What's Left

This is... a surprisingly impressive feat for one guy. After the halfway-point, Landon (the protagonist) has many physical changes, hair cut, clothes change, injuries, a completely new type of primary weapon, at one point getting straight up covered in blood... and I appreciate that the dev took the time to show all this in the pixel art. There's WAY too much detail in the smaller areas here, for a game that's been out for this long and received on the verge of literally no attention. I have so many thoughts floating in my head about this game now that I've completed it, what made the story so baffling and what made the gameplay so... everywhere but here's what I can really grasp: This game is a mixed bag, a true hodgepodge of locations, gameplay elements, and whatever else. Several times, I quit out of the game after dying again and not having any soul for my necklace to revive with so I got booted back to a frustratingly long title screen. And yet... I kept coming back to it, more often than I have other games I'd throw down in annoyance. Visually, it has a fantastic charm to it with subtle touches that are just really nice, and coding-wise, it's shockingly sound for how many elements are introduced and then abandoned not long after, save for the bank because I ended up with... some 60,000 silver and NOTHING to use it on. (My guess is that it was that Tiki I bought but IDK honestly.) The biggest problem I have with the game is that Picaro could be written out of the story entirely and the only thing it would ultimately change is the very ending. You don't learn of why he's helping Landon until the very, very end, and they straight up get separated for a third of the game or so, and then the ending chapters are played with him nowhere in sight either, again, until the very end. And it sucks because I adore his cat and fox forms and I just like the idea of him in general so for him to be there for so little of the actual game, really, is just kinda sad. Overall? Go play the dang thing. It's flawed and its story struggles to hold up under too many questions (in my eyes), but it's got a lot of heart, and the dev deserves to see some praise for what has been accomplished here.