Sadly I cannot recommend this game. Don't pay attention to my play time as someone in my family sharing played it with me (it has some minor co op). Funnily enough the few minutes I have on play time here is me being astounded that it kept crashing and I couldn't get it to load for whatever reason even though the computer we did play it on is the exact same as mine in every way, parts and all. But I digress...
There was some good potential to this idea. It LOOKS like a cute little frog game. And in some ways it is, but you'd have to ignore all the glaring issues with it in order to just enjoy a cute game. And there's just so many games out there with more adorable aesthetics and better game play to offer. It's just not worth it, even on sale like I bought it.
To summarize, and minor spoiler warning in case this kind of game is your jam despite it's faults, you are a non-binary frog warrior named Chorus. And the game let's you know this basically within the first two minutes of playing. Now I actually was surprised to find this was an LGBTQ+ focused game, as nothing in the game description nor the immediate steam tags label it as such and usually developers put those tags at the forefront because they're proud of it. So I was surprised but it's not like that mattered to me, if I'm playing a game like this I'm in it for a good story and different perspectives kind of adds to that for me.
Unfortunately though, the game falls off from the very beginning. It's almost as if the creator of this game was afraid to give Chorus any real struggle or any faults for that matter too. Which is a shame because it makes the entire game just feel so bland. At any point in the story, if Chorus was met with any obstacle it was immediately solved.
Need a legendary weapon to take on the next 'bad guy'? Oh, say less fren, here is that legendary thing you want.
You need to pass by me, a guard specifically put in this spot to stop travelers from passing? Sure go on ahead.
We disagree on something and have a 'fight'? naw we didn't just kidding I totally agree with you and you're right about everything all the time.
You get it. There was no real stakes, no obstacles. Every single issue was just solved immediately for the main character, who is indeed right about everything all the time and never makes any mistakes. Which is just boring to sit through and watch let alone play. And here's where it gets worse. It's truly a cardinal sin to make your main character flawless or without any real faults, because it leaves them no room to grow and the telling of the story is basically over before it's begun with nothing of value learned or earned.
You think a non-binary warrior frog character might face hardships about other frogs not accepting their identity. But nope, Chorus' main complaint is that their home village didn't accept them because they wanted to be a warrior and they were considered "too smart" to be one. Which A. is kind of rude to assume warriors can't also be intelligent and B. is not an actual flaw. Not to mention that no one in their home village actually expressed any form of judgement on Chorus and were all overly friendly with them, except for the leader, which basically just said "I'm the leader do what I say" and then our main character pulls the equivalent "You're not my real dad!" routine and runs away teary eyed to go join the nearest warrior guild.
it's just such a shame, because if you're going to make a game centralized around this characters gender identity then you should at least do something with it. Otherwise it makes the LGBTQ+ aspects feel shallow and thrown in for the sake of checking off a box or something. And that's how it felt playing through it, almost as if the creator of this game has no idea what someone who is struggling with their gender identity might go through, especially when those around them don't accept them for it. If they had taken the time to tell that story, this could have been a really great game, but instead I found myself slogging through a 5+ hour game where the character had no personality, no strife, no mishaps or mis steps, and no interesting tale to tell.
Besides that, there's the issues I had with gameplay. The levels are all so barren of any real...well...game play. There's no secrets, no puzzles, no collectibles, no levels, no progression, no crafting. There is no meat on this bone. It's basically a walking simulator. You go from point A to point B with little to no hassle. The mobs aren't hard, they are actually beyond too easy to deal with. You do have some kind of frog currency, but you never really use it, and killing the few mobs the game offers gives you so much money that you're never really finding yourself too poor to be able to afford anything. Which when I say afford anything, I just mean food. That's all there is. Just food you'll never need because everything is so easy and nothing ever really challenges you.
The combat is a spam attack button, and if a second player is with you playing the beetle character they are immune to all damage. So you can technically just sit back and let them kill everything if you want. So essentially, there's no real game play either.
So there's no story, there's no game play, this 'game' really just has nothing to offer.
Just do yourself a favor and play the next wholesome RPG game out there. This one just ain't it despite the good reviews, which I'm suspecting might have been Kickstarter supporters suffering from sunk cost fallacy or something. Their names are all over the place in the game and of course in the credits, so I assume they were this creators family/friends or just people who were happy to see their names on screen. No idea.
Regardless, I hope this review saved you some time and a few bucks to put towards something with an actual game to offer.
