Recent reviews by zimberzimber

I find it hard to recommend this remaster over the original, even for newcomers.

To me, a lot of what made OFF stand out was lost in the remastery process.
Most notably the music, which doesn't come close to the vibe the original hooked me with.
Then there were things like the borders or vendor interface, which look nice on their own, but felt out of place.
And while it's weird to complain about, the game feels too polished for the odd vibe it has, making it less OFF.

Beyond that, it's still OFF.

Almost makes a man wish France was real

This game is more than just a horror roguelike, it's a puzzle, constantly feeding you vague clues at what lays deeper, each layer having new surprises to throw at you.
The dark music and simplistic yet expressive art style come together into quite the eerie atmosphere you just can't get enough of.

Highly recommend.

Do also play the developer's previous games on their Itch.io page.

Game looked fun and I really wanted to like it, but it just doesn't want to be liked, it wants to be frustrating.
Beaten Death a couple of times, and I just don't want to continue any more.

On the surface level it seems like there can be a lot of cool synergies between the various mechanics, but the unfortunate truth is that it rarely comes together as the game keeps giving you items or perks that simply don't give any meaningful power boost, and what little control you have over the randomness is simply not enough with how much garbage there is.
On top of that there's the item weight mechanic which only seems to get in the way of non-strength builds by turning potentially usefulitems into a detriment.
Then it has the item sets mechanics which does nothing but add more clutter to the item pool as you're almost never going to complete a set, or trade one of the slots you're using to complete a set that barely does anything for you.

The visuals are fine for the most part, but it often reaches a point where the screen is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where you can't tell whats yours and what isn't.
Having the option to tone down the opacity of your orbitals, auras, and companions is nice, but those are rarely the issue.

Some bosses seem to just be a DPS/stamina check, where your have to either have enough stamina regen to dodge their unavoidable attacks, or kill them before you run out of stamina.

Praying for you 🕯️ O Great Mita 💝

A horror sci-fi movie in video game form!

The way it tells the story is great, and it gives you just enough information to keep you guessing on what's going on.
There's not much gameplay to speak of besides a few simple puzzles and some really nice sequences towards the end, but they do a great job of keeping the game, well, a game.

It's also short and cheap, all the more reason to get it!

Better than sex

Short, nice, creative, and free.
Perspective as a mechanic is always awesome.

As awful as it is ancient.
I've yet to meet a tool more infuriating than RPG Maker.

This game should be "exhibit A" in any love-hate relationship case study.
There is a lot to love, and a lot to hate about it, with the latter growing by the day, and only being counter balanced by a trickle of actual content, but mostly by the people you've met along the way.

Since there is plenty of praise being sung for it already, I'll be focusing on the negatives in this review, with ascending severity.
There are a lot of other, smaller issues I will not be addressing here, which tend to make the overall experience very infuriating, such as the movement in certain places or on dark plants, but they're not nearly as big.

The game will often separate you from the people you're currently playing with, and present it as if it's an issue on your end, intentional or not.
Between randomly being separated, not being able to join your friend, or being placed to far away from your friend once you join them, staying together can be a real hassle sometimes, more so when you're in a group of people.

There is also some general lagginess with some game objects reacting to you, most noticeable with doors and darkness plants.

And the game tends to straight up crash a lot for many people.

Sky's final segment is an abysmal experience which, while very touching and cinematic at first, loses its charm extremely fast as you're forced to repeat it in order to obtain large quantities of a special currency, to improve your wing level, and to access certain items.
Each repeated run through the area turns it more and more mundane, into something to just get through, the first segments of which are often skipped with exploits.

The game constantly takes control away from the player for the smallest of things.
Cut scenes showing the same door opening animation you've seen countless times before, a lot of which are unskippable...
Forcing the camera to look at something as you fly into a wall because something triggered somewhere...
Forcing specific flight paths in senseless ways...
Even nonsensical things like forcing your instrument to a specific tone based on the background music... (which is why I play with background music muted most of the time)

I get it, they want to show off this cool thing or guide the player somewhere, but it does nothing but get in the way after the umpteenth time.

FOMO. This game lives off FOMO.
I HIGHLY recommend avoiding this game if FOMO is not something you can resist.

Between the seasons, events, and traveling spirits, the game leaves very little breathing room as it throws rare and expensive items at you, a lot of which you might want because you love how they look, leaving you to either grind, pull the credit card out, or get over not seeing it again for who knows how long.
Other than having you constantly grinding for the currency, which is time spent grinding instead of interacting with what you love about the game, it also makes you less open to spending said currency on what the game is about in fear of being short for the next temporarily available thing.
I personally often find myself not wanting to unlock an emote or send hearts to everyone I'd want to because I fear missing out on some expensive item I'd like but won't be able to obtain or see again.

On top of that, real money purchases are absurdly expensive.
For example, there's a cosmetic pack featuring just two items referencing Journey, one of their previous games, which costs 25$, 10$ more than the actual game itself.

For a game that's supposed to be about socializing, it sure doesn't seem to encourage or leave room for it.
It's focused more on keeping you in the game with the same tactics other live services use, like dailies, battle passes, and temporary events you sure wouldn't want to miss out on!!!
(yes, seasons are essentially battle passes, except worse due to how Sky handles currency)

There are some surface level encouragements, like certain dailies or reoccurring daily events bringing people together, but those are more often than not treated as just a thing that needs to be done before moving on to the next thing to farm enough currency for the next expensive carrot they'll dangle in front of you.
And that carrot is fighting, and often winning, for the same resource that unlocking interactions with your friends does.

They also seem to have embraced people abusing glitches.
It's harmless in most cases, but I've seen more people glitch into the floor to bypass gates that require multiple people than I've seen people help with them.

There is a lot to praise it for, but the aforementioned issues greatly overshadow all of it once you've grown familiar with the game.
These are long time issues which TGC doesn't seem keen on addressing, judging by how long people have been complaining about those things.
It also in desperate need of some polish.