1 person found this review helpful
Not Recommended
0.2 hrs last two weeks / 0.2 hrs on record
Posted: 22 Dec @ 6:45pm
Updated: 22 Dec @ 6:46pm

This game feels underbaked in pretty much every way possible. The art is pretty good, and the characters do a decent job of filling out persona-like archetypes of people, but unlike persona there isn't any serious growth or hidden background to these characters; the furthest the game goes in terms of development is a character apologizing for doing something obviously wrong.
The world is neat I guess, but like everything else in the game, it is as shallow as a puddle. Characters will talk about magic vs technology but the only magic you see in the monster world is combat magic, and like, blue fire? There are off-hand mentions of things that are absolutely insane and wholly unjustified. Humans can't live in the monster world because magic is poisonous (okay...) and also there is no sun (what? where is the heat coming from?? what's the day night cycle??? why would no sun kill someone?).
The shallowness of the world could be forgiven if this was some incredible, emotional story, but the plot is driven by threats which are incredibly nebulous and poorly motivated. Jun is trapped in the monster world and needs to get out before dying (solid), also there are evil monsters who are showing up (okay...) and also she is a fugitive on the run from the police who are desperate to detain a dying, normal-ass human who happened to get stuck because... cops suck? Which like, sure, but it makes it hard to take any drama seriously when our characters are never hurt, Jun walks around talking to everybody with infinite time between missions, and there isn't any semblance of any kind of actual deadline for getting Jun free.
This is all capped off by a deeply insulting "mystery" oriented plot where the apparently smartest character in the group gets her entire personality chopped out to be replaced by trying to figure out the connection between clues so unbelievably obvious an average person could figure out the mystery before even receiving them. Really as a general gripe, all of the characters are incredibly stupid, and not in a particularly funny or interesting way, not to mention the whole game ends on a stupid chosen one twist that feels even more insulting.
The gameplay does not save this at all either. The core combat is a match 3 game where instead of switching adjacent tiles anywhere on the screen, your character runs around swapping tiles while trying to avoid the enemies which are attacking them. This is honestly not a terrible concept, but the execution is deeply lacking. The whole thing feels janky, with poorly readable hit boxes and enemies which seem to do contact damage but actually do attacks which once they lock onto you can hit you from any distance, even if the enemy was only next to you for a brief instant, plus the sin of allowing the player to get stunlocked and constantly slowed down. The way that all of the different rune types do different things leads to horrible stretches of sitting around doing nothing while you swap tiles around waiting for a set of useful ones to pop up, and enemy health pools are large enough that every fight is a slog, either being a nightmare of poor hit feedback leading to deaths or, in the majority of fights, boringly running around and tanking hits because literally who cares, you have infinite healing. The worst part of this is that there is absolutely no growth or building on this core. The first fight you have in the game has the exact same blocks, powers, and effects as the last one in the game. The mechanic of chaining powers together is mostly unimpactful, giving some bonus damage and nothing interesting, and the special abilities you equip from your party are very finicky to activate; the fact that they can whiff completely only adds insult to injury. The enemy types have some variety but really only vary in how annoying they are while you kill them, and the roster rapidly goes stale, with all enemies showing up in every area after they are introduced. The boss fights do the bare minimum of obvious ideas to shake things up, but do not make any of the flawed systems actually fun.
Side quests are boring scavenger "hunts" or character bonding quests which are mostly rehashing existing mechanics. The dungeons are tiny and pretty much linear, with little to no exploration or reward for doing so, and the puzzles run the gamut from incredibly simple to frustrating trial-and-error rooms where you get softlocked constantly with no undo button, and have to restart from the beginning each time you attempt them.
The only way I could recommend this game is if it was on sale and you really really vibe with the art and characters. Otherwise, I cannot recommend this short, shallow, deeply flawed game.
P.S. I finished this game in two hours as you can see from my achievements. idk why the steam stats forgot my playtime/
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