DON'T GIVE UP: A Cynical Tale

The Right Way To Do a Self-Insert. It's pretty obvious that this game is very personal to the dev, and I was able to tell that even before becoming a backer on KS and following the development. But even though "Self-Insert" is normally used in a bad way when talking about devs and authors, this game has made me realize that there is indeed a way to Self-Insert your personal story and have that *make the game better*. Don't Give Up explores a situation and set of feelings and frustrations that are all too common and even though it's obviously the story of someone who is not me, the emotional situation is conveyed strongly enough that it resonates with me and almost certainly with many others. The dev has managed to distill the essence of the self-insert and make it powerfully relatable for those who experience similar feelings even if what causes them are totally different. As for implementation there are a lot of nice touches too, but it's much easier to find those elsewhere. The rarest value of DGU is in its ability to portray an individual story that will have many people even with wildly different stories thinking "It me." And given the game's subject matter that's an especially potent message.

Many games about depression require you to go down a dark path, but Don't Give Up let's you choose the right answers. You are stronger than you think, and you know how to get through this. The combat was pretty fun and reminds me of Battle Network. The good of this game outweighs the nitpicks I will not list here.

Ok so I'm going to start by prefacing some things: This is a critique, not bashing on the creator. The developer obviously put a massive amount of heart and soul into the project, and I'm not saying it doesn't deserve recognition. Secondly, this is only from about 4ish fights in? Not terribly far basically. So for starters, there is a rather noticable juxtaposition between the overworld sprites and the dialogue portraits. Not a bad thing, but a bit jarring at first, especially since the dialogue portrait's art style is infinitely more interesting and engaging and feels less like an awkward attempt to emulate the graphical style of say the MOTHER series, though it is nice to see the inspiration. This bleeds into the battle scenarios in that they tend not to be engaging visually. The system is interesting and I personally think that it was a good call for the dev to, at least so far, leave out random encounters as this system is much better suited for occasional use as opposed to the standard jrpg tactics, especially when grinding or being over / underleveled is involved. That being said, the power attack / ultimate attack system doesn't feel as powerful as it should, and just tends to drag on, even if it is to the benefit of the player. So far the gimmick-based battle at the party wasn't challenging as much as it felt artificially inflated in terms of difficulty, especially with an awkward counter system that says to press the counter button "just before the attack lands". Now, I'm not saying that it doesn't work, but instead that the window in which the player counters is at a sort of extremely awkward length of time. Just long enough to feel like it's overstaying its welcome when used, but also just short enough that you can still mess up the deflection. The music is honestly probably my favorite aspect of the game thus far. The chiptune that is often paired with smooth beats, be they high or low energy, often sets the scene rather well. With the exception of maybe a loop that played too long in an area by mere moments, the music is honestly perfect for what I believe the developer was going for. I've come to be attached to maybe one or two characters, as well as maybe the protagonist. It isn't to say that the protagonist is unlikable or more importantly, unrelatable, but moreso that the self-insert nature is obvious and causes a good few jokes to either fall flat, come out as completely awkward, or feel like, for lack of a better term, like a big yikes. This usually has to do with identifying others as "beautiful" and is a clear attempt to highlight a double-standard of society wherein everyone should feel beautiful, but only the few that "really are" reap the benefits; however, here it comes off a bit more, again for lack of a better term and at risk of sounding more mean-spirited than I actually am, neckbeardy. I know I have yet to see the character grow but these issues feel too glaring and sort of embedded in his personality. There is also the issue of the world; not a major issue, but instead the issue of juxtaposition once again. The world of the first characters plotline is very much an analogue to our own, with very little different save for the combat being brushed off by the general public, except when it's not. There's no explanation as to where the main character got their weapon, and I have a feeling that I know a potential twist due to the second character's name and some heavy-handed naming of other conventions of their world, and while initially it is easy to feel more eased into this world through daily social interactions, it feels very heavy-handed if my prediction is true. Not only that, but too much is introduced too quickly to really be digested by the player to feel more at-home in these surroundings as we are clearly supposed to be, given the lack of emphasis on exploration and more on the mingling between people. I appologize if this has seemed ramble-y or meanspirited, but really if the self-insert is anything to go by, this dev will hopefully genuinely consider the criticism provided here. Again, I don't mean to say people shouldn't give this any attention, but more that it feels more like an early beta in need of some re-writing, potential re-designing for the overworld (or the small but noticable cases of portraits not being placed where they were previously, causing the character to shift left, right, up, or down for a frame), and maybe a tweak or two for combat. All in all, I think a neutral rating would be more fitting, but for the pricetag and how much feels like it's incomplete to some degree, I can't fully reccomend it for purchase.

This game had a lot of passion put into it. Lots of pop culture reference, beautiful music and fun characters. The combat is different to any other RPG and can be really challenging. But you have the option to swap difficulties if your struggling. The main gripe I can give it, but can apply to a lot of RPG's anyways, is that it can be easy to get lost in certain area’s if you don't follow the plot or remember how to get from A to Z for certain missions. This can be easily fixed with a map though.

What if Undertale was written by a pretentious Hipster (besides YIIK).

Never enough urban JRPGs, great story and humour. Tris going to parties and flirting with girls is fun and relatable, seeing real life locations and situations in a "gameified" way is very entertaining. It's really hard to write about what makes this game good without playing it yourself, but the themes feel much more raw compared to the average JRPG, even ones that deal with similar themes (i.e depression and worthlessness in FF4, 6, 7, 8, etc). Furthermore, the game compresses more story and nuance in 8-10 hours than most JRPGs manage in over quadruple the time. Also I like the focus on story over gameplay, yet the combat system still manages to be fun without being bogged down in gear and stat optimisation. Biggest criticism is the Tris sections are much more interesting than Subris. Once you finish the game Subris' story retroactively becomes a lot more interesting at least, but it never hits the character highs of Tris Edit: Another small criticism is a sidequest log/exclamation marks would be cool. I talked to every NPC I saw but I had paranoia I missed some quests because you can't tell who has one lol. For being completely missable the sidequests are surprisingly indepth, for example going to a coffee shop, getting someone a job, getting into another fight, and getting a HP bonus for beating the whole thing.

This game is really good for what it is, I originally got it as part of a humble monthly bundle, but it was not the whole game and turned out to be a demo instead. I didn't want to wait for humble to follow through so I shelled out an extra 10 bucks to support the developer, and it was more than worth it. The combat can seem a little unresponsive at times, but you're encouraged to pay attention to incoming attacks more than giving damage, if you get greedy with your hits, you're going to lose. There are a couple annoying fights in the game, but they can be beaten if you pay attention and slow down. Not every battle is supposed to be approached the same way. It's a little rough around the edges, but the devs gave it their all, and it shows because this game is dripping with charm.

The developer put his heart into this game and you can feel that. For me, this title is great fun to play and the story is really compelling. I like the retro style graphics and the not-so-retro-music. The big plus on top of that all is the reasonable price ;-) In my first 6 hours of playing I had more fun with this 80 cent game than with lots of clearly more expensive titles. Give it a try.

I'm sure others will enjoy this game a lot, it's just not for me. I bought it for 4€ on sale and it's definitely worth the money, so I wouldn't refund it even if I didn't enjoy it personally. My main issue with the game is honestly the fact that it's so linear and gets boring quite fast. Go to point A, dialogue, go to point B, dialogue, maybe a fight, go to point C, maybe back to point A.... I almost finished the game, talking to everyone and wandering off a lot and I only found 1 sidequest, which rewarded me with a vague "you have slightly more health now". Otherwise you just find dialogue full of references (and some jabs at feminism for some reason) The combat system is different than the usual standard JRPG, which I appreciate. But I found myself getting tired of it rather quickly, especially once you are forced to parry instead of dodging and enemies start spamming attacks too quickly to the point where you get hit even if you spam the parry button, because the timing of some attacks is weird. I quit at the boss before the final one(?) which has a terrible 2 phase mechanic in which phase 1 is just long and annoying, while phase 2 is quite difficult. If you die, you have to redo the whole first phase. I didn't care enough about the ending to go through that more than once. Story-wise the game is hit or miss. Maybe I had different expectations about the game, since I thought this would be more about the mental health struggles of the protagonist and "beating your inner demons" (literally). Instead there was a huge focus on vague and purposely confusing supernatural themes. Just exposition-dumped on the player from one moment to the next. There is also a parallel story about your subconscious and how your bad mental health affects your body, but that story was even more unrewarding, especially because every boss you beat is just taken away by the big bad evil girl. The music is catchy and I liked the representation in the game, although I felt bad for the love interest, since every character who has seen her made comments about her being chubby and having "hips for days". Another small issue is that the dramatic sound effects are way too loud, even after turning the sound effects down to a minimum. You either hear almost no other sound effects or you have to deal with extremely loud noises out of nowhere every once in a while.

A tale of overcoming personal struggle. A lot of love and hardship was put into this game and it shows.