I bought the game simply because I saw it's made by Slovaks and it sure delivered everything I could expect from a Slavic game set in a semi-realistic, historic setting. The game itself is about 5 hours long and I think there were like 3 different moments when I could have made choices that may have had some replayability impact. There could have been more, there could have been less, but I doubt the game could squeeze more than 10 hours of gameplay, since I doubt it offers much replayability. The story seemed to take about half an hour to build up its steam, but once it did, I was fully hooked in, especially after an hour in
However, I do not see it as a downside. The story keeps itself bittersweet in just the right way. The jokes land spot on and it really shows the creativity of the devs. The Polish localization also delivers (though, I'm just slightly annoyed by how none of the localizations adapted the names, keeping Slovak names and spelling, which was sorta immersion breaking), having the dialogue written in a natural, often colloquial, way. Meanwhile the bitter side of the story is touching. Death and grief is not put up on some pathetic, poetic ethos, we're given everything at the face-value and its the context and the artstyle that helps us sympathize with what people there could feel like, including the main hero - Pavol. The comedy and the tragedy don't seem to clash with one another, walking onto and off the stage at just the right time
Speaking of the protagonist, I really like the characters, especially the main duo. They were assigned with one another forcefully but with time, their relations ripe into a fully fledged bromance. The grief and emotions that Pavol goes through are also believable, if one was to assume he's representing the mindset and actions of someone that's a hopeless romantic. The story itself wraps itself up in a pretty Slavic way, to avoid giving any hints as to what the ending is.
The graphics may seem really harsh for the eyes but somehow the devs managed to make this extremely desaturated colour palette work and turn out really climactic. It's topped off by short and to-the-point 3D cutscenes which always felt like a little reward for basically achieving a milestone in the game. The characters, aside form being written in a believable way, were also designed to be very characteristic and easy to tell apart, with the differences being even colour-coded. The animations were also well made, as well as all the setpieces
From the technical stand-point, I doubt it's impressive in anyway, my friends pointing out immediatelly that it was made in the RPG maker, with this rudimentar-ness even once leading me to a softlock, getting squashed by two different NPCs that kept moving back and forth. Thankfully, autosaves seem to be made at very convenient timeframes. Despite that, the fights felt satisfying. Usually the opening phases required some thinking in which attacks to deal, with the main-phase attrition-like fight requiring you to actually use the items that you've been stockpiling. Only the closing phases of the fights felt boring, since there's no way to fast-forward the attacks, it usually just consisted of pressing the enter button a few times and waiting for all the animations to play out
Overall, the game was a delight to play. It should have given itself maybe 1 or 2 more hours to flesh itself out to the fullest, especially with how the whole story arc feels complete, with no room for a fitting sequel. Though, I certainly would love to see more games set in a tone and aesthetic like that. With a clear conscience, I can recommend that game to anyone, especially when the game goes on a discount, as it goes 40% off on most of the sales.
Edit: Two more thoughts that I got just after wrapping up the review.
The first one being, that the music is great, it's not really what could be expected for the setting, but it's fitting for the mindset present are represented within the game (though, in the end-game the music seems to kinda give up and just not care about setting an appropriate tone, for some reason?).
The second being, that this game is kinda like Disco Elysium lite. Smaller, shorter, simpler, easier to digest, but still seemingly playing around with similar tones and aesthetics. If you like one game, you could get interested by the other one
