Arco

Masterpiece in so many forms. Storytelling, music, gameplay, everything

Excellent twist on a tactics game - what if you took the rhythms of a dual-stick shooter & made them a turn based tactical thing. Short but not a wasted moment. Gets a lot of emotional mileage out of simple but beautiful sprite work and music. Every vocal track drop hit. Fast favorite from the last few years, absolutely worth a try!

Didn't get on with the combat system at all.

EPIC! AS GOOD AS RDR SERIES. MARVELOUS! INDIE GAME MASTERPIECE!

This game got a glowing review from LocalThunk of Balatro fame, but unfortunately Is a big letdown in my book. The non-combat sections are reminiscent of old style point and click games to an extent, which is cool. The dialogue in conversation seems to be fairly minimal, much like an old Western movie. The aesthetics are great, and I love the pixel art. The real sticking point though is the combat. The combat plays out like a turn-based strategy game of sorts, where you and the enemy move at the same time. However you deal almost no damage, and the only strategy is running away and taking pot shots to whittle away the health of the enemies. Making matters worse is the guilt mechanic, which causes ghosts to materialize which attack you in real time (in other words, they are not frozen like conventional enemies and will keep coming). This is just another layer of tedium that is completely at odds with the strategy gameplay, albeit narratively fitting but mechanically infuriating. What's worse is that the enemies scale quickly, with you going from fighting animals and bugs to bandits with guns and explosives that can finish you in a hit or two. Worth noting that there's two tweaks you can enable, one which disables the guilt and the other that gives you infinite dynamite to make quick work of enemies, but it doesn't make it feel any better. I just can't with this combat.

DIME QUE HARA TU DIOS POR TI

This is a qualified recommendation. The music and story are melancholy and beautiful, and if you play games for those reasons, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game. I'm not a big fan of pixelart, but it's well-done in this game. The gameplay is pretty good, but its vagueness gets frustrrating at times. I found myself taking breaks not because of how long I played, but because I needed a break from taking damage I thought I'd dodged, unexplained attacks, and mysteriously robust enemies. If this kind of thing stops you from progressing the game, then the story and music go unappreciated. The final boss fight was fun and engaging, and I found myself wishing they had styled more fights that way, too. All and all an engaging, if simple, RPG. If I gave a score out of ten instead of a flat up/down, I'd probably give this a 7/10. (Anything under a five being unrecommendable)