horror" aspect of this game. the characters are okay, albeit a little underdeveloped (but also theyre literally animatronics so i guess its fine?), but the travesty lies in vanessa. without going into too many spoilers, the way they utilized this character (or didnt...) is a shame considering her exposition in the vr game. the endings all suck, by the way. fuck this game's writing ong im getting upset thinking about it too hard

this game is ... interesting. i liked it, i think, but ironically it hinders itself in the core gameplay loop before you can enjoy its strengths. it is so unbearably tedious to get every achievement/ending, and the overall story is a very surface level take on the modern influencer and the edgy/reality of the internet. a lot of the dialogue and encounters are incredibly well-written and relatable. the game definitely does its best to reflect the streaming scene as a whole, but it takes too long for me to want to stay invested. i did 100% it, and i do like ame/p-chan/kangel, but i don't know if i could really recommend this game. you are better off watching the endings' cutscenes on youtube, but even then you lose the charm of witnessing the spiral of ame-chan under your control.