REAL WEB LEGENDS: Carter's Quest

I am not very happy to leave a negative review for this game. I fully want to love everything about it and can wholeheartedly acknowledge the clear amount of effort and ambition that has gone into this project (at the time of writing chapter 1 is reportedly complete.) In fact because of that I still think this game is something of value worth supporting but also deserves an honest insight into what to expect if you get it. What this game does well it does really well. The style and artistry is truly enjoyable and noteworthy. Heavily inspired by n64 Zelda, the vibe is right on track with presentation and mood. The world and story are genuinely interesting. I found the character designs and NPCs you interact with to be a huge highlight, and the cutscenes are done extremely well with very expressive animation and they were always something to look forward to. There is a vision here and an adventure that is enticing you to to be a part of it. What is unfortunately lacking is the moment to moment gameplay itself. What you see in the trailer for the game is exciting and interesting because it is mostly limited to what I mentioned above. However, in between those moments of story and character progression are vast empty spaces with little to do between them but slowly run from one end to the other and have a few combats or solve a handful of the most barebones Zelda puzzles you could imagine. I understand that designing even a basic map or dungeon is a huge effort, but I can't really recall a moment that was not the most bare bones or basic experience when it came to traversing the levels offered. You get the creeping feeling these maps were designed with a grander scale and vision from the dev but it feels wholly unnecessary when you run across an empty space with nothing in it and almost nothing to do in it that could have been half the size multiple times. You appreciate nooks and crannies and spaces being created and made accessible until you find the vast majority of extra exploration has no reward besides a painfully slow backtrack. You start to see inspiration taken from the open world zelda games in some sparse ingredient gathering that is hopeful but has very small payoff currently. In the city area of the game with a lot of NPCs around there is still vast emptiness and a huge wasted opportunity because many of the NPCs don't really do or say that much. The city is also where you thankfully finally get some movement tech to speed up your character for crossing those long distances, this took me an hour to get to (I spent a lot of time investigating everything I could up until now) but it really felt like some of the early game areas should have been shorter to get here or just something more to fill those long and barren areas leading to you finally getting it but I will say it is was a "thank goodness" moment of relief. I just wish being able to zip through the game faster wasn't so desirable for the wrong reasons. There are moments of combat as you traverse around. I personally found the combat to feel pretty good initially and I did enjoy it. Most combats happen in a room you walk into and you're locked into that combat until you defeat them all. In open world you can enter into and out of combat with some groups of monsters. I would have liked to see the Zelda-comparable of more unique trap-like individual monster threats set into their environments where defeating them is sort of a puzzle/challenge in itself. As it stands combats are all sort of the same across the board where the setting plays little role, just combat until they are all dead. There are some boss encounters as well. However it should also be noted that combat (particularly the boss encounters) can often be cheesed and exploited like crazy, especially when you get magic- every significant combat in game once I had magic was just spamming a spell which stunlocked the enemy taking out 1/2 their health, recharging the magic, repeat. The game is in Early Access, the developer is currently working on chapter 2 which is why I think full disclosure into what you are actually going to experience in chapter 1 so far is only fair. Should you support this ambitious solo project because you think the idea/aesthetic is cool? Yes, the effort and art here deserves recognition. But go in with tapered expectations so you don't find yourself disappointed. It is a lovely vision that demands massive effort that has been stretched razor thin across a huge undertaking and it shows it. It may be all the more reason to support because you believe that effort deserves recognition or it may be reason to know it may not live up to what you want from it currently. Also it is openly and fantastically queer and that is actually one of the best things about it so if that is a negative for you that's just a skill issue but it ain't for me.

This is a work in progress. It is a absolutely a work worth checking out, but bear in mind this is.....nowhere near done. In short, it hits that N64 itch I didn't realize I had. Its not a system I particularly pine for, but this has all the good stuff. Colorful and wacky designs, unhinged story that is probably a lot darker than you would thing from said wacky designs. Its fun and interesting. 6/10 in its current short form with potential for a very interesting 8/10 in an act or two. Hears hoping. Note to the makers: Thank you. I do genuinely enjoy your art and hope for the best for this project and you in the future!

On early access, the game has promise. I did the "intro" part currently. N64 zelda-like with quirks of its own. Tho someone on reviews compared combat to DMC which is sliiiightly a stretch. Combat is nice tho, way more air-time than zelda games for example.

Im cartering it, Im cartering it so good

This insanely bizzare game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, but the way it goes about presenting that to the player always has you on your toes with its own unique oozy flavor of crazy toys/mechanics to play with and whatever insanely fabulous™ character interaction you'll stumble onto next. The world is full of neat lil' bite-sized experiences that really incentivizes you to explore, and the combat being so flexible helps keeps that journey from becoming stale, too. My only gripe is that there are a decent handful of reused encounters like a partiuclar boss type that you deal with the exact same way, and some of the dungeon design feels a bit lacking, but I'm counting on having more obstacles, puzzles and enemy-types to really flex all the tools you're given in future chapters. Highly recommend regardless!! The sheer weirdness, queerness and charm bursting from this funky lil' game make it so dang memorable, and I'm super excited to see where it goes from here~

Seems neat. The presentation, story and design of every cast member that isn't a homonculus is delightful (god, how I loathe the 'ear/hands/feet on a blob' design) Some critique: The DMC-esque combat is initially neat but the enemies really can't keep up. It almost feels superfluous. Hoping it gets more tricky and challenging down the road! The areas are way too huge, considering how sparse they are with content. Maybe a movement upgrade later makes it less tedious to move through, but it feels very much 'large for the sake of large'. Man those puzzles and dungeons are very 'put A into A'; minimal thought required. I can understand, simply because designing good puzzles is hard as hell, but still. The story and worldbuilding seem pretty interesting. I like the flow of dialogue. Hoping it gets better as it goes on, but regardless, I'm supporting it out of respect for the ambition and love put into the game.

I am leaving a positive review, but there's not too many things I can compliment the game on. All the mechanics feel very hastily put together with very little thought behind them. Combat is awful at worst and flashy but shallow as a puddle at best. The "puzzles" all account to putting the square piece in the square hole. The first half of the game had me on the border of quitting, until the one cool sequence of the game plays, which gave me enough willingness to finish it, though the rest of the game held no such surprises sadly. The game tries to emulate the N64 Zelda vibe, but everything is just a little off? The amount of jank and rough edges just kind of made me want to play MM again instead, though directly comparing the two games might be unfair. I'm sad about the fact that I didn't have more fun with this game, as the story seemed interesting enough and I'd be super down for this kind of game, if the gameplay wasn't aggressively trying to bore me. I will give the new acts a chance once they drop, and I'm somewhat hopeful for what the future holds for this game.

I found this advertised on Bluesky as, to paraphrase: "what if you crossed Ocarina of Time and Devil May Cry, then gave everyone manic bisexual energy". And boy howdy does that fit. There's not a lot of game to this game, but every cutscene is absolutely wild and over-the-top hilarious in ways only comparable to DMC, Bayonetta, JoJo, and The Mask (1994, oh gods I'm old now). There's just _so much_ going on here, with high animation quality that simply should not be in this reimagined era of videogame. The dev put so much love into each of these, and I'm totally here for it. As for the gameplay: ehhhhh. I really enjoy the combo system and fight mechanics, the lowfi menus and hilarious cosmetics are great, but the core action-RPG is... not there. Which is fine. Expect extremely high contrast between the high quality of the cutscenes and middling quality to the gameplay, which the dev leans into in some pretty funny ways. They clearly knew their strengths, and I appreciate it. The puzzles were quite good though. They offered fresh takes on switch puzzles and "light this torch" Zelda motifs that I quite liked, particularly the orb puzzles from Breath of the Wild and its ilk. The storyline is all over the place, but so far it's gone places that are genuinely interesting and, again, reinforcing the game's strong cutscene animation game and leaning on the door of cartoon comedy. In summary: you're really only going to want to pick this up if you're interested in 2-3 hours of over-the-top cutscenes and hilariously contrasting gameplay (at this writing, Part 2 is apparently coming soon). At $15 here in the States (though currently on sale lower than that mark), the strength of the visuals alone almost sells it. The aforementioned part 2 should bring the value up quite a bit, and if the animation game remains at this quality, this becomes an easy recommend. And to the dev: your animation game is incredible. Please keep making this thing, it's so so good.

is good i like

This is overflowing with so much potential. I love the story, art direction, and the characters so much. I just wish the combat was a bit more difficult. Even on hard I wished enemy encounters were a bit longer.