i am still not into the gameplay of turn-based rpgs, and i'm particularly critical of the way this one does it. no health bars or real explanations for whatever your actions are going to do, so it kind of feels like all the numbers showing up don't mean a whole lot to me and that i'm just bashing enemies blindly. you eventually develop a sense for what you're doing, but at first this really puzzled me and made me put off continuing the game for a long while. and while the whole game has much better QOL than i initially expected, there's still a lot of reasons to complain: you're slow, the movement through the menus can drag, saving the game's a bit of a chore, all around there's many tedious bits about this game that push me away.

it, then, says a lot that even in spite of all those setbacks i loved this experience. the world this game creates is absolutely brimming with creativity, fueled by its own absurdist logic and goofy kookiness that i find impossible not to love. the story is so fun to follow, even if at times it feels like it's being held together by duct tape. the emotional punches hit hard, and so do the horror elements filling up the later parts of the game. what a time.

also any game that makes me give stuff names is going to be subjected to losing a slight bit of emotional impact because i just had to name the main characters shit like "DUDE" and "BROOO" and that i'm attacking enemies with "PSI BALLS α"