I am thoroughly enjoying this game so far. It's a really interesting and slightly complex story but I've been interested the entire time, even enough to read additional in game lore books and the like.

For a JRPG the grind doesn't feel all too bad, but I also haven't done any end game stuff yet, so I could be very wrong about this soon, so far though resources/money/experience and equipment mastery have been easy to gain and have consistently grown in proportion to the difficulty.

This game is an action JRPG, and a unique one at that. While the animations look a bit choppy, the game play is quite smooth, and it encourages the use of all skills at your disposal, the controls are very polished in this regard as well, the game feels fun and intuitive to play.

This game is either a collectathon enjoyer's worst nightmare or dream game. There is a ton of things to collect whether it be magic abilities, weapons and materials, equipment skills, filling out the "growth" map., etc. A ton to do, however it's made more rewarding due to the fact that you can easily plan out very efficient farming routes for both enemies and resources all while swapping in and out weapons/shields and armor to max out equipment skills or get an item for 'mastering' the particular weapon or armor all at once.

Also by equipment skills I mean abilities like passive upgrades to attack speed, or elemental damage, or even item magnet abilities. You can use them for free if you have the weapon or armor equipped, or you also have a growing ability to use unequipped but mastered skills which grows over time.

The actual combat itself, while it feels nice does get a bit mundane as eventually when you get good at it, it's quite easy at normal difficulty. There is a variety of things you can do combat wise, and it grows over time as you collect combat abilities. Though these you usually get from chests it seems. Blocking is valuable as well, it's great for projectiles and protects against status ailments. You also can utilize the invincibility frames you get when you use the magic in this game, and you use both ranged and melee abilities along with magic as sort of a catch all Gary Stu type.

On top of this you also have a variety of items you can use to fit any situation, from all enemies in a room being heavily damaged, to throwing an arrow by hand which is surprisingly powerful early on. The game also utilizes a delayed item use system. So you use a healing item, a progress bar appears, and then the item is used. If you are struck/leave that zone etc it will cancel it. It hasn't been difficult to break away from fights to heal/shoot a bow at a distance as well.

No autosave system, save often, and when you interact with a save point all enemies not in that zone are resurrected. If you leave your zone and come back those enemies do respawn as well.

There is a lot of depth to this game too. An arena with multiple and varied "cups" ranging from platforming and combat challenges to speed challenges. You are able to backtrack after you've progressed to a certain point in the story, so don't overly stress on leaving things behind. Though the catch is you have to complete the chapter again. Makes the game ideal for speed runners I guess. You even get your own house and back yard. Unknown if any visual or functional customization is possible.

There is a lot of freedom in character customization as well. You can allocate 5 points to attributes every level, but you can reallocate them as you see fit at specific points scattered throughout the game, and there is some strategy to this, even terrain dependent strategy. You're well served just bumping attack, defense, and health too, at least as far as I've gotten in the game.

There are many puzzles, and a lot of context clues as you watch cutscenes. This game is cutscene heavy, so for those of you who may remember that boss fight with Riku during the old PS2 KH1 days you can rejoice, for this game features a skip button.

It's a semi silent protagonist. I think it's deliberate, as the character will talk in game, but you can't see his words. There is always context that let's you know what he's talking about, but let's you sort of fill in the blanks of how he communicates it with your own imagination.

This game plays excellently on Steam Deck. There's some choppy audio, but I've not been bothered enough to try and fix it, so there may be a workaround for it I just haven't utilized. It's also really good with the battery life. Like you're hitting the top end of the "possible hours" of a single charge. Though that may be obvious as its not that graphics intensive.

Overall I definitely recommend this game, there's a lot to do and it's very approachable but if you want to can turn the difficulty up to 11. I haven't tried that yet so I don't know how the challenge is balanced, I would say it's likely a damage sponge method given the health pools of some bosses. This is speculation though, and it could be user error with regards to my damage output, so your milage may vary.

Lastly, it's pretty clear a lot of love and care went into this game, and I think the developer nailed something really cool, unique and fun to play here. There's even a demo if you really need to see for yourself. I believe that this game is definitely worth picking up.


*Edit: I am incorrect about having to complete whole chapters over if you go back to them.

Game finished edit: I can honestly say this is a must buy for me. Probably if not definitely my GOTY. I literally played non-stop until I finished it, and I didn't feel like any part of it was a chore except one specific thing at the absolute very last part of the game, but even then the methodology is interesting and fun for the most part. You're doing yourself a disservice if you like anything that you see on this page and don't pick it up in my honest opinion.

I *really* wanted to like this game. I really did. I've been itching to hang out in the zone since the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. I thought this might be a good, solid approach to the concept however unfortunately I personally find that it falls flat on its face.

It feels to me like the developers were so interested in telling a "gotcha!" story that when it came down to decide things like "Player Agency" "Gameplay" and "Fun" we were told to go ♥♥♥♥ ourselves.

It's literally a game where the protagonist cries about their story, all while literally being a gopher for the 5 companions you recruit. It gets worse than that, though, many of these "gopher" missions to collect tools, resources, a specific weapon or disguise or what have you simply turn into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "moral choice" which are utterly meaningless and they force in useless conflict where it isn't necessary.

Friend wants you to blow up some of the enemy troops, you get into position and you're ready to take them out but "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, ANOTHER FRIEND HAS A COMPANION WHO IS SUDDENLY IN THE AREA FOR NO REASON AND THEY WILL DIE NO MATTER WHAT IF YOU FOLLOW THROUGH. YOU ARE STUPID FOR NOT THINKING THIS COULD HAPPEN IGOR!" It's fun the first time. It's stupid the second, third, fourth, fifth, oh wait all of the choices this game makes you go through have the same, stupid schtick of if you make one friend happy, the other will be mad choices the ENTIRE GAME. I'll just gloss over the fact that for whatever reason none of these companions can do their OWN ♥♥♥♥, you have to do all of their requests because they're busy getting food or meds you don't need in whatever zone you put them in while you do their chore. None of what they gather for you matters, either since it's a pittance of resources compared to the full inventory you leave every mission with. I had everything built in probably the first 10 hours of the game.

It gets better in the fact they just Mass Effect you at the end anyway, no matter what you do or how you play. "Oh you made all the bad/correct choices in the game? Doesn't matter, because choose between Good Ending, Bad ending, Sad Bad Ending. Nothing you did up to this point actually matters, you are powerless, you are stupid, you were wrong and the entire story you were fed is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, so ♥♥♥♥ you."

Not to mention I think this dev just gets off on calling their characters (And players by proxy) idiots and playing deus ex machina like it's a clever plot point.

The gameplay loop is cool at first, but gets very old, very fast. Load into a map to do a chore for a companion, go to 5 different spots on the map with a ? on them, get whatever silly supplies and XP you get from those "side quests", then go to the quest marker, shoot the thing, read the clue, or observe something, you press your get out of zone free button, go to sleep and rinse/repeat. They will let you do these "story bites" where you can learn about the story, but again, it doesn't matter because the dev will just call you stupid, say all of the clues they made you slog through to get to the end aren't actually real, they'll call you stupid again, say "DEUS EX MACHINA" and you get your choice of Good, Bad, or SadBad ending, no matter what you did the entire game. There's the entire plot for you.

Combat is a joke. There is literally 5 enemies. 3 of which are soldiers of varying levels of armor which doesn't matter because it's nothing to get an infinite ammo weapon that can SHOOT THROUGH WALLS in early to mid game. The other two are "anomalous" monsters. There's a melee monster, and a ranged monster. They throw in some "unique" variants on these 5 enemies but it's literally "Here's the same enemy with another color palette and a bigger health bar." Too bad I can shoot the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ through a wall and no matter what he's wearing he will be dead in 5 shots anyway.

I'm really, sorely disappointed by this game. It really had a lot of potential but it was completely wasted on the poor storytelling and terribly useless game mechanics. This game would have likely been better served as a visual novel rather than what it actually is.

*Edit:

I'm laughing my ass off now, the DLC they have? near 40 dollars for weapon skins and to play music in your hideout? What a complete, greedy joke. These developers, and likely the publisher if they're not one in the same need to get over themselves. Wow.