Angeline Era

Overall the game was fine, but everything after the throne fight and novelty of secret hunting wore off fairly quickly

Mesmerizing and super fun, amazing nostalgic vibe, extremely creative world, and well built.

- Discovery and exploration for fun's sake - A thousand metaphors I'll probably never get my head around - Unique boss fights you won't find in other platforming adventure games

Pure, simple, elegant even. Angeline Era takes a small set of ideas -- exploration and a simple yet surprisingly deep combat system -- and runs with them, polishing them to perfection whilst stripping away anything unnecessary. I would wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys exploration, even if it often is for its own sake, and a simple combat system that somehow manages to constantly surprise you. However, if you don't enjoy either of these, Angeline Era may end up disappointing, as was the case for myself.

Absolute DELIGHT of a game! Analgesic team always does beautiful stuff, and this is still wonderful. Cried at a few parts... It's based on a lot of personal experiences that'll speak to certain communities more, but it provides a lot of context on these things that help it make sense, especially towards the end. The secret hunting in their games is always a highlight for me, and I enjoyed it a lot here! Combat was also very fun, even as someone I would say is Bad at it. It's absolutely alright to play on a lower difficulty, but if it feels boring, definitely consider turning it up! It changes a LOT of how the game feels to play, for the better, if you feel underchallenged. As my... Second? Bumpslashing game, it lead me in fairly calmly, and I enjoyed it! Just remember that the game is designed to kill you at least a few times on harder difficulties, and that that's part of the fun. It's a game, and a challenge set for you in that regard! And can still be made reasonable with difficulty tweaks. Just bear in mind that the highest difficulty setting is essentially a challenge mode, and not the way the game is meant to be experienced first time! It takes away some mechanics (HP buffs, shopping) that are clearly meant for players who feel skilled in both the combat AND knowledge of the game. In the words of the wise: It's okay to get your ass kicked sometimes... But it's just as okay to use every tool at your disposal to win!

some of my favorite exploration in a game, ever. the world feels alive and like it's endlessly predicting and reacting to what I'm going to do next, made me laugh out loud several times. the bumpslash combat clicked at some point and now I keep dying in every other video game from walking straight into enemies :/

Just amazing

I really enjoyed playing this very artsy little action game. In the game you can fight by just walking into monsters which is actually surprisingly deep, gameplay-wise. How to proceed to the next area involves some puzzle solving and tactics, and each area is nice and bite-sized and there's always a nice reward. It's a lot of fun! There are great boss battles, and it never really gets boring. It's got the same PS1-era graphics as Anodyne 2 (this developer's previous game which I also really loved) and honestly I love it. It's such a vibe. We are living in the time period where these graphics are cool again, like we had 10 years ago with pixel art. Great. The vibes in general are excellent, and made better by another excellent soundtrack. The story is very high-concept, with a lot of floaty dialogue about religion and magic realism that is honestly impossible to follow. By the end I was skipping text because I had no clue what was going on. And the ending is just completely baffling, to the point where I was happy when it finally ended. But I did make peace with the story. I decided to just enjoy the vibe of the writing rather than the content and that worked pretty well. In the game, you have this button which searches the area you're in for secrets, which means that there is a strong sense of FOMO wherever you end up going. To the game's credit, it's always clear where to look for secrets, but I did feel quite aimless when exploring the world. I spent a lot of time just randomly finding levels and completing them, feeling like I was missing important content (for example, I found a useful blacksmith character only right at the very end of the game). Only about halfway through when I found a map which told me how to finish the game that I stopped feeling this sense of being overwhelmed. Around this point, when I had been struggling to keep going with the game, I found a really fun part of the game at the bottom of the map which really motivated me to keep going. I did really enjoy this game and I do really recommend it.

Another Analgesic banger

Amazing game, I love the use of the bump system from Ys I & II. Charming graphics, great level design, a hard but balanced difficulty, great music, it's hard to go wrong here, quality action RPG. Story is weird (reminds me a lot of Terranigma) and by the end it's pure absurdism. I liked it, many people will too, but some might be turned off by it. Even then it's a strong recommend.