i am dedicated to finishing this game, and have already completed 1/6 over-arching stories, but let it be known that this game is Not Good and I don't recommend it. The first part of this will be a short, non-spoilery review of the game at its purest form but i'll go more in depth about it's flaws after a warning.

to begin, this game outright lies to you from its marketing. on the steam page and in interviews before the game begins, you are told that every road trip is different with thousands of possible combinations and choices that actually affect the storyline but really... they don't? technically, yes, every run is different, but the stories and situations you find yourself in feel repetitive and predictable. there are 7 (technically 8, but two of them only show up together and have the same personality so I count it as one) characters with their own storyline, and the game instead chops up their personality and storylines into bits that they mix and match around, which leads to the "diverging paths". in reality, your encounters with them don't really matter. there are no real choices, and more often than not you are forced into helping them even when there could have been some interesting writing decisions from disobeying or directly going against their cause. i can't go more in-depth on this without spoilers, so instead i'll move on. the actual over-arching story of the city of Petris and the election at hand feels like an american who discovered politics through the 2016 elections and found out what black lives matter was in 2020, and wrote their surface-level understanding of politics based on that. i do consider myself someone who is more liberal, which is why i want to emphasize with the audience reading this that my gripes with the storytelling in this game are not because of the left-leaning rhetoric in this story. it is because of how blatant the writing is that after playing a single run, i was able to predict every story beat ahead of me. even now, 5 runs in, nothing has convinced me that i was wrong. the game treats the player like someone who is incapable of reading into any nuance or piecing things, and takes no time for suspense or world-building. despite there being multiple forces at play, (republicans, liberals, and revolutionaries) you are never allowed to actually take a side and have it matter. everytime you complete an ending, you are guided to the ending that the game has already decided on. meeting different characters and saying different things does not matter. nothing you do actually matters. and thats where my biggest gripe with this game comes from. it is deeply unsatisfying to play. if you take the choice out of a choice-based game, then at least give me an interesting narrative to follow and care about. road 96 cannot and does not do that. i heard a lot of comparisons between this game and telltale's style of faux-choice-driven stories but personally, i think a big difference is that at least in my experience, telltale games still offer an interesting story. despite the fact that none of the choices i made in the walking dead mattered, i still cared deeply about lee and clementine and their situation, and when the story continued to escalate, i felt enough to cry at the end of the game. instead i played this game for a little under 5 hours and still couldn't bring myself to really care about the white girl who decided to rebel against her republican father or the cop who is potentially a good guy but is forced to do their job for the republican government. there is a chance that you can still care about the characters in this game despite this, but my god don't pay full price for this game. watch a lets play, and if its on a significant sale, buy it then but otherwise, just skip out.

SPOILERS UNDERNEATH THIS

now that i can really get into the nitty gritty, i want to really spell out where the game really falls flat. as said before, you follow 7 characters: Zoe, a teenage runaway whose father is revealed to be the republican totalitarian dictator, Tyrak. John, a trucker who is secretly working for the revolutionary group named the Black Brigades and subsequently lost a lover to the cause. Fanny, a police officer working for the government to detain runaway teens on road 96, who is dealing with their adoptive teen running away to find their biological parents. Alex, a fourteen year old genius hacker prodigy who has been recruited for the Black Brigades in hopes of finding more about their adoptive parents who were about of the revolutionary group. Stan and Mitch, the comic relief that are also highway robbers. Sonya is basically the ben shapiro of this universe. Okay, I'm joking, kind of. She is a news reporter whose show is funded by Tyrak's government and believes that the revolutionaries are nothing but terrorists. Lastly, we meet Jarod, whose daughter was recruited to be apart of the Brigades and killed in action during a protest, and now seeks vengeance against any Brigades directly responsible for her death as well as Sonya.

Now that we've met the cast, I feel like you can see where the puzzle pieces fit in. I'm not sure if the sequences I got were just very unlucky in timing, but I received the biggest exposition and clues about each character in my first encounters with each person. This made the rest of my runs feel really unsatisfying? For Jarod, for example, there is a scenario where you can meet him at an abandoned RV hideout and he essentially dumps the story of his dead daughter on you before revealing that the hideout actually belonged to the Brigades before they were ransacked and found by the government. He shows you his daughter's old RV, and then asks you to demolish a radio tower with him. Immediately after, he gets extremely angry and tells you to leave. Every encounter I had with him after this run, I anticipated more dialogue or exposition about him, but each encounter with him was either vaguely referencing a dead daughter that I'd already learned everything about, or vaguely referencing his plot to find the Brigades, which I'd also already learned about. This happens again with Zoe, who I first met when approaching an active RV hideout on my first road trip. She was causing trouble with the person renting out sleeping spaces, and after you bail her out from the cop, she tells you where you can rest. Eventually, in the middle of the night, she wakes you up and begins to talk to you about leaving (there is also a really fun trombone minigame in this section that has no effect on the story, but I actually really liked) and being a runaway. She tells you, ominously, that she's running away from her dad who is... well, you don't really need to know, just that they disagreed and that she comes from a place of privilege and can't stand being home now that she knows the system that upholds her privilege at the expense of others. then, she tells you she's leaving the next day alone. this was the most vague of Zoe cutscenes, and I actually didn't mind it, but now that you know her basic character, every scene with her feels redundant and too on the nose with no development about Zoe as a person, much like Jarod. She is a troublemaker and a rebel because of her dad. She is a liberal who wholeheartedly supports the anarchists/revolutionaries because of her dad's position. There next encounter I had, she is handcuffed behind a police car on the floor where the police are snacking and fueling their car (or at least, they're implied to be fueling up, but their car isn't taking gas and they aren't eating they're just sitting in complete silence). The gas station is owned by a Tyrak supporter, and you are asked by Zoe to help her escape. It is important to note that in every conversation with characters and npcs, you are always allowed to ask their opinion on the protests/Brigades or Tyrak. You are then allowed to make a choice between supporting Tyrak, supporting Flores (the democratic party), and supporting the Brigades. Every choice tells you in a popup on the screen that it will have a lasting impact, but so far I've really noticed none. Despite this, however, when greeted by a scenario that outright feels like "do you want to support Tyrak or the revolutionaries by helping this teenager?" you are given no option. You cannot do anything except help Zoe, which leaves your character being caught abetting and the both of you being held in the police's car. Zoe tells you blatantly that her dad is Tyrak, before Brigaders come kill the cops and help the two of you escape, taking Zoe with them. Idk, there just isn't much else to say about these characters. I like Jarod to an extent, as well as John. To me, they are the most likeable characters in this game despite also having a fairly one-note personality, but at least they are interesting. I don't even want to get into Alex, who is the most obnoxious character in this game. Constantly referring to you by "homegirl" or "homie", yo! It's so awkward, and the voice acting is this game isn't particularly stellar either. We need to get white people out of the writer's room, seriously.

Aside from the terrible storytelling, there isn't anything left to the game, really. It is driven by its story and the choices you can make, but when the story is bad and the choices mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, then what? The exploration is okay. You have an energy meter to start with, and traveling usually uses a bar or two out of something like 10 or so. You begin each run with a gauge that is usally not filled (you get to pick between 3 lost teens who begin with a random amount of money or stamina), and you can replenish your energy using food or drinks. The biggest issue is that there is no consistency with this system. Sometimes taking the bus takes up two energy meters, while hitchhiking only takes one but sometimes walking along the road also only takes one, or maybe two? There have been times walking takes up 3? And eating a burger usually restores two energy, except when it only fills one. Same with resting and drinking. They can refill your energy one. Or maybe two? It's pure randomness. You can be entirely unlucky and pass out because your character spawns with 2 stamina and the first walking encounter takes 2 as well, which means you die. It's just a weird system. You also pick up perks that carry between runs after certain encounters with each character that makes the game incredibly easy. My first perks were an energy perk from John that means sometimes I can just take no energy from certain progression interactions or open safes/lockers with my strength and potentially gain money or food, which can be used to replenish my stamina or hail a bus that will use less stamina. The other perk I grabbed in my first run was a charm from Sonya that makes chance interactions have better odds, as well as more charming interactions, i guess. This usually leads to an abundance of money in my runs, which means I have basically no threat of dying, which .. makes the threat of this perilous road trip so pathetic. This game just really relies on the story to hold it up, but it's so flimsy. Just don't bother picking it up.

im not gonna lie, i have attempted to log this game dozens of times. how do you rate a game you fell in and out of love with? especially when it changed your life? its fun. it sucks. the balance is horrendous. ive never felt happier than duoing with a friend in comp. the update to ow2 was better. i miss playing tank duos with random people. this community is terrible. i met my best friends because of this game. i miss goats. the devs did what they could for this game. they didnt do enough. i hate the league. owl was the best part of this game.

i love overwatch.

Started playing this and have less time in it than I would normally like for a review on this site, but I really was impressed by the launch! I am slightly biased, because I came from MHY's sister game Genshin Impact already a fan of their games, but I also tried Honkai Impact 3rd a while ago because of Genshin and wasn't impressed.

This game is the culmination of what I think both Honkai and Genshin do well, but with the apparentness that Honkai is the series MHY loves the most. They definitely leaned harder into the time sink/grind aspect of Genshin that isn't my favorite, but because the game is so new I'm not sure if it will end up much worse of any better. In HI3, the game was more of a beat 'em up style game with, what felt like to me, very little emphasis on strategy. The story was very good, and the characters had so much love in them. In genshin, there is a lot more emphasis on strategy and team building, and I really like the blend of the two in this turn-based RPGish style. While I will always have a gripe with gacha systems in games, I am trying to refrain from passing judgement since it's so early in the game's life cycle, but it seems to be leaning heavily to the genshin style which... I don't feel positive about at all. Though I don't really have much experience with HI3 like I said before.

Anyways, just kinda dumping my thoughts after getting past all the tutorials and completing some of their dungeons & my fair few of fights. Really love the character design and the humor is actually funny. When I saw the Honkai Star Rail booth at anime expo last year, I didn't expect to ever play it or even enjoy it, so hopefully I will continue to enjoy my experience with it in the future!

Okay, I think I will eventually come back to this and try to progress a lot further than I did but I just... felt so underwhelmed a disappointed in this game especially as someone who LOVES shopkeeping-style tycoons and dungeon-crawlers. The idea of tackling complex dungeons with multiple floors to ransack for items to sell in town had me HOOKED. Unfortunately, while the premise is great, the concept ultimately just falls flat.

First of all, a minor(?) nitpick but who the HELL releases a game on steam with no actual keyboard controls? I literally could not navigate the menu because it was so unintuitive that I had to google controls on steam discussions to start. The devs even acknowledge this and explicitly have said they do NOT want to accommodate for keyboard & mouse players, and that the game was designed for controllers. I feel like I wouldn't usually care, except like? You're on steam, appealing to pc gamers, and don't explicitly tell me on the steam page that I won't have fun without a controller. Straight up wtf LOL

But whatever, you know. Its really not that big of a deal and I mean I had a controller anyways so oh well. Except... the dungeon elements were incredibly, incredibly easy after just 2 or 3 runs. I died to the boss maybe once before I was able to beat the first floor every single time & went on to clear the subsequent levels just as easily. Its not like I expected Hollow Knight levels of difficulty or anything, but this definitely feels like you will only find challenge/fun in the dungeoneering if you are new to the genre. I also want to say that I DO consider myself decently good at games that test pattern-recognition and reflexes like bullet hells, so take my experience with a grain of salt.

Despite this, I still felt okay with the game at first. I honestly didn't explore too far after a couple attempts since on top of feeling too easy for me, the combat was kind of clunky, but it was passable enough. Weapons aside from the sword/spear felt not great to me, but I also generally dislike bows in video games especially in a top down where I can't really aim comfortably. But while in dungeons, you're main goal is typically fighting and exploring for loot to sell in your shop. To me, this could have EASILY redeemed the game for me. Instead, in my little time with the game the store aspect felt really... boring? Easy. Also a little confusing? I just kinda want to sigh when I think back on it.

When I think of an amazing capitalism simulator, I think of Recettear. It also has a very mid dungeon system, but MAN the actual store aspect is so fun. I cant help but compare them to a degree. One thing that came to mind in my playthrough is the idea that different customers of different wealth brackets can shop, & you can sell things to each person with different prices because of what they are willing to accept. Similarly, there is a sort of supply and demand system that comes into effect that shows you if things are being sold for higher or lower than normal retail, and I would like it but I felt like. A little lost? In deciphering when it changes, by how much, etc. You have to FIND what the range of prices is for an item through trial and error which is totally okay, but when the specific item is being sold at market none of your recordings are saved in the log book and you arent given any type of ballpark estimate for the resources worth that you find. For example, in Recettear, if you sell a short sword, putting it in your display and selling to a customer will bring up a default price of say 500 gold, and you can adjust to 120% markup or 80% discounted rate or adjust to whatever arbitrary number or percentage you like & work within that system to find the sweet spot in different customer demographics, sales, price drops, etc. It is a really indepth system that takes something simple but elevates it. Moonlighter attempts to do the same and honestly does, but worse. When you find an item, you have no clue if you are pricing something at 100 gold when it should really be 8. This sounds like not a big deal, except the price ranges between items on the first floor alone goes from 3 coins to over 1k. How am I supposed to guess anywhere near accurately? Especially when pricing things poorly also reflects on your relationships with different classes or affects the popularity of items. Its really frustrating.

To speak more on the sales aspect, I really, really dislike the actual ui for it. I like the little idea of setting up items in the boxes you want and customising your store. Its really cute!! Recettear did similar and I truly loved it. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to compare the 2 once again to accurately demonstrate my issue with the games approaches to fulfilling the actual sales. In Moonlighter, an NPC will approach the box with an item, inspect it, then make a face that shows how happy or upset with a price they are. They will then leave the store angry, or leave money at your register and dip. In Recettear, the npc approaches the item, and then prompts a screen where you see the person who wants to buy, the base price of the item/what they are offering, & then are given the option to adjust and haggle. They give dialogue to indicate their feelings and leave either successfully paying or in anger. These function very similarly, but Moonlighter takes the individual sale out of the equation which circles back to the idea of different classes having different budgets and hurts that part of the system. It is impossible to tell who is going to buy what. NPCs approach multiple items and pick what they are going to buy, and you cant adjust the prices in preparation for each customer. It is just so hard to do that. Not to mention that in my experience, distinguishing who is wealthy or poor or what was so HARD for me. In Receattear, you are told what the person wants to buy, they clearly are wearing tattered clothing if they are poor, fancy clothes and dresses if rich, etc and you can engage accordingly and react. In Moonlighter, I could not do this effectively. I struggle to find the proper words, but the system just felt unsatisfying. This piece of interesting depth felt like something I couldn't actually play around, and I wish that wasnt the case.

This game very clearly has so much love in it and so much attention to detail that I want to like it. The art is very pretty, and the various character designs are very cute. I like the aesthetics and the feeling of the town and I love that your business helps the town flourish too. I like that the dungeoneering and the store front feel equally important, and I like the thought put into it. Unfortunately, the balancing and minor flaws add up for me in this game and ultimately made my experience feel like a boring slog, where I never actually had a piece of the game I could appreciate. If 1/2 of the systems were very good, I could rate this well. But for me, I just couldnt enjoy it. It was incredibly underwhelming. I hope you can find more fun with this than I, but unless you are very new to these systems in games, I think your experience will be sullied by its minor but additive flaws.

unorganized thought dump ahead, so don't expect anything nearly as thought out as my usual reviews... also, no spoiler tag, but i will go over tiny hints of spoilers (the furthest being who the antagonists/protagonists of the chapter are)

i'm not sure what it was about this chapter, but the humor didn't really land for me. well, okay, let me rephrase that. i enjoyed it a lot, but less so than chapter 1. i'm not sure if i've just generally outgrown toby fox's style, but a lot of the quirkiness didn't stand out for me as my personal highlights the way it seems to have hit for the general internet. for me, this is most obvious with spamton. i like his lore significance, but didn't care for him THAT much as a character besides how much his dialogue style gave me a headache to read through lol. his miniboss fight was VERY cool, but much like jevil in chapter 1, i would never have found this on my own. i think i'm just an idiot? BUT WHATEVER!! it was super fun, and truthfully every character fight in this game reinforces just how creative and brilliant toby fox is as a game designer. each bullet pattern was unique and incredibly fun. i beat the fight on my first try, but knowing how scrappy i got by, i just want to fight it over and over again to really master it. a lot like how i always felt fighting sans!

generally, i liked chapter 2. the dark world here was super fun, although the puzzles felt really random and a lot more boring than every puzzle in chapter 1 and undertale combined. i did like the word, spelling, maze-y puzzle though. wish they had used it more than the mice. queen was awesome, and i liked seeing lancer and all the darkners from chapter 1 again. rouxls card supremacy, as ALWAYS. loved his character and i can't wait for him to continue to shine. berdly and noelle were great additions to this chapter. noelle is cute, and i like her a lot but oh man i just love irritating characters because I FUCKING ADORE BERDLY!!!!!!!!! anyways. that's all i have to say there. also, queen is cool.... i can't say much without wanting to gush, especially in reference to her AMAZING BOSS FIGHT that i do not want to ruin for anyone else whatsoever.

what else can i talk about? oh yeah. the music is pretty good here too, but that's to be expected with anything toby fox touches. my personal standouts are going to be hip shop and, you guessed it, "BIG SHOT." Love the use of leitmotifs from previous undertale songs (especially mettaton neo, who, for obvious reasons, spamton reminded me a lot of while playing).

final thoughts: the alternate route that can be played in this chapter is super sick. love it. had no idea it existed when doing my blind playthrough, so opening up the wiki to see what easter eggs i might have missed only to see a WHOLE OTHER ROUTE was awesome. again don't want to say much without spoilers especially since the game is so fresh in my mind and i think i might come back with more fleshed out opinions eventually.

im excited for the rest of deltarune to release, especially since the next release will come with 3 chapters rather than toby drip feeding the fanbase one chapter at a time. with this though, i am equally excited for things to change massively. i like the dark world a lot, but after 2 whole chapters it stills feels infinitely small, and i look forward to a deviation that can spark some new life into the formula otherwise i think it will very quickly become tiring.