Beloved Rapture

This was an incredible experience. Having grown up playing JRPGs I didn't realize how moved I would be to see one with lgbtq+ representation. Though don't expect this to be a "gay" game. Another comment put it best, this isn't a story focused on a queer relationship, this is a story where one of the central relationships just happens to be queer and THAT is the rep I want to see more of. The gameplay, visuals and soundtrack was captivating, reminiscent of games I played growing up but with the added challenge of offering difficulty choices. I found the increased difficulty really shined in the first 3 or 4 chapters. Instead of hording resources like I usually can get away with, I was actively diving in my inventory just to survive. Eventually, once you establish your character builds and have several levels under your belt, the later chapters are less dire, but still enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised by the length of the game. Several times I thought the story might resolve as a particular conflict point started buttoning up, only to be met with a brand new region and more story! The storytelling was well executed, with new characters getting their time to shine and gaining their own presence, validating my investment in what happens next. I've seen a few reviews mention performance issues but I didn't have any issues with my playthrough. This was an excellent game. I have a habit of getting easily burnt out with large scale JRPGs, so it's saying something that I was able to focus and play this completely through. ALSO THERE'S FISHING. YES!!! I wish I could play this again for the first time. I highly recommend it!

I really want to recommend this game. If you are a fan of the golden age of RPG on Snes with turn based combat and seeing number goes up. this is for you. yet, I cannot recommend it against all the great game out there. The combat system is a classic of that era. Fight/Magic/Relica (Limit Break System)/Defend etc. The thing with the combat system is that it's not deep enough. You are just whacking at the enemies. Equipment do not have an impact on what you do. Putting stats on the char do not really affect it. They wanted to create balance in building char, but you are stuck with building the exact archetype of the char. There is no place for creating something new. Again, not a bad thing, but each char feel blend. Not unique in their way to attack or use magic. Ho, and the cherry on top. No other weapon. You leveled up to augment stats (With a point system that doesn't make any sense) and that is it. No changing weapon or infuse with elements (you are leveling up your weapon to level 5??) Give me different weapon, different tactic. The story is also classic, Bad vilain... kill kill. The huge disappointment that I have is with the Characters itself. They are talking too much (sometimes 1 hour of just moving and talking) and to say nothing relevant. They are huge plot hole in the story or in the character Development. Crysta has not backstory at all!! Like where is she coming from? Why is she there? Why does she have an Ethrel Weapon? The link between her and the party is non existent. The relation between the other character are also weird. LGBTQ+ theme in here which is fine. The issue that I have with it, is there is not really ending/closure there. + If you want to go Romance, maybe have other character developing romance. This could really be more in terms of gameplay and story. The art is really beautiful and the music amazing. Sadly the rest it's not on part with it. Congrats to the team, Just need to do a little bit more. *Little Note to the Devs : I know you want to show a NPC is evil or whatever. I'm okay with the F word from time to time. But C words and B words in a JRPG retro style doesn't really fit. You can do better writing than that. Also, please. Relax on the "..." each 4 words. Always reading with those things is not fun. First game that I see that do that kind of things actually, and it's too much... **Edit to correct some grammar issue.

There are some things to like about the game and story, but there are enough negatives to not recommend this title. The true playtime is around 22 hours, most of it was played offline while I was travelling on my SteamDeck, so the Steam didn't track the timing (offline timing is still in Steam beta). It played well on the Deck, but ran the CPU pretty hard so battery life was poor. The combat is the biggest frustration that I had. It's set up as an ATB based system, but you cannot input commands or even select items on the menu while an animation is going on. This is (according to a Steam post from the developer) a limitation of RPGmaker, but the best thing to do is NOT make a system that literally breaks when an animation is going on. Some combats, especially against 3 or 4 foes, have a ridiculous amount of animations going on, and you're sitting there for 10-20 seconds while enemy attacks go off unable to even move a bloody menu. The animation freeze also hits when your characters trigger their Relica ready too. Inputs during that freeze will be lost, so it's extremely frustrating. It's also sometimes difficult when you're in a menu (ie you were partway through selecting something when an animation freeze occurred) which character is selected. Another aspect of combat is you CANNOT pause combat. If you get interrupted or need to step away and you're in the middle of a boss fight, well too bad for having a life. Screenshake is used extensively. One sequence of cutscenes had screenshake persistently go on for over 40 minutes [spoiler]the castle siege[/spoiler]. Several other scenes had lots of screenshake, and several attacks use it extensively. Way too much screenshake is a motion sickness or vertigo issue, and there's no way to disable it. Flashing is used a good bit too, but is not as extreme. There are a lot of cutscenes, cutscene to gameplay ratio is really bad in the last few hours. By the end I just didn't care much anymore and wanted it to be over. The women in game are treated really poorly, aside from Crysta every single one is subjected to a lot of abuse or death, depicted poorly, and every single one including Crysta are subject to a lot of slurs. I didn't expect much with a game focused on mostly gay men, but I wasn't expecting the sheer volume of the slurs. The touted gay romance doesn't really become explicitly stated until about ¾ of the way through the game, there are a few hints and subtext aspects before that but you won't see any romance until that point. What I did like: Items were useful and powerful, even if sometimes in short supply. They'll make an exceptional difference in combat. I liked the relica "limit break" system, and knowing when to use and when to save them for big burst turns made the combat more strategic. The spell upgrade system is good, but runes are really hard to find (especially Holy runs, they don't show up until really late unless I happened to miss one earlier). Exploration is solid, and it's one of the better mapping systems I've seen in an RPGmaker title. The maps are mostly accurate to your position too. Overall, while I did like some aspects of the game, there were enough negatives to not recommend it. Sorry.

I totally fell in love with this game right out of the gate! I've been dying to have a cute RPG like this that covers the topics and relationships in a tasteful way. Almost exclusively positive feedback from me save for a few items. Fortunately, the devs have a special "Director's Cut" update in the works which addresses most of my criticisms mentioned here. *Things I Loved* - Beautiful pixel art visuals! Very well done character and environment animation with lots of animation frames and anticipations and follow-throughs. I'm SO impressed with the lighting effects too; I had no idea such things were possible in an engine this old. Really nice portraits for the main cast, and the different expressions are super charming! I'm personally a big fan of Johan's eyeroll and Aiden's laugh/blush. - Amazing soundtrack! A lot of bangers here if you like 16-bit music. My favorite track is Omalas Forest; it feels really melancholy and lonely and cold...which is the perfect mood for that area! Steel Oneself (one of the battle themes) is also a certified banger. I'd also like to give a shoutout to Elysia Grove, Cave of Au Shun, Edge of the Storm, Awasha Coast, and Fields of Nysas! Seriously, some of these tracks wouldn't sound out of place in some of the heavy hitter JRPG franchises. - Great level design! The game has a good mix of linearity and openness, with lots of items to find and side content to complete. The game mostly opens up starting in chapter 4. You're generally rewarded pretty well for exploring and doing side quests too, which is always nice to see. Highlights include receiving tons of healing items (which are vital for the early game struggle), Ethrel Shards (which are required for weapon and magic progression), and large amounts of gold (which is also required for equipment progression). In short, there's always something to find on nearly every screen. The dungeons of the game feel very distinct as well. They each feature different gimmicks to navigate, and usually have puzzles too (those can also be found in the overworld occasionally). They start out pretty simple, such as moving a rock on a button, but later on progress into reflecting lights, blocking wind, sliding on ice, and even speedrunning a trap gauntlet! - Simple but fun ATB combat system! The system is fairly standard, but there are some innovations I really enjoy. For starters, the defend command is actually useful in this game. Since it heals you, there's a sort of rhythm of attacking and defending that's required early on. The other system I like is the Relica Gauge. I like that it encourages actions to be taken, which keeps the power of items in check during the mid and late game (as items don't count for the Relica Gauge. No random encounters was also a really good choice too, considering how much the game encourages exploring. - Really solid story! I see a lot of potential here. The game shows right out of the gate that it'll have some darker moments and isn't afraid to show some blood when the situation demands it. The are some more mature themes involving family trauma, survivor's guilt, PTSD, and abandonment throughout the game. There's a good mix of light hearted and emotional moments to break up the seriousness too. I found the main characters really likable, and the slow burn between the two male leads was super heartwarming and natural feeling. I will have more thoughts on the story in a later section that will contain some spoilers. - Free expansion update! This was recently added to the game. It integrates fairly smoothly into the game, although there is still more content to be added at a later date. There's a new area to explore, and a tower climb challenge with two of the hardest bosses in the game. Can't wait until it's fully complete! *Things I'm Lukewarm About* *Second Point Contains Character Name Spoilers!* - Difficulty curve felt a little unsatisfying by the end. The first 3 chapters feel very well balanced, but starting from 4 onward the difficulty started to decline and eventually fall off a cliff by the end of 5. It never really recovered after that for me, except for two bosses in the expansion content. The final bosses were a bit of a joke for me by the time I got there. I should note that I did almost all optional content + the expansion, so my power level may be skewed higher than average. If you're very experienced with JRPG game systems, you may be left wishing for more. If you skip lots of content or aren't very JRPG savvy, you may struggle with the early chapters before reaching an average challenge afterwards. - A few characters feel like their arcs were incomplete or borderline non-existent. Crysta is probably the biggest victim of this, since her motivations are not explained until very late. Even with that, the explanation is somewhat shallow and gets quickly swallowed up by more pressing matters in the plot. I find her quite entertaining and a sort of "big sister" of the group, so I'd really love to see more of her! Zach is the other big loser with this. He really didn't get enough screentime and there was no real resolution to his arc even though it began all the way back at the start of the game. It just felt like I was waiting for a really big scene with a lot of drama over what happened but instead got nothing at all. With the scenes we do have, it actually ends up portraying him in a highly negative light, which I'm not sure was intentional. The last character on my mind is Isolde. I feel like she's quite flat as an antagonist, with no clear motivation for why she acts in the way she does. I don't think she needs a riveting backstory or anything, but a little speech or flashback could help her out. *One Thing That I Really Didn't Like* - It pains me to say it, but I found the final chapter and ending to be quite messy to the point where I'd compare it to FF15's release endgame, which is absolutely NOT a compliment. It's very clear the team ran out of resources and thus wasn't able to flesh the conclusion out in the same way the rest of the game is. A tale all too common with not only indies, but the game industry as a whole, sadly. The story just starts moving at hyperspeed, and tons of things happen with no proper resolution or explanation. It would be comparable to reading a book and deciding to skip every other page during the climax. The team is very aware of this criticism, however, and it is set to be addressed in the Director's Cut version mentioned earlier. I'm super hyped for that since I otherwise enjoyed the story greatly, and I'd hate for it to be left in this state since it seriously puts a damper on the story. *Miscellaneous Minor Musings* - Maybe some map QoL changes? It can be a little difficult to use the map at times since it doesn't actually show your exact location in an area. Having some kind of indicator for Blacksmiths and Rune Shops would be nice too. - In certain towns I sometimes found it difficult to find a rest place to restore the party. - A harder difficulty setting could alleviate some of the difficulty concerns I mentioned earlier. *Regarding the Relationship* I debated if I should even have a section about this, so I'll keep it brief. This is a story with gay romance, not about gay romance. I'd say pretty much all preconceived notions about the game's story and characters relating to this should go straight out the window. Anyone can play this game. I had a great amount of personal interest in the game due to quality representation being extremely rare in games, and even moreso in the JRPG genre. The relationship between the two leads is very touching and is written in a similar vein to other typical JRPG romances between main characters. If you can handle Tidus x Yuna or Locke x Celes, you can handle these two, haha. It falls between those in terms of prominence. In conclusion, I absolutely adored this game. Thank you so much for making it! I can't wait for the big updates to drop!

An LGBTQ+ game that's not a visual novel. It's actually a really good game too. Brutal hard in places but never impossible. on a platform where 95% of LGBTQ+ games are trash, this shines bright.

So, I 100% recommend this game, as it is a great RPG and the progression feels nice enough. Plus, the lenght is just right to not overstay its systems. What I write next should not detract from the fact that this is a great game and very fun. I think the technical and plot problems at the end of the game and the DLC are probably a product of burnout and the need to release the game afterall. The plot is generally good, with the caveat that a number of things end without resolution, which lead to a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion to the game. The turn of events that lead to the end sequence are completely brought about by the protagoonist contradicting himself and the narrative that was built all along. The majority of the game is a tale of revenge, but right at the end the protagonist just goes all stupid and makes unrelatable decisions, which I believe leads to the problem of the ending feeling rushed, which is mentioned in other reviews. WORSE OF ALL, at the end we don't even get to fight the big bad guy we have been chasing all along, he kind of just dies and we get a random final boss without much context, who isn't even that interesting of a boss fight. Other than that, it pisses me off that we never get to reunite with the childhood friend (despite cutscenes showing him going with the team to rescue the protagonist in the ending sequences), which received a lot of build up throughout the entire game. And Crysta is kind of just there for the majority of the game, with a very ambiguous background that never really gets developed upon. Her inclusion kindof felt like "we needed a mage!" and that is about it. Oh well, I only have so many complaints because I was genuinely invested in the plot. So, take my nagging as a sign that this game was good, but suffered from not achieving its maximum potential.

Overall the gameplay is fine, But i don't really jam with the story. For one, the story is faaaaar too gay. Like, in the most literal sense. And while i think thats fine for other people. Its way too in your face the entire time for me. Game won't let you make any choices which aren't gay. Also the end is just far too clean. For everything that happens in the story i just don't like they way things end so cleanly. Its not for me. won't be playing this again myself. Also there are bugs, those aren't always as egregious but a few times i did get wrecked and got stuck somewhere i couldn't get out of.

Tried to get into it, but hit an unwinnable wyvern fight early in the game. Devs NEED to STOP doing WELCOME TO DIE difficulty at game start while the player is learning the game. It wasn't fun in the 80s or 90s either, and its not fun now.

(Playtime does not reflect the hours I spent playing offline on Steam Deck.) This had been in my library for a couple of years and recently resurfaced on my radar thanks to the Kickstarter for its sequel. I'd been meaning to try it, since I love well-executed turn-based RPGs and I'm aware that a gay relationship is central to the story (a good thing for me, to be clear). This game has beautiful spritework, environments, and combat animations. The soundtrack also has an ethereal quality evocative of the 16-bit era's best. Unfortunately, I think these elements outstrip the experience of actually playing the game. Movement and input in this game feel awful and the script is poor. Every exchange feels juvenile and asinine—typical YA tropes without any prosaic finesse. There are constant hitches when you're running and swimming. You can't input commands while any sort of animation is happening in battle. I accidentally restarted the game with an errant keystroke more than once. There's no native controller support. There's no native Steam Deck support. So much of this game feels like beautiful veneer over a rotten core. I was summarily disappointed and would not even consider playing Robot Rhapsody without assurance that the game is built on a stronger, more technically competent foundation.