I really wanted to like this game. I REALLY did. But it slowly eroded my sanity the longer I played it and tried to comprehend the baffling conjunction of choices that made it what it currently is.
Make no mistake, InDemon Tales has a really good story and the characters are well-written and make the story enjoyable. But sadly there's a really tedious game in the way of those things. I'll explain but there's so much to go over that I'll have to continue the review int he comments to fit it all.
First, I want to re-emphasize that the writing here is great. Your character is silent so the other characters have to carry the show but the game does a really good job of giving everyone their own personality and quirks. Not once was I bored by the banter of characters or the intriguing parallel story of espionage in the enemy ranks. Every interaction made me feel something and kept me engaged with the story and had me laughing and rooting for the crew, even the enemy at time. I even got a little emotional by the final act. As frustrated as I was by the end, I truly felt like I grew connected to the characters and the adventure they embarked upon.
Unfortunately, this is a GAME. Unlike a book or even a cartoon, the player is not passive and the medium requires their participation; the gameplay, above all else, HAS to be worth it, and PLAYING InDemon Tales is a practice in tedium and redundancy. I honestly had to have an internal debate on where to begin with the gameplay issues, as they're not so linear that you could just go from addressing one to another without crossing into several other issues on the way, but I'll start with something basic as an outline: Progression.
Particularly, the progression of stats in this game are nigh worthless. Leveling up grants a character 2 SP and 1 TP. SP is used to upgrade HP or MP values, and the ratio is 1=1, so 1 SP to HP means +1 to your total HP. Pretty straightforward. TP, on the other hand, is used to unlock skills in 3 skill separate trees. Most skills are just stat dumps (something like +4 to movement) but a handful of skills are tangible things like being able to use lockpicks to open chests instead of using keys or gaining the ability to dash. The problem with TP is that that you only get 1 per level and since later skills in the tree require the previous skill to be unlocked, unlocking the ability to dash (which is a skill that requires you to unlock 2 skills before it) isn't as simple to obtain. You could unlock the first skill in the tree, +1 Spirit for 1 TP (1 TP = 1 Level), but the next skill costs 2 TP (2 more levels), before you get the dash which would require 3 TP (3 more levels) for a total of 6 levels for that one ability. Obviously, most people wouldn't really be too focused on this, especially since the game does nothing to highlight it. They would more than likely be dumping points into various skills, rather than following a single tree, but eventually, the player would realize that they would need to grind out levels just to get the ability to dodge attacks. Which takes up mana, which doesn't regen very well, so dodging overall becomes almost redundant because you'd run out of mana early on trying to dodge more than 4 times.
Those other stat boost skills that you got also don't matter much. They KINDA do, but the game isn't as upfront with them as it is with your HP & MP. For example, "Power" is not a direct stat. Damage is INFLUENCED by power, yes, but the game doesn't tell you this, nor does it tell you how much power contributes to your overall damage. The same goes for all the other stats like spirits for the damage of spells, or mining power for your pickaxe's "damage" to blocks. Even worse, the increment in which these things add to the real stat that you can't see is so minuscule that it barely affects you. You could grind several levels in order to gain enough TP to unlock a 4 TP skill that gives you +4 power, but that really only gives you a small fraction of actual damage on top of the damage you were already doing before. Weapons have their own base damage amount, but again, you have absolutely ZERO idea how much your power contributes to that. The choice between a sword that has 10 damage + 2 poison damage (x5) and a sword that has 25 damage becomes almost irrelevant.
This is exacerbated with mining power; higher mining power effects how many times you'll have to hit a block before it breaks. But because the increase is technically a percentage, increasing mining power does not automatically translate to less hits. It could take you the 4 hits to break an iron block with 7 mining power, but also takes 4 hits with 10 mining power, and that extra +3 does not come cheap. This means that it's practically worthless to get a new pickaxe unless the increase in power is so dramatic that the difference in performance is immediately noticeable, and ooohhh, I'll get to the progression of gear right after this, don't you worry.
Everything I've said about power carries over into spirit so there's really no need to re-iterate it. Overall, since minor additional stats don't present an easily identifiable change with each increase, it feels like you're wasting time by grinding leveling for skills. And you WILL be grinding in this game. And you can't respec skills until a bit further into the game where there's a merchant that sells respec tomes for 400 gold, which is a high asking prices considering the rate you gain gold in this game. But when you DO buy those respecs (trust me, you will), you're guaranteed to be only putting those points towards tangible changes like the dash ability or permanent lifesteal (of which there are only 2 skills for in the offensive skill tree but can be found on some gear).
I said the next thing I'd talk about was the gear progression and, ohoho boy, the gear progression. You unlock newer gear (armors, weapons, pickaxes, etc.) as you progress through dungeons. Newer dungeons usually have higher level enemy mobs and higher quality materials (like going from mining copper to mining iron). On the surface, this is pretty standard progression. There's just one problem: by the time you progress to the next dungeon int he story, the gear you're currently working towards becomes OBSOLETE. You may be thinking, "What do you mean, PinhaT?" I mean, you could be at a point where the highest tier of gear available to you requires platinum ore. Platinum is above iron, and all the dungeons you're able to currently access generally have copper (which is below iron) and SOME iron. The highest dungeon you can enter at that time HAS platinum, but it's only available on the lower floors, so it's extremely scarce. Well you have two options here:
1.) You can get to the lower floors of this dungeon, gather as much platinum as you can find, leave the dungeon before the boss and then repeat that until you've got enough materials for the good gear.
or
2.) You could try to your luck at the boss now and and work on farming for the ore afterwards, as the dungeons you'll unlock after will have platinum more frequently. That way you can obtain the materials for the gear a bit easier.
Well, both options are redundant, because once you beat that dungeon, newer sets of gear are available at the blacksmith that require even newer materials that are in the next dungeon that you just unlocked and their stats are vastly better than the gear you're currently working towards. On top of that, the enemies in that new dungeons deal more damage than your platinum gear can make up for, making it virtually worthless to continue farming for it. So you just wasted your time (and your gold if you went and finally bought it) trying to obtain this absurdly pricey gear, just for it to be made obsolete the second you obtained it. But it's fine, because you get to enjoy doing it all again right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[The rest of the review continues in the comments from here. Sorry, I really tried making it smaller.]
