Just to preface this, I don't normally like posting negative reviews for smaller indie titles, because I know how hard it is to make games and promote them. However I felt like I needed to speak out after my time with this, so lord, where to start with this mess?
First off - I will fully admit to two things. 1) After about a quarter of the way through the game, I started skipping every single dialogue that popped up. This mainly was because the dialogue was so inane and pandering (and I get that the latter is the *point* here) that I felt like I scraping the bottom of the Ao3 barrel. 2) I shut off the music and sound effects a hour or two in - while the compositions I did hear were decent, they quickly became repetitive, and the menu sound effects reminded me too much of Earthbound for some reason.
However, my biggest beef with this game is the balance - or lack thereof. You see, there's a passage I remember reading in the Bard's Tale Construction Kit manual years ago that talked about balance. It was about how yes, you can make a weapon that does 10d100 damage or a combat that has 99 mega-orcs in it, but after a certain point, it starts to become an arms race as to who can build the better weapon or monster. The developers obviously never had kept that in mind here, because after roughly the halfway point in the main story - and very much so in the late game and post game parts - it 100% does become an arms race.
The gear you start finding from combats (which I did appreciate that the game was rather liberal with its drops, considering that the majority of your gear upgrades come from that) starts eclipsing what gains you make from leveling up. While I know this is true for most JRPGs and games made in that mold, it started to become absurd in the post-game. I was finding myself in situations where I was finding gear that was twice as powerful as the gear I had found in the previous area, which in and of itself was twice as powerful as the gear before it. These weren't small numbers either - it was very common for gear to go from +100 defense to +200 defense to +400 defense in the span of a mere 30 or so minutes. While I understand that getting those big boosts does produce an endorphin rush (believe me, I know, I love the Disgaea series for that), it starts to make leveling up feel useless. Considering the fact that you need to manually distribute stat and skill points after every level gain, it starts to become extremely tedious to take care of.
On the other side of this arms race issue, it's the enemies. You start by facing small groups of enemies - 1-2, rarely 3, but as your party grows and you progress, it's not uncommon to face groups of 6-8 enemies by the endgame. While this isn't so much of a problem in and of itself, the fact of the matter is is that enemies start to become so powerful and tanky by the end, that AoE spells start to take precedence over single target spells. This is mainly because if you don't eliminate them quickly enough, they can and will absolutely tear your party apart - it's very common to see weaker party members get 1-2 shotted in the endgame and post-game areas.
To exacerbate this issue, there really isn't many build pathways for your characters - or combat options for that matter. Sure, the game does tell you that you can distribute your points freely, but here's the rub - not all characters gain the same benefits from the same stats (outside of two characters you get in the post-game). Ryuu, for instance, gains more from a single point in strength than Luna does and vice versa for intelligence. While most characters have both a physical and magical set of abilities, there really isn't a point to beefing up both. As far as abilities go, beyond the two that I already mentioned, you have a set of buffs and debuffs (which the latter never, ever work in the situations where you'd want to use them in), along with some status effect spells (which, much like the debuffs, are quite useless in the situations where you'd want them to work). Each character also has a set of passives that grant such a small stat benefit that they may as well not even exist. That's it, no means of diverting or mitigating damage, no clever tricks or gimmicks, no planning or strategy, every combat becomes a pure rushdown by the end. It's a tiring experience. Plus there's an ailment resistance stat that I didn't know existed until after I beat the final story boss, as the only gear that affects it doesn't start dropping until the post-game (and before you ask, no, there are no buffs that affect that stat).
To not be entirely negative on this game, there are a few things that I liked. The main thing is the fact that you can fully respec your characters at any point for free. Also, I did really enjoy the fact that the game is rather breezy in terms of progression - a new piece of gear or a new level was *always* right around the corner. That alone kept me going through the entire game, and something I find a lot of indie RPGs sorely lacking, so good job there. Also, the art was mostly good - some of the characters felt like the artist(s) had dived into a few too many "how to draw fantasy anime" books and some of the enemies were a touch on the horny side. Overall, I'd say the art was much easier to deal with in this than it is in a lot of games that go down the anime-inspired route for character designs.
However, none of those facts could wash the extremely bitter taste of the unbalanced, boring combat and wonky gear progression from my mouth.
