Angeline Era

Played with left stick only and jorked it the whole way through this

This is a really strange game. Expect lots of exploring for the sake of exploring and lots of spirit-seeking. Genuinely just left me confused throughout (in a good way, but sometimes a bad way, also.)

Really glad this was my introduction to bumpslash games. The gameplay is incredibly simple to grasp, but very compelling as the challenges ramp up. I very much enjoyed the narrative, but it is rather esoteric. I think they nailed the "random ps1 game you rent at Blockbuster and love but barely understand" vibe.

This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird. I can't stop playing it. It feels like something that could have easily been an N64 or PS1 hidden gem. It has all the makings of an experimental and weird JRPG from the 90s. The developers clearly had a love for games like Ys, Zelda, the Mother series, and hell maybe even Quest 64. The game is simultaneously like these games, but also nothing like it. It is its own thing with clear inspirations here and there. I won't say more. The less I say about it the better. Just know, the game is probably a lot weirder than you anticipate it. But weird is a good thing in this case.

This is a beautiful game in every sense of the word so I don't want to be reductive but I just have to say when I first booted the game up I wasn't expecting....well, *most* of that, but especially the male breastfeeding scene.

Great game. The gameplay is a combination of YS 1/2 and the YS 3+ where you fight in a small 3d arena. All the gameplay elements were well done with the room designs mixing up the types of enemies and environmental hazards so that they each play a bit differently and would often build upon each other as you go through a level. There's also enough variety between different weapon types and a good number of artifacts/spells you can use to customize your playstyle. Some light platforming exists as well to break up the combat sections. I found the music to be very memorable despite not being very aggressive. My one criticism would be the structure and pacing of the game as there is actually a lot of story but 95% of it takes place at the end and it felt rather disconnected from the rest of the game up to that point.

A [b][i]very[/i][/b] hesitant thumbs up; a game with really cool ideas, with a story that struggles with its own identity. I was introduced to this game by its Next Fest demo and IronPineapple's YouTube video on it; it seemed interesting, and the demo managed to establish the vibe of an old (potentially cursed) PlayStation/N64 game. I liked the demo and saw the game was on sale, so I decided to give the full game a shot. None of the character portraits were in the demo, and the art style does NOT mesh with the game's art style or tone very well. There's many cutscenes later in the game without character portraits and the difference is night and day. I know the art style is subjective, but it felt genuinely off to me. It would work better in a visual novel or more lighthearted story, but the pastel-colored portraits are far too bright for the topics the characters are discussing in dialogue. Content from the demo has either been rearranged (the 1/2/4... fish boss is now a prologue boss and deals less damage), greatly altered (the alternate weapons are far weaker than their demo counterparts), or flat-out removed [spoiler]the level with killer trees that vanishes if you die in it is gone[/spoiler]. The game establishes some interesting plot threads at the very start, namely that the PC was called by Angels to gather artifacts stolen by Fae; if you know folklore, there's a great deal of satisfaction is seeing just how evil the fairies in this game can be. [spoiler]There's still a fake-out game over in one place[/spoiler], for example. But outside of a few specific encounters and traps (such as a level with exploding coins), the game doesn't seem fully committed to catching you off guard with gameplay mechanics. There's several places in the game that imply the Angels aren't as morally upstanding as they initially seem, and this is even pointed out during the ending. But due to the game's pacing (and some late-game plot developments) it's hard to tell if there was a message the devs wanted to communicate, or they just wanted to reflect how the PC felt like they drifted aimlessly for most of their life. The ending (intentionally?) left me feeling robbed of a proper resolution with most of the plot threads and characters. Also, the ending is like 1/4 of the entire game (it's interactable and there's a few enemy encounters but it's mostly cutscenes). REALLY weird decision in my opinion, there's a point of no return and no New Game+, only harder difficulty options. The game feels like it ends just as the plot is beginning to go places. But there were little surprises that kept me coming back; NPCs that would use jarringly explicit language (most say generic things or act polite), themes of toxic relationships or manipulation, and a good number of incidents that made me feel like I stumbled across something I shouldn't have. I know you can't have a game made completely of moments like that, but it managed to capture that feeling Souls games have of letting you discover stuff, but with much easier/less punishing gameplay and a greater emphasis on narrative. TL;DR Try the demo; if you like it get the full game

The gameplay wore out its welcome pretty quickly. Running around bumpslashing things is okay, but later in the game the screen fills up with enemies that spray projectiles everywhere and it started to feel clumsy. Eventually I turned the difficulty down to easy just to get it over with. There are a few interesting ideas scattered around, but the world feels barren. There are only a few NPCs that have an effect on the plot. Having so little to discover made exploring feel unrewarding. By the end of the story I didn't feel like anything was accomplished, and the ending dragged on way too long. There are probably a lot of secrets that explain things better, but I don't have any interest in exploring further.

Angeline Era was a fascinating gaming experience that will stick with me for a while to come. Its "one mechanic" combat is surprisingly deep, and kept me interested through the game's whole runtime. The search mechanic created many exciting moments of genuine discovery. I was invested in Tets, Arkas, Niamh, and the whole world of Era, but sometimes it felt like the game was fighting my attempts to connect with it. I don't mind ambiguity in a story, but even after rolling credits, I don't think I could describe to another person what happened in this game, or why most of the main characters made the choices that they made. However, the vagueness in Angeline Era's lore and the context of its world greatly appealed to me; it sparked my imagination in the way I remember games from my childhood doing. In a sense, Angeline Era feels like an excellent episodic adventure. When it comes to the central conflict of the story, I felt that Angeline Era was more interested in maintaining its mystique than in making me feel something. For most of the main story, I felt more disoriented than anything else. However, each individual boss/region has a tight, efficiently told story. The moments that I loved in Angeline Era (and there were quite a few!) were found in these stories: Caitlyn's estrangement, the tragedy of the mines, Tets' grief at home, Arkas' pain, and so on. These tales were so strangely intimate and moving, each in their own unique way, and I think I'll remember them for a long time.

A mechanically fairly straightforward “bump combat” action-RPG, where Angeline Era shines is the decisions made around the margins. One of the core decisions the game is built around is having a dedicated “search” button, which you have to use frequently. Every location on the overworld has to be discovered using this search, and each location holds a number of secrets that can be found by searching, ranging from a few extra coins to a secret passage leading to a hidden section of the level, or even a whole new pathway in the overworld. The game stays charming and surprising, though the difficulty is quite spiky and can occasionally be frustrating (I played on the difficulty one tick up from standard). Some later surprises are exceptionally strange and completely shift the context of the game in quite interesting ways.