TL;DR - The game is unfair, unforgiving, and unfun. I do NOT recommend!!!

I've been following Dreamed Away since its Kickstarter launched roughly two years ago, so when I saw that it finally launched, I knew that I had to buy it. Now before I say anything, I want to note that I played the entire game up till the final boss on Switch 2, for roughly 8 hours. However, I felt that a review was needed for this game, so I bought it on Steam for precisely that reason.

First and foremost, the game is not fun. The battle system is your standard 'totally not Undertale' system that every indie RPG tends to follow these days, but while Undertale understood the bullet hell genre, Dreamed Away does not. You're basically stuck at the bottom of the screen moving left and right exclusively, immediately kneecapping what made Undertale's system good, and the patterns that enemies hit you at are entirely random, making some bosses' moves literally impossible to dodge. What doesn't help in this aspect is that leveling up does pretty much nothing for your stats. No matter how many levels I gained or how many weapons I equipped (which weren't many, I was stuck with a stick for 80% of the game), I found myself consistently dealing out 8-13 damage all the way through to the final boss. Also, did I mention that you need to cast a power spell at the start of every fight--wasting your first turn every time--if you want to deal any significant damage to the enemy?? Without it, you'll hit with a whopping 4 damage most of the time, and this is on bosses who have 40+ health. Combine these terrible stats with an unfun battle system and I found myself actively avoiding fights as much as I possibly could. I was actually crossing my fingers when the game was nearing its end, hoping that the final boss would just be a cutscene. There's also this strange DDR-esque system that the battles also use, which is admittedly better than the other form of combat, but these two switch off at random.

My second major issue with the game is its pacing. Have you ever wanted to play a game that's 80% dialogue/flashbacks and 20% "game"? No? Well then this game is not for you! For nearly hours at a time, Dreamed Away would have no enemies to fight, just boring fetch quests. This happened several times throughout the game, the most egregious of which was near the end when your character is in an underwater hospital. The only actual gameplay you're given here is running errands for the director, and by errands, I mean slowly running back and forth through giant, long corridors to deliver mail to doctors whose names you don't know yet. The only distinction you're given on who to give the letters to are their names, mind you. After this, there's a confusing color-coordinated code that the game gives you no hints or clues at to solve, which took me over an hour and ultimately led me to just look up the answer. That's a lot of what this game is in the later parts, by the way. Utter nonsense where the only way to continue is to run around through the entire game's map and press the A button on literally everything, hoping a cutscene is triggered. And again, the game gives no indication that you're supposed to do this. I also forgot to note this earlier, but the pacing is so bad because after an hour+ of no enemy encounters, the game will throw 15 enemies at you all at once. They all fight the exact same way too, with maybe very slight deviations. Though when the battle system is this shallow, you can't really blame anyone for repetitive battles. Like I mentioned earlier by the way, I actively avoided these fights as much as I could because they weren't fun and never made me substantially stronger. After killing 15 bats, you'd think that your character would be strong enough to one or two-shot them, but no, unless you do frame-perfect presses of the A button, they're pretty much always a four or five-shot.

My third issue with the game is its story. It's all over the place. The plot follows a little boy who needs to find his missing sister, and for the first four hours or so, he travels through a few "whimsical" lands to get to her. I say whimsical in quotes because it's all very generic, but it's better than what follows. Eventually there's a part where you're in a submarine with a pirate captain, and then you find yourself stuck in the dreaded underwater hospital I mentioned earlier. The issue here is that this is where the game's plot ends. The sister is barely mentioned after this, and the missing pirate captain just never returns. I don't know if he died or something though because that's not revealed either! In fact, until the literal last scene of the game, not a single one of the game's mysteries is ever revealed! Normally a good mystery gives the audience a clue or two to gnaw on as they continue on, but not Dreamed Away. You'll be stuck in this foe-Ghibli nonsense world that carries none of the Ghibli charm for 8 hours until you reach the very underwhelming answer to the game's mystery at the end--which I won't spoil, but man, I was expecting something with a lot more impact.

My fourth big issue will just be other miscellaneous problems I had with the game. For one, towards the end of the game, there's basically nowhere to buy good health items, which are kinda needed for the ridiculously unfair late-game bosses. Another thing about said bosses is that the late-game ones (and maybe even the earlier ones, I don't remember) don't have audio triggers for any of their moves. They'll just hit you with a 3-frame attack with no tell and you're expected to somehow dodge it. Another issue I have are the characters. RPGs thrive off of good stories and interesting characters, and this game has neither. No one's funny, no one's interesting. They all essentially speak in riddles since no one wants to let the player in on the big (underwhelming) mystery, and that alone makes them all boring. They also just don't have fun personalities. I feel like I should bring up Undertale again because someone like Papyrus just oozes personality. The closest Dreamed Away has are these elf goblin guys who're basically just a general nuisance, and after finishing the game and realizing what was going on the whole time, they also don't really make sense?? Like I still don't know what the purpose of them even was aside from artificial comedy (which for me, fell flat every time). There were also characters like the Storyteller who felt like they should be important but barely did anything the whole game and were never fully explained, which felt convoluted at best and like a waste of time at worst. There were also other small issues I had, such as every character saying "A-gain" spelled exactly like that, as well as characters like the 5-year-old sister speaking like an adult. No one talked any different from one another, it felt like every person was just the same dude in a different costume. Though ultimately my biggest personal pet peeve were the mirrors. For the first 2/3 of the game, mirrors play a big role (which doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you learn the meaning of the game at the end), but for some reason the devs chose to take this major plot piece and use it as an Undertale reference?? I know I talked that game up on this review already, but isn't it just kinda lame to take the "It's you." and "It's still you." lines from Undertale when looking in a mirror, especially when mirrors aren't just a set piece and are an actual big part of your game?? Like I said, it's a pet peeve, but there's a time and place for references; major set pieces aren't it.

Ultimately, my issues with this game boil down to it not being fun. The characters weren't engaging, the story was all over the place, the actual gameplay was mostly fetch quests and tediously unfair battles, it was just not fun. I highly suggest to anyone reading that if you value your time and want to play an engaging and fun RPG, you look elsewhere.

At this point I am about 60% through the game and I have to say it's wonderful.

I do love a pixel game and this one has the heart and soul of a great game with a great story.

Without giving too much away, it's clear the dev team have thought of 1000s of tiny details that make this game very fun and engaging. Although it's not obviously choice based, your choices and actions do affect the world around you which is a neat little feature.

The story it's self is interesting, I am guessing away at what could be happening next and I'm very excited to reach the end of the game to see the full picture. I also did not expect this to scare me but there are some random jump scares that really hit you, which is a new one for me for a pixel game 😂

Id recommend giving this game a try. The battles can be tough but that's half the fun, but the exploring and story are really where it shines.

Amazing game! Well worth the price! This was my Halloween game for this year and it’s been a fantastic choice very soooky, great mystery and I just wanna keep playing to figure out what’s happening! I don’t love the battle system personally but I love that it has levels so I can make it easier to get through the combat. Overall I love this game and for the first time I’m planning to replay a game so I can make different choices and see the other outcome. You can tell this game is made with love and it’s a joy to get to enjoy it.