Recent reviews by Toxic Bell

Yeah, yeah, good game, invested some hours, fun times, so let me talk about redundant titles:
TCG Card Shop Simulator, right?
As in, Trading Card Game Card Shop Simulator
Yeah. I know. I am pissed.
Good game tho.

idk, construct, automate, explore & exploit.

Shoot

shoot good

loot

loot sometimes good

TLDR: Good

Take your Parsnips, sell all but one, buy potatoes, then potatoes, more potatoes, do it until you're done with spring and have made millions off potatoes, the dream of any good citizen.

Yes it's a fantastic game.

Step 1. Jump
Step 2. Do stuff
Step 3. ?????
Step 4. Profit
Step 5. Return to Step 1.

There is a mild problem of the game being from the stone age, but it's fixable with some searching.

If you don't know this game, wow. I am so sorry for you.
It's fantastic. Get it.

Multiplayer can bug the ♥♥♥♥ out in the funkiest of ways.
The game is so much fun, you will literally not even notice until there is a calm moment.

It's fun. Play it.

This is weird.

A friend is basically known as Frog, its actually literally what I call them from time to time, and we are actually working on a frog game ourselves - And then, I found THIS. And he bought it. For him. And me. First and second part.
I have no idea. But play this game. And the games after that one. You will understand the glory of frog.

Okay, so I played this game over the weekend and let me tell you - If you came for a Pokémon experience, you came to the right or wrong place - Depending on what you are actually looking for.

I can dissect this game in a few ways, it has a lot of pros and cons.
The TLDR is: If you look for a grindy-ish game with a funky story (There even was one plot point that actually genuinly surprised me lmao) and some really cool designs and a handful very epic OSTs - You came to the right place.
If you came for a battle system that keeps you intellectually stimulated, you came to the wrong place.

The game does a lot of things right, and some things very wrong.

Lets start with the general premise, which in my opinion should be the collecting and training of mons.
Funky. Grinding is heavily simplified, it's actually a completely mindless process and it was fun to listen to something in the background and smash my spacebar before my mon even properly appeared on the screen to farm EXP.
The same can not be said about the more difficult battles. Whilst a "normal" battle goes down rather mindlessly, there is battles where you simply have to rely on items, and that is a theme you have to get used to in this game.
A common complaint about Pokémon is, the games are too easy. Now, let me tell you, this game is not harder and more often than not you will get punished for trying to play "smart", simply because it's a hard turn based game and the additional attacks barely matter.
Random Chance effects are insane, the chance alone to get them is bonkers, but that is only explained by the sheer insanity those effects bring in the first place. Most, if not all, non-damage status ailments simply block you from attacking. The absolute cherry on top is confusion, which continously damages you at the end of your turn and your opponents turn, AND doesn't let you attack *EVER* as long as it's there. It's frustrating. Paralyze, sleep and binding do the exact same thing, which is not letting you move. As far as I can tell, only bind gets removed when you swap out (Yes, that thing that usually prevents you from switching).
The RPS system is wild. You can group types together and they kinda all have the same general weaknesses with some exceptions and it feels really weird.

Okay, that was a long ramble about battle, I am saying, if you get this game, dont get it for battles, that absolutely did not bring joy.

The game also has a few very.. random things happening. Now, this sounds bad, but its not like you suddenly stand somewhere else, something breaks, nonono, its more like the hitboxes didnt get fixed properly. There is a few trees you can walk over, that also applies for a few other things, the general quality of maps is wonky, you can tell very quickly that the maps were made in a rush, quality was not the most relevant topic. There is one item and one black flame you can't even get to, it exists, but you will never get there. Which sucks.
The map progression is HARD liniar, you go in one way and thats it, There is some lefts and rights, which is usually go to X so you can then progress a few minutes later going to Y.

So all of this sure af did not keep me hooked. What did keep me hooked?
Unironically the story. I had so many good laughs outta that one. I just can't spoil you, if you want a bit of a funky story, this was hilarious.

Secondly, epic monsters. And with epic, I mean it quite literally, that was SO insanely fun. A bit of a Digimon experience in that sense, really fun.

The progression system felt kinda good, and the endgame was pretty cool.

I liked it and I will continue trying to catch them all. :^)