I really wanted to love this game. I tried and tried, booted it up again, left it, picked it up again multiple times. But I just cant play it. The visuals are amazing, the designs really cool, the music is both nostalgic and really good, the combat is fun and sometimes challenging, it has good QoL. So then, what is the problem with this game?
The writing. Its horrid. It makes visually appealing characters feel hollow and generic. It makes an interesting premise fail to hook the player's attention. It makes the world feel shallow. It makes the game go from a gem of its genre to a forgettable one.
And it frustrates me a lot, because it feels like they genuinely put so much love on this game, on every aspect of it... Except the writing. Would it have killed you to take a writing class? Did you try your best to make the story and dialogues as boring and empty as possible? I dont understand it, how nobody on the dev team looked at the final product and thought "wow, this kinda sucks".
Dont' wanna get much into specifics, but two moments pissed me off so much I think I have to mention them (I'll try to not spoil anything).
- When you get to a certain city, a character starts continuously breaking the 4th wall with terrible, and I mean TERRIBLE jokes about RPG game tropes. On a main story cutscene. It broke my inmersion so fast and so hard I got genuinely angry. What a genuinely obnoxious and dumb character. But she is a supporting character. She sticks with you for a good while. Incredible.
- More or less halfway trough the game, after an important event, and when the truth starts to be revealed to the players, you get a random encounter with two mysterious villains very important to the plot. The dialogue goes like this:
+ ITS YOU!!!!
> Calm down heroes, we dont want to fight, we just want to talk.
+ Oh, you scared?
> Oh, you feisty?
> Anyway, we want you to retrieve the [THING].
+ No
> Oh, okay, then we fight you.
[ Boss battle ]
> You win this round. We leave.
Dialogue ends. You retain control.
.....
What the heck. The heroes get jumped by TWO PLOT RELEVANT ANTAGONISTS, and after surviving they act like nothing happened? Not a single comment???? Nobody?!??! A perfect opportunity to show the characters interact, express their oppinions, build their characters, wasted, like many others, just thrown into the trash.
I cannot recommend this game, sorry. I would love to, but I can't.
