The level of fapping some people give this game is unreal to me. It's very good, the combat is fast paced and pushes you to utilize all of the tools in your arsenal. But the level design feels mediocre. Doom 2016 felt like there were more secrets and collectables to discover. There were also barely any cutscenes where this game stops gameplay more often to explain lore and it's story that doesn't matter. It's Doom. You kill demons. Doom 2016 understood this and started you off almost immediately into gameplay. It was so refreshing to play. This game while still being very high quality felt less impressive and felt like it was catering to youtubers and normies.

Props for being unique I guess, but this suffers from one major flaw: it doesn't feel very interactive. It doesn't feel like what the player says really affects what the other characters say, and which direction the story takes ends up feeling mostly random. The only time I felt like I was actually influencing events was when I did stupid stuff like stand at the door forever without coming in or relentlessly trolling Trip. i.e. the only time I felt like I was interacting with the game was when I was messing around with it, which I'm pretty sure wasn't what the creator had in mind.

Review

I gave it a real shot, for 8 hours!

You can read my notes and thoughts here : https://twitter.com/han_tani2/status/1735187901296836666

Or read an essay in which I discuss TotK https://melodicambient.substack.com/p/why-ocarina-of-time-cant-be-recreated

The short version is: the game has its nice charming moments, I actually like the idea of janky physics dungeons and riding around on stuff. NPC designs are nice and some of the side quests looked interesting. But I hattteee the crafting stuff, it kind of ends up padding almost everything in the game out. There's also so much distraction, it feels like YouTube recommendations or TikTok...

Shitpost review

Zelda but if Miyamoto wasn't inspired by wandering the countryside as a kid but opening up Genshin enough times to get the 30 day login bonus

This is the most fun GAME I've played in a long time. The experience this GAME gave me is unmatched and unparalleled by any game of its like I can think of. Amazing music and combat, awesome visuals, and in general some of the most fun I've had in a while.

But I emphasize "game" because Everhood falls apart outside of its core gameplay. The writing is all over the place. It's really funny but so desperately wants to be Undertale it hurts. It tries to do the same player interaction Undertale does but it doesn't go anywhere; it tries to subvert Undertale's formula but it has no idea what made it clever in the first place; and it assumes I'll remember who these characters are like Undertale but that's also held back by the fact Undertale is way more earnest. The plot self-contradicts itself and refuses to elaborate on the core points of why you're doing the things you do in the second half of the game aside form "it'll work out :)". No, give me more of a clear cut reason to do this aside from the game telling me to do it. Without going into spoilers, the point the game tries to make shoots itself in the foot so much the foot is replaced by lead.

Everhood is a character driven plot where the main character doesn't matter and I can hardly remember what any character looks like. The personalities are fun and on point, but these are genuinely such generic designs I cannot for the life of me say any design is truly unique or inspired. I saw a poll to make plushies out of either Blue Thief or Green Mage and my thought was "Wow. These look like bootlegs."

I feel bad for ragging on the game like this when the main experience is so fun and the devs obviously put a ton of effort into it. I heavily recommend this game but the flaws in it are too glaring to ignore. In any case, I'm eagerly awaiting the next game from the developers if they decide to make one.

A game that exists to attract sales through the mash up of two indie genre darlings. I won't say there's nothing here, the combat would certainly be admirable if it were in a better game. Though when the monsters you tame have such names as Blob, Rocky, or Monk it shows that the creators have little creativity and or passion for their work. In fact I dare say a kindergartener who has seen a single episode of Bakugan could envision far more worthwhile creatures then what is on offer here. When mixed in with such lackluster platforming that feels like what a game design student would make after their first week of lessons, it's hard to say that there's anything worthwhile to see here.

To be fair I expected such when I came in. Perhaps I expected more in at least the naming department of the monsters but at the end of the day this is a product of design recycling from far better and more inventive experiences.

Two main issues. First, the genre combo has no synergy. 2D Metroidvanias have a lot of backtracking so the combat should be quick. Turn based monster collectors tend to have long battles so different play styles, such as set up or stall, can be viable. Likewise, in monster collectors the player doesn't have access to every ability they've gotten at all times, one has to choose what team to bring. This opposes the Metroidvania idea of trying all your new abilities when you are backtracking. This genre combo was just a bad idea from the inception.

Second, the monster collecting gameplay encourages constant switching but makes it annoying to do so. This is just a problem with the developer's execution. In games like Pokemon there is a weak incentive to switch monsters as using the ones from the start can easily take one through the whole game, leading many players to just use their one Charizard as much as possible. This compliments the highly detailed level of customization though EVs, IVs, moves, abilities, held items, etc. Oppositely, games like Megami Tensei give a strong incentive to consistently switch demons in your party, as each demon will stop learning moves after only a few level ups. There is relatively little customization so fusing away a Jack Frost you've had for an hour doesn't feel bad at all.

This game can't decide what camp it wants to be. New monsters are easy to acquire. Hatched eggs will be at your party level so they can be useful right away. However, there is also a large amount of customization. There's skill trees, held items, form differences, and having to set these up every time you get a new monster is very tedious. The Metroidvania aspect asks the player to use the latest monsters for overworld abilities, but the turn based combat asks one to get out their spreadsheet to figure out the best investment for skill points.

Overall, this game had a bad concept and has bad execution. I imagine I enjoyed this game much less than others because I am a huge monster collecting game fan, and thus have played all the notable works of this genre. However, likely many of the fans of this game were people who only played Pokemon, were disappointed enough by Sword/Shield to finally try a different game in the genre, and then loved this because it was something different at all. Releasing a monster collecting game in 2020 was a fantastic release time.

The wooden doors in this game are an affront to God. I have genuinely, truly, without hyperbole, never had such an experience with doors in a game before. I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that literally every interaction you can have with a door is a negative experience, or the fact that every single one of those experiences seems to be working exactly as intended.

Even worse than that, the game has moments of BIG JUMPSCARE volume that repeat every time you respawn in certain sections and NO FUCKING AUDIO OPTIONS so if you're sensitive to loud noises like me, you can eat shit, basically.