First, I have to give praise to the soundtrack, which is so good that I think this game is worth it for that alone. I loved the soundtrack so much that I bought the digital album [i]twice[/i] so I could have it on two services. Check out this sample:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8l-qIYsoNI
So the first thing that amazed me was how much thought was put into the game. Near the beginning of the first chapter, I found a random piece of machinery that looked like a big AC unit or something, and saw I could analyze it. Now, in most games, you're lucky to get a generic description, but here I got a humorous description, which surprised me. Then I found another one, and tried gain, and got a [i]different[/i] humorous description. And it was like that for [i]almost every decoration in the game.[/i] Of course, this doesn't make or break a game, but I think it gives you an idea of how much thought and effort went into the game.
While the game advertises itself as Cyberpunk, I think it's more accurate to call it "Surreal Sci-Fi" instead. Sure, it has cyberpunk elements, like a high-tech dystopia, but the artstyle is very trippy and the story mixes in Greek and other mythologies, and overall Keylocker felt sort of colorful and unreal rather than the gray and gritty style I think of with cyberpunk.
The story has a lot of twists and turns, and slowly morphs from a kind of silly and light vibe to pretty dark near the end, and classism becomes a common theme. Yes, the game is pretty political in that way. Overall I found the story most fascinating near the end, where you start getting a lot of lore dumped and you and learn about the world of Keylocker.
One other thing is that I absolutely loved all the character designs, which all look like they walked off of a fashion runway (except for the monsters of course). I was taking screenshots constantly because of how cool they all looked.
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So, with all this praise I'm giving, it might be surprising that, according to the Steam achievements stats, very few people actually made any significant progress, not even making it to the first boss. Besides how I said the story was much more interesting near the end, based on my personal experience I think there are two reasons, both related to the combat.
First, the developers obviously tried to avoid typical RPG tropes. Instead of HP, MP, STR, INT, etc., you have LP, EP, Dissonance, Resonance, etc. The new terminology and overall style means that your knowledge from other games doesn't completely translate to this game, and it can take a while to learn. I'll describe the overall concept of combat and progression as I understood it, and hopefully this will explain why it might be hard to pick up, and also hopefully better prepare you to enjoy this game if you buy it. So there's LP and EP. When LP reaches 0, you die, so that's pretty easy, it's just another name for HP. So what's EP? Well, there are 4 types of combat moves: L-ATK, E-ATK, L-DEF, and E-DEF. E-ATK makes the target lose EP, and if they run out of EP then they lose LP instead. So EP is a shield against E-ATK? Yes, but also you spend EP to charge up L-ATK and L-DEF moves. So EP is both a shield [i]and[/i] like magic. Since you spend your shield to perform L-ATK and L-DEF moves, which both directly attack enemies' LP in different ways, there's a risk/reward thing going on. That risk/reward also extends to weapons and unlockable skills: a powerful weapon might make you [i]lose[/i] health each turn, and many skills boost two stats at the expense of reducing one stat. Finally, I think L-ATK and E-ATK are easy to understand now, but what about L-DEF and E-DEF? E-DEF is pretty straightforward: you raise EP for yourself and your allies. L-DEF charges a counterattack, and AFAIK its power depends on how successfully you defend against an attack. This leads to my second observation.
Every time you attack or defend, you are given a QTE. The QTE result might be Perfect, OK, Early, Late, or Miss. It might be as simple as pressing the interact button when the character flashes, or you might need to press 6 directions with the right timing, or something else. And some of these QTEs can be pretty unforgiving: the 6-direction-press QTE, for example, counts as a Miss if you just fail just 2. It depends on the difficulty, but, on normal difficulty, perfect blocks mean 0 damage, perfect attacks deal pretty big damage, but anything less-than-perfect feels pretty punishing, meaning taking a ton of damage or dealing very little damage. On just the normal difficulty, just failing to get a Perfect defense twice was enough for my support characters to die. Of course, it depends on how you decide to level up your characters. Overall, this combat system can be very satisfying when you're doing well, but frustrating if you fail a lot. Personally, I noticed that I'd experience a sort of "fatigue" after playing for a while, and start making more and more mistakes after playing for an extended time, so I had to take frequent breaks to play this game well.
Honestly, it took a while for the gameplay style to really start making sense to me. I wasn't having much fun before then, but once I started to really comprehend it, I started having a lot of fun. So, if you don't like the game at first, I recommend trying to "power through" because, for me, it was definitely worth it, and I loved the game by the end.
FWIW I think the game allows you to skip any fight, since I was given the option to give up and lose rewards if I died a few times. So if you're really struggling and want to just explore and experience the story, I think you can do that.
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Overall, I think this game is a major hidden gem. I'd recommend it if you want a turn-based RPG that feels unique and new rather than safe and familiar.
One last thing: the dev has been very responsive on discussions, and has helped me out with some questions, which I was pretty impressed with.
