Recent reviews by Nost

I've been gaming for long enough that very little surprises me anymore. This game did it. Do yourself a favor, don't look anything up, and jump in feet first. If you're a fan of turn-based RPGs, you won't regret it.

Art, Environment, Music:
Art and music come together to create stunning ambiance.
Gorgeous environments utilized UE5 quite well to create a dreamy atmosphere. The soundtrack is hauntingly beautiful, but absolutely willing to change it up into electronic, jazz, etc. Truly stellar job by the composer for a first game.

Script, Voice acting:
A veteran cast reading from a deftly-written script.
Killed it, as expected of the cast. Characters will talk over each other or stumble on their words in realistic ways during cutscenes. Ordinary dialogue does have the typical clunky RPG pacing, but the lines are still delivered well.

Combat:
Innovative twist on a traditional turn-based formula.
I was initially skeptical about the qte/reaction-based parry system, but it changes up what might otherwise be fairly run of the mill turn-based combat into something truly unique. As cliched as it is, it's not inaccurate to compare the dodging/parrying system to traditional soulslike combat.

Story, Characterization:
Weird concept utilized fantastically. [i/]
Every year a number counts down, and everyone of that age dies, with the count currently at 34.
Once I wrapped my head around it I got really into it. The game actually comes off as pretty adult compared to your traditional jrpg. Characters are sufficiently nuanced and act and react realistically to the trauma they're suffering through. Deals with pretty heavy themes of grief and loss. If you're vulnerable to such things, expect to cry.

Overall opinion
A must try if you're a fan of turn-based/jrpgs.
Hard to overstate how much I'm enjoying this game. Top tier in every facet: art direction, music, characterization, story, script, voice acting, combat; realistically the most fun I've had gaming since 2017, with bar-none the best initial hook of any video game I've ever played taking place in its first hour. Don't watch streamers play it. Don't look it up. Just play.

Fantastic tactics/puzzle hybrid. Everything about it is excellent:

- Clean art style
- Excellent overall presentation
- Deeply engaging combat that can really give your brain a workout once your options expand
- Cute characters
- Snappy, witty dialogue
- A surprisingly thrilling story with strong world building

Every bit of this game is a joy. From the humorous pre-breach dialogue to the delicious puzzle of gameplay to the surprisingly intimate inter-mission conversations with between characters, every piece feels thoughtfully designed, and the writer never missed an opportunity to squeeze in another joke. Your ever-expanding and -evolving combat toolkit provides a staggering number of options after the more constrained beginning, allowing you to devise your own strategies for every set of challenges the game throws at you.

Highly recommended to any tactics fans, as well as anyone who's not really a fan of tactics games.

If you ever wanted to try out WoW or FFXIV boss battles but don't want to sacrifice all your time to loot grinding, this little MMO simulator might be for you. Challenging, fun, and chock full of cute rabbits, loot, and goodies to unlock, it's another game that embodies "just one more go" energy. Thinking of it as a bullet hell is really doing it a disservice; there's really very little in the way of mazes of bullets being flung at you.

Best experienced with your friends in a Discord call, but perfectly enjoyable in single player too. The story that comes along with the single player mode is simple but fun enough for me to want to keep playing to unlock more scenes. Overall, a highly recommended project from a solo dev.

All hail bnuuy.

Excellent 3D platformer with exceptional movement mechanics. Blocky, low-poly environments and muddy, low-resolution textures hearken back to the era of early 3D a la Ocarina of Time, along with a great soundtrack that really sets the tone of the game. The character animations are stylish and fluid and really make you feel like you're good at the game (even if you aren't).

The movement abilities in particular were extremely well-chosen and really make you feel like you're breaking the rules as you use them to scale walls and surf over toxic pools to navigate around the sprawling castle that makes up the map.

I noticed a bit of weakness in the UI, such as the map screen not fitting correctly within the frame of the screen and the extra power node just being a generic grey UI box instead of with an extended version of the UI asset, as well as a couple small issues with a time trial ending prematurely and one time I got locked inside the main menu and was forced to quit and reload, but none of the above overly impacted my enjoyment of the game.

While the genre (retro-styled 3D platformer metroidvania) might be narrow enough to put some off, I highly recommend anyone who isn't to purchase and play this game. Props to everyone involved in this game's development.

Lots of fun! Heavily reminiscent of Ogre Battle, it reminds me of playing Ogre Battle 64 as a kid. Definitely recommend picking this up if you like the hybrid tactics/strategy niche that Advance Wars, Wargroove, etc. occupy, particularly the ones with an RPG component e.g. Ogre Battle.

The graphics are fun, though I would say there's a slight stylistic clash between the large, anime-styled high-resolution portraits and the simplistic character sprites. I'm aware this is hardly atypical in this kind of game, but personally I prefer more consistency with aesthetic e.g. Chrono Trigger.

The story seems pretty generic and predictable so far, particularly for those who played Ogre Battle 64, as it's seemingly set up almost in exactly the same way.

The game systems are solid. Balancing squads around capacity, unit count and capabilities, and artifacts, as well as picking your way through the talent tree, makes for engaging decision-making possibilities. I'm still having fun imagining new squads that I can build (DRAGON RIDERS!). However, at the point I'm at (mission 12/?, played time 15 hours but several hours of that is just messing with my army) my units are starting to reach tier 3 in their classes, but I feel like I'm at most halfway through the game, if not less. Either it's shorter than I'm imagining or your units all cap out relatively early, which is a bit disappointing as it would be nice to have them continue to get stronger in anything other than stats into the late game.

However, it feels easy for squads to fall behind. Sybil for instance is badly struggling for me, most of my units are ~18-19 but her squad is still ~12 and every time she tries to face enemies she gets focused and obliterated and limps along not contributing for the rest of the mission, ending up even further behind. Even new recruits are as strong or stronger than her current units. It almost feels like the correct solution is to replace all her units with new recruits or even give up on her entirely , but neither of those feel great. I wish there was some way of power leveling lower-strength squads to bring them up to par.

It can be hard to know exactly how many squads to build, what mercenaries to hire, etc. since so far every time I do a mission my number of deployable squads has gone up and I'm not sure what the cap is yet. I'm used to playing these games with the squads lead by unique characters and new recruits being used to fill out squads as they expand, not forming new squads from whole cloth with recruits/mercenaries.

Conversations add depth to characters and their relationships, but feel somewhat shallow. As far as I can tell they happen automatically at certain junctures in the story, as opposed to something like Fire Emblem where characters' relationships develop as they work together in battle. Still, they're very much appreciated by how they flesh out the various people you meet. I wish there were more!

Menuing is a bit of a chore. Army management in particular can be fiddly; for instance to change a unit's class, you have to go into Organize Army, Squad Operations, select squad, Change Class, select unit, click through the popup that tells you what your class already is (?), select class, Promote, confirm. It feels like it would be better if you could just select the unit you want, automatically seeing its status, then see any further options available.

The in-game tutorial and resources could use more development. It can be a struggle to figure out how some mechanics e.g. movement type, unit capabilties, Ambush, etc. work, as their explanations are always brief and sometimes even buried in other topics that seem only tangentially related.

Autosave is only when you finish battles, make sure you save if you do any army management afterwards before quitting! (I lost 30+ minutes of messing about with my squads this way 😥) The game does warn you about this so it's my fault for making the mistake but it still sucked.

The game has some flaws but they're ultimately minor and do not outweigh the fun I've been having. This game is a solid entry in the relatively niche strategy/tactical RPG genre.

A worthy followup to Orcs Must Die! Similar playtime, modestly expanded build options and enemies, but mostly, co-op! Playing through this with a friend definitely enhanced the experience compared to the original.