Geo Mythica

Geo Mythica is one of my favorite indie games I have ever played. I picked it up kind of on a whim and could not put it down until I had 100% it. Which is saying something because I rarely feel compelled to 100% a game even if I really like it. I truly loved playing Geo Mythica. The game features a very lovable cast of characters and a story about traveling the world save it from an evil corporation. It manages to keep the story serious while giving it a chance to breathe and be silly when it wants to. It was honestly a breath of fresh air in today's overly melodramatic game industry. The combat is a lot of fun. It blends action and turn based party mechanics really nicely with a the ability to bind skills to hotkeys and pause the combat when opening the menu. Party members unlock talent points every level to be assigned to their skills and these skills can be changed and reassigned at any time. Every party member brings something unique to the table. Makes approaching all of the games challenges fun a rewarding. I did my entire first playthrough on the recommended difficulty and I am already looking forward to playing the whole game again on hard. I seriously cannot recommend this game enough. If you enjoy Earthbound, Secret of Evermore and maybe a dash of Carmen San Diego, you will love this game. I promise.

In a quick 2 sentence summary if you like interesting old school style JRPGs then definitely get this game. It's one of the best with a really nice playtime that doesn't overstay it's welcome at all. As for a more detailed gushing about the game I have to say I originally was going to give this game around a 9/10 if I were to use a scoring system or a solid A. After beating the game and the only mild negative criticisms I had were comparing character balance to a classic like Chrono Trigger, where I thought some characters dropped off and not all party compositions could work well but every character could shine with the right party makeup. I noticed the Steam Page for this game had a guide made by the developer which I thought was pretty unique and skimming through it... I read up on some character strengths I missed which would alleviate the minor complaints I had while also going... Dang this game has a lot more crunch and depth than I was expecting! I also saw throughout the guide that the developer just loves the game and world they built and the passion that oozes from the game also oozes from the guide they wrote to help folks enjoy it. You will be hard pressed to find games this good and made by folks with such a love for the genre like Geo Mythica. S tier game.

Black Main character who knows marital arts...Exploring different cultures...Fun Battles....A dragon man and a talking Basenji. I need the devs of this game to get out of my mind. But I would also like to thank them for making this game.

I am here to heartily recommend Geo Mythica! It was extremely appealing to me on multiple fronts: * I enjoy retro-styled games, and the 8-bit styled graphics really worked for me * I love both JRPGs and action RPGs - this one definitely trends more toward the JRPG side of things, but like the description states, you can definitely play it more action-y with the hotkeys. I tended toward more menu-based combat but used hotkey combat for a handful of skills that I leaned on. * I'm a geography nerd and having a game set in an explorable real-world Earth was sweet. * My overall playtime was right at 15 hours with all achievements. GAMEPLAY There's really a ton to love about the gameplay in Geo Mythica. Combat is kind of a real-time-with-pause setup and it's done really well. Battles are quick and flow nicely - I wish the gif in the Battle section of the game description on Steam was at a more appropriate framerate, because it never stuttered the way that gif might make it seem. I played the entire game on Steam Deck and it ran 100% perfectly. All the characters felt really viable in combat, I ended up using all but one of the available character choices regularly throughout the game. Leveling up and getting new equipment always felt meaningful, which I appreciate in a game. Each level up also gets you a Talent Point (TP) to spend on upgrading a character's stats or skills, and the customizable options are great and similarly meaningful to character performance. You're free to re-spec your TP at any time, and it was never a chore to do so given that the system wasn't overcomplicated. At the same time, even though it was easy to respec, I didn't personally find the need to be constantly re-shuffling my TP, which I liked. I found the story and characters enjoyable. Nothing world-shatteringly novel - I think the best thing the game did was keep you on your toes with regards to the antagonists. The characters were written in such a way that they all had their own voice, which I liked. Game difficulty was just right for me. I played on the normal difficulty (of note - the descriptions of the different difficulties made me laugh) and it worked well for me - it was maybe a bit too easy in the early going, but there were two challenge dungeons later on that were really tough and made me work (these were instances where I was re-shuffling my TP, and I found it very satisfying when my new reconfiguration helped me beat those dungeons). This might not seem like a huge deal, but the quality of the menus really stood out. They're very intuitive to use and they do a really great job of saving you button presses. Fans of old NES or Game Boy RPGs might remember frustration with poor menu design and responsiveness, and there's none of that here. The polish of these menus combined with the snappiness of a modern system is really satisfying. Again, not a huge deal, but representative of the polish put into the game. MUSIC AND SOUND The soundtrack is really good! Extremely old school NES feel that classic game nerds will love. My personal favorite track was Liliana's theme. Composers did a great job matching tracks with music styles from the countries you explored. REPLAYABILITY Hard to say! I plan on replaying it at some point because I'm very interested in the harder difficulty setting, and the 15 hour playtime is right in my wheelhouse. There is also an item you can get really early on that provides some neat behind-the-scenes info about the development of the game, but its location isn't signposted until close to the end, and I'd be interested in replaying to make better use of said item. All in all I had a great time. Congrats to the devs on their great work!

I picked up this game assuming it'd be a quick little action rpg with fun combat, but I was seriously blown away by the scope of it! Not only was the combat right up my alley, but I found the characters to be incredibly charming (especially Gio, my beloved) and I LOVED the fact that not only was the world map in the game a map of our real world, but also how the game is sprinkled with geographical and cultural trivia of all the places you visit! The game is clearly made with so so so so so much love. I aspire to be this passionate about my own game dev one day. This game has easily become one of my all time favorites. Please play this game, I highly doubt you'll regret it if not for the gameplay, then definitely for the passion behind it.

Had more fun playing this game than a lot of the recent "AAA" titles that have come out lately. 10/10 would recommend picking up

Disclaimer: I was a game tester for this game throughout much of its development (and played much more than the 7 hours Steam has recorded) but bought the game after its release so I could play through hard for no reason mode and read the dev commentary. Here is my breakdown: Gameplay: May feel a bit slow at first and there is a bit of hand-holding in the first few levels (I may be the reason for this XD), things ramp up a few levels in, but if you want a challenge earlier in the game, just switch on hard for no reason mode. The combat mechanics are incredible! Don't really know how to classify it as it has elements of party management/hack and slash/skilling/real-time combat/turn-based? gameplay. I know that doesn't do a great job of describing it but point is, especially in the second 2/3rds of the game, [b] combat mechanics just feel perfect. [/b] The amount of thought put into them allows for so much creativity in approach if you put some thought into your fighting style, yet without feeling overwhelming. 10/10 would recommend. Graphics: The graphics serve as a throwback to the NES days, which you can pretty well tell from the trailer. In fact, if I remember correctly from the dev commentary, [spoiler] The game's music and tilesets should be theoretically playable on a traditional famicom/NES [/spoiler] The worldmap is gorgeous, with colors reminiscent of some of the brighter maps of earthbound. Characters/plot: The amount of characters feels just right for them to be fleshed out. Attention is given to everyone's backstory except perhaps Geo himself. You kind of have to get the idea of his personality and mindset from his interactions with everyone throughout the game. Good interplay between character arcs and, imo, particularly good antagonist storylines. Soundtrack: I am no music expert and don't feel like I have the ear for reviewing this aspect of games, but I will say that there were a few tracks that were really bops. I'm particularly a fan of the [spoiler] Triceratops travel track [/spoiler]. Replayability: While the storyline doesn't change in successive playthroughs, playing with hard for know reason and checking dev commentary [spoiler] Found in a secret location accessible from the nearly the start of the game [/spoiler] have made playing through again a real treat and a real challenge. Overall, I would recommend wishlisting and buying on sale. It's the kind of game that makes you happy while playing it, and makes you feel accomplished and like you actually got good at playing the game and strategizing and restrategizing by the end of it. There is no silver bullet combo that once you figure it out the game is a piece of cake, the combat evolves from one level to the next too much for that. So yeah, buy it.

One of the more enjoyable games I've played in awhile. (Works on steam deck if it's still not verified)

This game is super fun. It's also smartly and competently written, and appropriately challenging on its default difficulty. The setting and premise are interesting, and the characters are endearing and memorable. Music is also generally quite good; several tracks even stuck with me out-of-game and I found myself humming them throughout my day. TLDR: Game is great. Buy game, play game.

First off, I would like to admit that I don’t play a lot of JRPGs, nor do I have any nostalgia for NES-style graphics. The reason I decided to give this game a try was because I followed the developer from their previous game. While I can tell the sorts of games it is taking inspiration from, thankfully, Geo Mythica is perfectly capable of standing on its own ideas, where underneath retro-appearances lies a modern, fluid action-RPG that I had a lot of fun with. If I had to make one loose comparison to one JRPG I have played and enjoyed, it would probably be Final Fantasy VII Remake. While visually the games couldn’t be more different, both games will have you fighting monsters with a party of colourful characters through linearly designed dungeons, switching between basic attacks and unique special attacks in real-time combat. There are many areas to explore with people to help and with plenty of side activities. Geo Mythica decides to take what works well in modern RPGs while mixing things up with retro RPGs tropes, such as the world being split up into a world map and individual zones, making travelling between main locations quick and easy. Since the game is using a 2D top-down perspective, you always have a full view of each battle, allowing for more strategic battling. You’ll have to make considerations of enemy positioning, timings, and targeting. The game pauses when opening the menu to cast abilities, which is great considering how frantic many of the battles can get, and the combat shines during the mid-game, striking the perfect balance between freedom to play how you want and challenging battles. Every area introduces new enemies with different abilities, often preventing you from just whaling on them with basic attacks to succeed, preventing me from getting tired of battling while never being required to grind. For the most part the "Recommended" difficulty did not give me too many issues. There are a couple challenge dungeons I chose not to complete. There's a point in the late-late where fights become less about attacking enemies and more about defensively managing your party, and your options for viable strategies start to dry up; needing to heal all the time locks up a party member, enemies attacking quicker and quicker, and fights with 3 or more powerful enemies can make single-target spells feel ineffective. That being said, I only found a few difficulty spikes through the main and non-end-game side stories, and I liked how - similar to the developers’ previous game “The Adventures of Chris” - failure is inconsequential and you're free to experiment without losing progress. Some individual hard fights take on a sort of puzzle quality of how to kill all the enemies before they kill you. But I just felt like the challenge dungeons limited options too much to hold my interest for entire dungeons. You can lower the difficulty if you want to do everything, but I chose not to. As for the story, I liked how most story arcs/quests were less than an hour long, so every play session felt like I’d accomplished something. Moment-to-moment writing is great, doesn't rely on reference humour and I laughed at quite a few of the jokes. In general, I found that the story was at its best when it wasn’t trying to take itself too seriously, and it was always a joyful surprise to see the realistic world combined with more wacky locales, not quite surreal but more low-fantasy. There’s a diverse range of real-world locations that have clearly been depicted with care, and while the graphics stay true to looking like an NES game, there’s enough visual flair in each location to be distinct from each other. It’s a shame that you can’t banter with party members outside of scripted story events, because when the game did get more serious, I felt that I had missed out on conversations that resulted in the characters' change of heart. The game is full of complex characters, and I guess I just wanted to hear more from them. The music is also really nice. There’s a great range of retro-inspired high and low energy tracks that I never got tired of. Overall I had a very enjoyable time with Geo Mythica, and I would recommend it to any fan of action-RPGs even if they’re not familiar with classic JRPGs like me. I had a bug-free and stable experience that took me 17~ hours to complete the main story and all non-post-game side quests. 8/10