Recent reviews by Miti

One of my worst gaming experiences in YEARS.
This game is a port, and it makes it clear since the first minute.
My problem begins with the controllers, some/most of the controllers perform two or more functions, making the controllers for PC unbearable to config and then adapt to. It took me 4 hours to finally be able to play something in it somewhat decently, and by then, it was too late to refund, so, I'll sink in more hours I guess...
20 hours in and I found out why my game takes so long to let me interact with anything else after I interact. The auto-save is SPAMMED with every single merchant/quest/inventory/traversal interaction, which made me wait for about 10 to 15 seconds when I remembered I had to talk to the npc RIGHT NEXT to the one I was talking with, then another 10 to 15 spent staring the exact same npc I was talking with before, some areas of the game I wasn't even aware they were accessible because the pop-up doesn't even show up if the game is saving, all of that bc of this little owl on the bottom right corner of the screen, I don't think I'll have to say much more but this feature is turned off for me now, at least this they'll let me do.

As for the content of the game, it's decent, I won't say it's good since I wasn't able to enjoy it at all with so many complications, and I'm not trying to nitpick either, I could talk all day abt this not being playable on linux, this game having 30 fps cutscenes for some reason, the overwhelmingly complicated yet non-conclusive tutorials and lackluster sense of progress, I can get past all that, I did before with other games, but this... This feels like disrespect, I feel disappointed, to think I was excited to finally play a game from this franchise I heard so much about from my friends just to find a game with user experience so lackluster that free indie games developed by a single person can easily surpass...

Just to be clear, I'm not saying this game is hard, in fact, quite the contrary, it's fairly easy, difficulty is not the problem, if you didn't understand that, read again.

1/10, would never recommend to anyone in this state.

sad to see this one go :c
gearbox strikes again!

TL;DR: The game is good, not extraordinary, but good. It's a bit short, so keep it in mind before buying it. I'd pick this up for a play if you're having a boring afternoon or a rainy day. Play it using a controller for a better experience.

So, where do I begin? The game has huge pros but a few things hold it back! I'll give the criticism and then suggest a solution for it, not that I'm 100% correct but this is primarily how I feel about the game

By far, the graphical design of this game carries it, cheers Ms. Afanaseva, Good job <3
My only two complaints are the ice section, the blue on the inaccessible parts of the map being too saturated and (spoiler)the frog that joins the mice in the end not having a shield bash animation and just getting a simple melee attack for it.

When it comes to the gameplay, it is ok, but falls short of being the memorable type of fun. A few points I'd like to pin and what I'd recommend doing (as a somewhat seasoned player of many genres that has a passion for games):

• The gameplay is too repetitive, although there's fun mechanics, there's not much to explore with it, the combat loop gets old really quick. My suggestion is to add a few more combat mechanics, such as skills that lead you to have a more diverse deck of playstyles. Maybe adding a two handed sword that allows you to deal more damage but won't let you defend, or an arrow with a poisoned arrowhead that deals enough damage to kill most of the low-tier enemies with a single hit, but giving it lower range. Sidegrades, you know? I'd highly recommend adding something like TF2's weapons, where instead of making your power go up, it goes to the sides, the power budget stays the same yet the way it uses power changes.
  
• The movement in this game is clunky and too slow! Give us some kind of running or dash/roll that is not exclusive to the arrowhead formation, heck, you could even double down on the suggestion above by implementing something that gives you a lot of mobility in exchange of vulnerability! But seriously, making the character move so slowly makes the game feel punishing to explore and forces the player to tunnel vision on the main objective.
  
• It lacks enemy variation! Although there's 4~ish common enemies (Melee frogs, Ranged frogs, Bile flies and mosquitoes. I don't know if we could count the rolling bile bombs as enemies but for now I won't) and a single boss. Don't get me wrong, the ways they were used were indeed really cool, I loved the frogs having formations of their own, but I feel like there could be more to the combat since it plays a huge part of the gameplay, you know?
  
• Aiming in this game takes a lot more effort than it should. It might be a skill issue from my part but it feels like this game favors heavily whoever plays it with a controller since using keyboard only allows me to quickly switch my aim to only 8 directions. My suggestion for this is to have a toggle to use an alternative keybind layout: hold LMB to walk in a certain direction, hold RMB to just turn your character to it, Q and W or E respectively for the skills on each formation.
  
• Lastly, the village feels... forgettable! The village offers only a few buffs but after you're done rebuilding it, there's no reason for you to be there, at all. I'd like to have deeper insight to the NPCs or at least get more dialogue out of it. You could add other functions to it, such as changing equipment/formation [If there's any mechanical changes as suggested above], A shop of some kind, even if it's as silly as just adding different clothing, any kind of new interaction that makes me care more for the village should allow me to remember "oh yeah, I'm doing this to save this lovely village of ours".

--SPOILER WARNING--
Now, the story. I understand the crew's native language is not English, so I'll take it easy.
I have played the game in English and it feels... translated. I like the way the story goes, but the narration and dialogue really kills the immersion, I'd highly recommend getting localization done for at least English!
With that out of the way, I'd like to pin a few things:

• What's the name of the protagonist? Is it Micel? Michel? Michelle? Same goes for the village, Is it Micegard or Musgard? It seems to change in every other dialogue box, doesn't really help the reader to follow the narrative so clearly at times, seems to be an overlook when translating the game.
  
• Ratkin's name is confusing at best. The name made me think of Ratkin at first as a generic rat, since it's common for people to actually use terms such as "ratkin, mothkin, catkin" to refer to species in general, I couldn't tell at all that they were an unique character until the betrayal scene.
  
• The narration feels really bland, can't say for the other languages but both Portuguese and English lacks personality for all of the characters, which doesn't compel me to care for any of them. Again, get someone to regionalize the translations, I'm sure there's plenty of people that would be happy to help! [Me included].
  
• The story goes way too fast, not letting me develop any kind of emotional bond with any of the characters, Helga for example, There's only one scene before we see her die, sure, it's a child that died but... Why should I care for that ONE specific child? Micel seems really impacted about it, and seemed to have a great bond with her, but we, as the player, never got to know enough to care for her. My suggestion is having a tutorial section before any real combat happens, with a tame "day in the life of" type of narrative, giving us wholesome moments with the other NPCs, showing us the relationship between Ratkin and Micel, Helga watching the warriors training and admiring Micel, the children playing and even Helga collecting the flowers for the bouquet she gives to Micel on the beginning. Cutscenes would do wonders for some of these and could make the game more lively in general.
  
• The frog's impenetrable barrier is made out of.... wood? The narrative builds the expectative for something big and migthy, like a big stone wall with really sturdy gates, yet... when you do get there, It's a bunch of sticks on the ground and a wooden door slightly bigger than the mice. My suggestion would be changing it to something like Trees intertwined in a way that their wood makes a hard to cut through mesh of sorts or even just your regular old Stone brick wall.

The songs in this game are great! I really like it and the sounds used are also quite nice, what got me is that together with the lacking narration, the characters lack personality in general, I think this could be solved by changing their "voices" for each relevant NPC, take Undertale as a reference, you can tell who's talking just by their "voice" even if you don't see them. That said, another thing that would add a lot to it is squeaky noises coming from the rats when you talk/interact with them, even something as simple as a sadder or spooked squeak noise before a character starts talking adds a lot to the dialogue without overwhelming the player.

All that said, the game is amazing considering the whole team is composed of 6 people, so congrats! I'd like to ask for a credits button on the menu too! Give love to your devs <3

Couldn't play bc of the camera, 10 mins in and I'm having motion sickness and a headache

The game looks cool tho

Misleading. Bought for a second time thinking it was the 2005 version or at least similar, no, paywalls n it's a whole new game entirely, should've been on the title that it's a remake or something at least.

It's ok

it's ok

I'm currently unable to play the game bc of Square Enix "security" system

I'm half japanese and i'm moving back to japan in the next few weeks, i've started playing FFXIV a few days ago and created a japanese Mogstation/SquareEnix Account
basically since my steam account is permanently linked to my japanese MogStation/SquareEnix account i can't just create a new one, and since i've bought this game here, i'm unable to use the key given to me by steam

the worst part is:
i cannot get a refund
i cannot use this key in another account since it HAS to be linked to this steam account
i cannot unlink my japanese account

i was having so much fun....... this kinda...... ruined my day

So... you may be wondering why i wouldn't say you should buy this game... here's why

Is the game good?
Definetly

Is the game worth buying?
Quite possibly

but the problem i have with this game is that it feels unfinished.
as you play, there's lots and lots of stuff that are in fact quite nice and you see that there was ppl who really were giving their best to make this game, yet there's lots and lots of parts where you are left with stuff that feels underappreciated/underused by the devs, lots of empty spaces, repetitive/linear gameplay and well... the game progression feels akward as well.

The other reason is that the game is also horribly optimized, my current setup can barely run it, having an average fps of 25 and dropping to 15 at NPC crowded places, and it's not like my PC is bad, it's fairly ok,

TLDR: The game is unfinished, usually runs like ♥♥♥♥ even in High end pcs

If you wanna play it, wait for any steam event so you can buy it with discount, otherwise, it's not really worth it

Muck