Weirdlands

Alright, as I finished probably most of the game, and generally enjoyed it. Nice things: - Art, lore and general vibes of the world. It feels a bit too empty sometimes, but it kind of matches the doomed atmosphere. - There are a lot of culture references. - Interesting encounter mechanics: encounters are determined by the type of the soil you're standing on. - Creature taming is reasonably straightforward. There are no limits on the number of "bench warmer" creatures, and there is very limited fusion/breeding: Lesser creatures are unalterable, while greater creatures can be enhanced by directly adding two lesser creatures skills and attributes to theirs. Not so nice things: - Navigating the game world often feels inconvenient and slow. It constantly feels that too few things fit in the camera view, and there is no in-game map to meaningfully track where you have already been, and whether it makes sense to try looking for a new path in some direction. - There is a certain lack of enemy (and generally side activity) diversity, especially by the end of the game. late-game "forest" area seems to only have one kind of enemy, and this same enemy is used in 4 hardest "training grounds" fights with the only difference being that each next fight has one more wave than the last one (up to 5 waves). - Instead of MP management, most non-trivial skills need to be "charged". While nice in theory, on practice it means that you must actively skip a turn to make the skill available. In most cases, it just doesn't pay out and it's better to use the most basic attack or heal option. It might have been better if "trivial" actions still contributed to charging abilities, but maybe on a smaller scale. - Level progression seems kind of broken, as by the end of the game, there is one superboss that you're unlikely to kill without some dedicated grinding or fishing, while all the other fights become basically trivial, including two canonical end-game bosses. - A lot of plot lines seem to cut abruptly. For example, the game starts with two guys asking you to be "their summoner". You'd expect that they'd care about you and your progress along the journey, give you a lot of missions, etc, but essentially the only meaningful task you do for them specifically is unclogging the toilet and finding a crowbar? A lot of other characters seem underutilized, i.e. they seem important as if they might use your help or something, but really they're just there as a decoration. Then, there are characters that tell you to do something specific, but when you do and try to talk to them again, they don't seem to acknowledge it or react to it in any way. - There are some minor bugs e.g. when fishing (imagine catching a "fish", but it doesn't register in the inventory and you only see the "!!!" message) or eavesdropping (you get a "PLACEHOLDER" text if you apply the bug on non-resistance NPC). That being said, the overall experience was very nice for me, just from "how it feels" perspective, as I like games in which there is just some kind of bizarre world and you spend time immersing in it and getting to know it better.

Great game!

Good writing, world building and characters Fun point & click puzzles Combat mechanics is fine, nothing exciting Can't wait to see what the dev does next

Great game. A lot of heart clearly went into it. I enjoyed the story the most, the artwork being a very close second.

Amazing game! Really smart design, both for the combat, rpg systems, and the exploration. The writing is fantastic also, I laughed really hard at more than a few jokes. This is more than just some Earthbound clone. It's almost like SMT meets Mashle

A very fun gem, instead of the usual approach to creature collector games you have a smaller amount of creatures at your command, but you can customise them so heavily that it never feels dull or lacking. It has a very enjoyable story so far, with lots of little secrets and fun puzzles. Highly recommend.

Full-on strategy battles and great puzzles. The art direction is amazing, the leveling up system being closely tied to the "money" really adds a new layer of challenge you don't see in many RPGs and the story really pulls you in. Haven't finished it, but I've been waiting for its release since the Demo days, where there was a "Superboss" at the bottom of the library. Excellent game for RPGs complitionists. 10/10, would recommend.