I Hate You, Please Suffer - Complete

this game is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ good please play it

Enjoyed this game a lot! The frustration is well worth working through, as it makes every bit of progress in the game feel earned. It reminds me a lot of the frustration I felt playing Lisa the Painful, although this game removes the save scumming potential by limiting save files to one file that autosaves at key moments. I especially enjoyed seeing the characters outside the party going on their own quests and sometimes intersecting with the party's story. I was caught off-guard when I found that several quests that I could have completed were completed by other adventurer's. In terms of RPG game lay, this game brings in several unique idea, such as how fluid stats are (they will be constantly moving up and down), an equipment gacha system, and, of course, the intentional frustration mechanics. Quests are also interesting, as they tend to have far reaching consequences beyond a prize and one-time story beat. My only complaints are the existence of a couple of dialogue bugs (names bugging out, actions occurring following dialogue that I did not input) and [spoiler] the solution to avoiding one of the fights in the lighthouse feels a bit unclear. I understand how to do it now after the quest (not spoiling how), but it felt unintuitive [/spoiler]. Overall, a fantastic game! P.S. If you enjoyed this game, you'll enjoy the creator's previous game, Slimes!

played the game until I got the "move out of the apartment into a guild house" ending. the good: - the unique MSPaint-style aesthetic - the writing; the dialogue ranges from cringe (complimentary) to some of the most sincerely touching I've ever read. the four main characters all have a distinct voice, and the overall vibe in interactions is uniquely... realistic, for lack of a better term. like everyone's in this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ world together, and they know that. even less-important NPCs have a unique voice. - the gameplay: each playable character has a unique niche, and despite the simplistic battle system, the skill variety sets itself apart from other RPGs in its thoughtfulness. - the difficulty: this game is Hard, but mostly the fun kind of hard where you want to keep going just for the accomplishment of making progress. money is scarce (until lategame, anyway), enemies level with you so you can't go through random encounters by just clicking on Attack the whole time, healing items need to be managed carefully due to the stomach ache aspect, and the exhaustion mechanic adds tension to dungeon crawling. the bad: - the difficulty can cross over from exciting to tedious at times: as the game progresses and you complete quests, there will be powerful mobs running around the overworld that can just kill you if you exhausted all of your resources in whatever stretch of gameplay you were doing before. at least the autosaves are fairly plentiful, so it's easy to recoup your losses - the background music for the apartment and the tower grounds is just unpleasant to listen to try this game if: - you enjoy turn-based RPGs with a unique aesthetic, down-to-earth vibes, heartfelt writing, and challenging gameplay stay away if: - you're easily frustrated by high difficulty

After Five-Thousand Years! I finally have the strength to write this damn thing! It seems something is not quite right about my stats, as I've played most of this game in offline mode. My alleged playtime is far smaller than the truth, but. Eh, whatever, steam. It's fine. -_- I was originally going to write alot more but I've said most of my critique on stream, so it feels abit moot. A tl:dr. If you like turnbased rpg's that actually ask something of your brain in combat and are looking for a sweet, saccharine story of queer romance and overcoming adversity in a bitter world dead set on spiting on you, this is the game for you! Full of charming characters, rotten enemies and some pretty solid jokes. You're sure to have a good time. Though, it is actually 40 to 50 hours long for a first playthrough. Scity is lying to you with those numbers. <.< As abit of a personal statement. I just wanted to say, I love Devon so much. It's rare for a character in any game, let alone one as action focused as IHYPS to be so clearly autistic and textually nonverbal without being somesort of joke. Seeing his story has honestly done so much more for my accepting of being autistic than anything else in my life, simply by him just being who he is and the narrative not ever compromising on that and "fixing" him, like so many other writers love to do. I actually got inspired to start using text to speech the same way in my daily life because of it and it has been, an indescribable help. So.. thanks for making him like that, Dari. It really does mean alot. ^u^

how had i never reviewed this this is one of my favorite games ive played in years, cannot recommend it enough. the characters and writing are great, the world feels alive and interesting, everything fits together nicely and it all feels incredibly thought out. if you like rpgs you need to play this

I really love this one. I've been taking a break between my first and second playthrough, but I am so glad I gave it a chance. What at first feels deceptively simple hides a really heartwarming stories about the realities of the working poors and the marginalized, with some deep personal stakes from the creator but also a message about the power of community in the face of it all. And the gameplay is interesting too! I didn't expect this to be more of a sort of sandbox experience. Secret abound in this one, with secret bosses and missions all over the place, as well as small interractions that can help you make or lose money, a lifeline for everything in this game or even just little interractions that can shed some more lights in other aspects of the system. On my first playthrough, I bungled up a bunch of things but that just made me want to play it again. Because I think one of the joys that is often lost in modern open world game designs is the ability to fail or to miss out on content. A lot of games are afraid the players will never see the entire content of the game so they telegraph things very easily and exploration becomes more akin to writing things off a list of chores than a true experience of exploring a setting. But in this one, quests you don't take might be taken by someone else if you do them in a certain order. You might miss out on an item you could give to someone earlier in the game to get a different outcome later. You might close yourself off to bounties, or other items that are useful. And that's good. It gives a tangible reason why you would want to play again, once you realize the little problems you caused for yourself along the way. In other ways, the world you live in do hate you. Stats are fluid and so are items, the more noticeable you become through your action, the higher chances a bad event might happen. You finally got an amazing accessory you got through the very funny artifact gatcha system? You might forget it on the bus because you didn't want to pay for the ride share app, or some cultists might steal it from you as you dine in a restaurant. You might stay up too late watching anime resulting in losing some max hp but gaining in other stats. But you also have some good events mixed in with the bad. At first I found this frustrating, but as I got along with the game, I learned to roll with the punches. Adapt my tactics, realize that the things I value might be temporary, but the characters at my side where there by choice and they would no change. And I think in the end, if that's what this game wanted to capture as a feeling, that the world might beat you down, steal your things and exhaust you but you can get through it because you don't have to do it alone. Then it succeeds.

the casual act of trying to progress in this game in any meaningful direction is genuinely grueling but that's kind of caused me to become obsessed with it... i've genuinely never played a game exactly like this before and there's something bold about how immediately and brutally it punishes curiosity while constantly building intrigue. it's like a school of Lucy Van Pelt Daring You To Kick The Football game design. definitely not something i would recommend to a general rpg audience but rather people who relish victory through attrition and weaseling through challenges that are kind of unreasonable and feel like the game is playing you. this is for fans of throwing yourself at The 7th Saga until one of you dies. EDIT: for some reason at the time of writing it says i only have 42 minutes in game but i have about 10 hours of play time offline that i guess never synced

I Hate You, Please Suffer, when it's good, it's an amazing experience of tight gameplay and wonderful storytelling, but when it's bad.. good lord is it infuriating, intentionally or unintentionally. I'll start with the good: -The characters are now some of my favorites in the medium; they are so fun and well written, my favorites being Devon, Stanley, and the Siren. The story is super solid (I got both Fresh Start and Everything Will Be Alright endings; I'll be trying the Alt Path later), and it left me wanting more. -The graphics are super charming; though not technically impressive, are made with care (though some of the side walking sprites a fugly as hell lol). -Combat was really fun, especially near the end when you get your full party and more tools to work with; mixing and matching equipment per boss is something I love in games. Now for suffering: -Ripping the bandage off quickly, I really don't like the dying + spiritual healing skill mechanic. Going out of your way to kill your characters off an untrackable amount of times to get some of the best skills in the game (like Devon's 1st one, one of the best heal skills in the game) sucks in my opinion (especially when you have the Siren keeping Remona alive for most of the game). -Oh my god, the amount of equipment I've lost on that damn bus, which made me use the paid transport exclusively for the later half of the game. Almost every time, one of these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lost an item that I'd just bought or was a linchpin in my current combat strategy. It just started to feel like I was wasting my time with the game, like why buy something when the game can just randomly decided that NOPE, you're not keeping that. Made the first half of the game way worse than the latter half. -Speaking of the first half of the game, pre third party member combat is almost a luck-based slog, like sometimes enemies just only attack one character, so they just die with little I can do about it. Also, most of my early-game character deaths don't even count for the spiritual healing skill mechanic because they are almost all exclusively game over wipes. Though once you get your third party member, it gets way better. -Short little side tangent: the encounter rate is WAY too high, like sometimes an encounter every three steps high; it feels unnecessary. Though even with all these negatives, I still quite enjoyed my time with the game, and I will be playing more of it in the future. I Hate You, Please Suffer: 7/10