[h1]tl;dr[/h1]
Cosplay Club is a rare miss from Behold Studios that feels like it was shoved to Early Access multiple years before it was ready. While a very strong concept and theme, the implementation is terrible. The battle system is clunky and janky, and the actual costume creation (which is arguably one of the most important parts) is stifling and awful. I wouldn't even recommend this game on sale, and I dearly, dearly hope it fixes itself by launch.
Even for Early Access, this is an unacceptable state, and I sorely wish I could get a refund. Save your money and buy a different Behold Studios game instead.
[h1]The Longer Version[/h1]
I hate to have to not recommend this game, but frankly, it feels more like an alpha build than an Early Access title. Some of the foundations are here, but the meat of the game is the battle system, and it's really, really not good. Hopefully someday I'll try this game again, as I quite love Behold Studios and have been a fan of their games every since Knights of Pen and Paper, but this one..?
Movement in battles is particularly troublesome. Theoretically, it's WASD movement, but it feels like your characters are on ice -- you always move too far, like there's set positions they can 'snap' to and anything less isn't feasible. That might not be an issue if movement didn't also delay your turns, but movement (logically) costs you time, so I often find myself moving farther than I really need to and using up extra time/turn initiative because of it. It feels like an exercise in frustration. Additionally, despite having played just under three hours' worth (I know my steam time says over, but I'm excluding time spent dealing with bugs), partnership attacks also feel extremely inconsistent with when they do and don't go off. Both characters in range? *Usually* it will go off, but not always, even if you've been basic attacking the entire time.
It honestly feels like most of the time I'm battling the battle system, not the actual NPC enemies. Additionally, some battles have "challenges" that can include stuff like "do not move more than X amount" -- however, there's no way to move a small amount then skip your turn, making it absolutely impossible to complete that challenge as far as I can tell. (There's others that are difficult to the point of unworkable too, but that one was particularly frustrating for being tied into the janky movement system.) It's also not a matter of "oh, you have the wrong skills" -- this is the very first contest, when you're using essentially the default/"stock" costume, so it's absolutely impossible. The saving grace there is that you don't have to complete every condition (only a couple), but that doesn't stop it from being frustrating that parts of it are LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPLETE.
Additionally, the parts in the cosplay creator initially are way, WAY too limited, like to the point where the basic, default templates include parts you can't use because they're locked until you buy them later. (You can use them if you use that templatee, but this still shows how limited the start is that you don't even have access to a single pair of shoes, for example.) The parts to unlock then have to be purchased with money as you progress through the game, but be warned: money is ALSO used to buy the materials you need to create the costumes to begin with, as well as the skills you might want to equip to your costumes. It feels stifling and awful, and what should be a strength of the game (making your cosplay) instead becomes a frustrating, limited weakness devoid of much creativity -- as showcased by the cosplay creation channel in the Behold Studios discord -- very few have been created because there's just not much you can do with the creator at all, particularly early on. I swear that even the DEMO had better options than the actual full game (making it very clear they know just how un-fun it is to create costumes with so much locked away).
There are also a lot of uh... Not great translations. I have to assume that Behold Studios isn't a native-English-speaking studio, but none of their other games have had this problem. I don't know if they used a different translation service or what, but there's a lot of just small things that made me raise a brow and go, "Is that REALLY how you're going to word that...?" This isn't just on one-off dialogue either. It's on basic battle descriptions and stuff too. This is a relatively small complaint compared to the battle system and cosplay creation, but it's worth mentioning as a definite flaw.
On a whole, despite my fondness for the genre and especially my love of this studio, I absolutely am not enjoying my time with Cosplay Club, and I'm going to have to put it down for now because it's just not fun to play. I'm not even including the various bugs I've run into here either, since I'm giving Behold the benefit of the doubt that they'll be fixed. This is "not recommended" purely on how frustrating battle is and how stifling the Cosplay Creator is. Hopefully, someday it will release with all of this fixed, but man, this is NOT in a state where it's worth even a small fraction of the $20 pricetag; I don't think I'd pay more than $3 for it in its current state, and that's purely on the strength of the concept and not on any of the implementation. I love Behold Studios and I love their games, and I enjoyed the demo of Cosplay Club, but man. The actual EA version feels awful, and I thoroughly regret my purchase. While I don't like leaving negative reviews for game studios that I love, hopefully this will at least save someone else the $20 they can spend on something else. (I personally recommend literally any other game by Behold.)
