Version reviewed: 1.34
An apex in mediocrity, dialled up to eleven in terms of awfulness by the jarring disconnect between gameplay and narrative.
The big issue here is that the game takes itself too seriously, tries to be too grim and tutorializes the player too much.
The game tries to put on an act that you're in danger, but you never are. For, you see, it falls prey to the same mechanic that most RPGM games do: attrition.
To recap: this is a timeloop game in which you pick Vera's - the protagonist's - class, equipment and program her skill usage to take on a series of one hundred fights of increasing difficulty, with each 10th fight being a boss.
You can also make Vera do lewd things in exchange for being able to unlock a particular class's skill for use with other classes. Except that it isn't necessary in the slightest.
Pick the Knight class, equip the first boss's trinket (passive HP regen) and set the programming to the following:
If(HP<=50%){Heal}Elseif(Mana==100%){Bash}Else{Strike}
And congratulations, you can now watch the game playing itself up to and including the floor 70 boss without a care in the world. I don't know what's beyond that, and frankly I'm too bored to find out.
If this game suddenly becomes good after floor 70 then take this for the ignorant and hateful criticism that it is, but for God's sake if a game takes this sodding long to get good then I am well within my rights to score it a 1/5 purely for the atrocious pacing and ludonarrative dissonance if nothing else.
Constructive criticism:
In summary, 1/5.
-Edited because I played 20 more floors while waiting for something else to download. I have now completed 70% of the floors and encountered no resistance from the game whatever.
An apex in mediocrity, dialled up to eleven in terms of awfulness by the jarring disconnect between gameplay and narrative.
The big issue here is that the game takes itself too seriously, tries to be too grim and tutorializes the player too much.
The game tries to put on an act that you're in danger, but you never are. For, you see, it falls prey to the same mechanic that most RPGM games do: attrition.
To recap: this is a timeloop game in which you pick Vera's - the protagonist's - class, equipment and program her skill usage to take on a series of one hundred fights of increasing difficulty, with each 10th fight being a boss.
You can also make Vera do lewd things in exchange for being able to unlock a particular class's skill for use with other classes. Except that it isn't necessary in the slightest.
Pick the Knight class, equip the first boss's trinket (passive HP regen) and set the programming to the following:
If(HP<=50%){Heal}Elseif(Mana==100%){Bash}Else{Strike}
And congratulations, you can now watch the game playing itself up to and including the floor 70 boss without a care in the world. I don't know what's beyond that, and frankly I'm too bored to find out.
If this game suddenly becomes good after floor 70 then take this for the ignorant and hateful criticism that it is, but for God's sake if a game takes this sodding long to get good then I am well within my rights to score it a 1/5 purely for the atrocious pacing and ludonarrative dissonance if nothing else.
Constructive criticism:
- the knight class is too powerful. Any class that can heal more damage than it takes while also dealing damage is by definition too powerful.
- Give us a reason to make Vera do something lewd. If 70% of the way through the thought "Well, that class's skill would have been nice here" has never crossed my mind then something is clearly wrong. Might I suggest you're going to need a bigger bait?
- The tone needs a serious rework. This almost feels Darksouls-esque with how many people we find dead or traumatized, then we walk into the dungeon and serve a healthy dosage of knuckle sandwiches to all the demons for several minutes at a time without the slightest worry or concern until we get the boss reward and it's back to dirty depressed people getting their lives ruined.
- This is far longer than it needs to be. It almost feels like it'd be better to cut the runtime in half - and the tutorials by 90%. Also set the additional increased speed setting to be unlocked from the start.
In summary, 1/5.
-Edited because I played 20 more floors while waiting for something else to download. I have now completed 70% of the floors and encountered no resistance from the game whatever.
