Recent reviews by Potato Salad can't hurt you

I came into this game hoping to like it, but unfortunately do not. The core of the game is grinding and level-ups, but there's very little reason I can find to do either. As you level up, the various fish you catch or enemies you fight level up to match you - with little or no change in mechanics. The only thing that really seems to change is the names attached to things.

Meanwhile, there's no apparent benefit to your account for training many of the skills. Fishing and cooking appear to have one purpose, which is making money by selling products to NPCs - but you can easily make money through things like combat, so that's hardly unique.

All this would be fine if the gameplay loop for each skill was rich and interesting, but it isn't. It's point and click, and in the case of combat, then wait for a while. And as you level up, none of this seems to change.

It's understandable that a game doesn't try to be everything to everyone. But after around five hours playing, I can't help but feel that it isn't anything to me. I respect the developer's prior work, but this one simply isn't hitting.

I'm not really the sidescroller type. Not because I think the genre's bad, or anything, but just because I never really got into it in the first place. Couple of Mario games when I was younger, and that's it. So it came as a pleasant surprise when this Steam Summer Sale $1.70 game turned out to be massively enjoyable. The Roguelike variance of the game combined with the means of making steady progress create a deeply engaging experience, which I gladly sunk hours of play into. The gold and upgrade mechanics are especially brilliant, in my eyes. They allow the game to essentially modulate its own difficulty level, with skilled players clearing the game easily on low gold counts while the scrubs like me can grind until it gets easy enough to beat. It's a beautiful effect that widens the audience hugely. Even better, the New Game+ and (so I've heard) New Game++ effects allow the game to extend its life even further. There's certainly a point where it stops being fun, but I've not yet found it. And all this without even getting into the birthline and equipment mechanics!

If you're patient player with a taste for fighting, this is definitely the game for you.