I’ll clarify right away that I dropped the playthrough at the beginning of the third arc, right after Jake.
A game of enormous ambition that simply can’t live up to it.
I fell for the flood of glowing reviews praising its incredible story and equally captivating characters.
At times, I could agree, but every interesting plot twist collapses under the unbearable anime-ness of it all. To put it bluntly, this game is anime. The story tropes, character introductions, battles, and twists all feel ripped straight out of something like My Hero Academia or Chainsaw Man.
As with anime of that kind, more and more characters keep getting introduced as the hours go by, each supposedly playing some role in the plot, but I just don’t have the energy or attention left to care about them.
There’s an absurd amount of text that says nothing. Either pointless dialogue or equally pointless inner monologues from the protagonist. Information that could easily be cut down to a third of its current length without losing anything.
Every twenty minutes, the story must cut away to a “meanwhile” moment where someone mysterious is doing something cryptic and grand, meant to intrigue me, but it doesn’t. It feels like the cheapest narrative trick to build up “future events.” At the same time other twists are hidden or skipped over just so the game can “surprise” us later, but often those twists only end up being infuriatingly illogical. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Daryl. Who somehow, after a week at evolution level one, can suddenly beat the protagonist’s ass.)
The main story battles are unbearably long, filled with constant twists and those same “meanwhile” interruptions that kill all pacing. Naturally, someone (the MC) gets his ass kicked for half the fight, then heroically rallies and wins, then the villain rallies and kicks his ass again, and so on. Ouroboros eats its tail over and over. I just can’t read it anymore.
Characters are hit or miss. Some are genuinely interesting, but others could be cut entirely without harming the story. Yet the author insists on giving the useless ones leading roles, which drags everything down.
Character design is outright bad. I’m not even talking about the art style, but the design itself. Take Michael, for example, why does one of the toughest, most dangerous men in the game look like a angry toddler with a wig? Why does every single woman (except for a few lolis) have massive racks? The text even points it out repeatedly. But if everyone has huge boobs, then no one does.
Every woman looks like a slut with a huge tits (and, to be fair, 3/4 of them act that way too), and every man looks like a roided-up teenager.
The gameplay is pure frustration. What’s the point of “freedom” if you have to train endlessly just to avoid hitting 50 dead ends? There’s no logic to the economy or the shop. The store sells items that are never used anywhere, and money only matters for a handful of character events. I spent all my money in the shop and later couldn’t complete certain event options because… the MC just stopped earning money at some point. But hey, at least he own a car worth a couple million. Nice.
Like I said above - this is just an anime, with all the usual genre flaws.
If you like One Punch Man, go ahead.
If you can’t stand stories like that - do yourself a favor and skip it.
