Recent reviews by CTF

Played this game after hearing a crap ton of recommendations for it and went in expecting a unique experience, boy was I wrong. From the first moments it started dawning on me what overhyped garbage this game really is. The opening is long and drawn out and the dialogue gives off the impression it was written by an 8 year old, the jokes are immature and dumb, the banter between characters is cringy and written with the vocabulary you'd find in Dora The Explorer. The overall feel of the characters is cliche and I cannot believe anyone that has ever played another game can find these characters deep, interesting or endearing.

After the long and needlessly wordy tutorial I was finally ready for my first mission, and what a thrill that was. I was tasked with rescuing 2 kids I know or care nothing about from some silly tower whose purpose, existence or importance is never explained. Boy am I on the edge of my seat now. What a boring way to open up a game, I cared nothing about the consequences of any of these character's actions, thanks in part to how bad the dialogue and presentation of the story is. The second mission wasn't any better, go to some farm and kill the "monster" terrorizing it. Is this an MMORPG? Because the tasks you have to fulfill sure feel like it.

On to the combat. The combat takes place on a grid based battlefield reminiscent of SRPGs but it doesn't have the depth of an SRPG. The existence of this grid is highly questionable as it feels shoddy, the characters can't move manualy and attack on the same turn, you waste turns just moving around to reach faraway enemies which makes the battles needlessly slow. They could have gone with a generic JRPG combat system but instead this "hybrid" combines the worst of both worlds. Silly random encounters in JRPGs that are not fast paced and quick are a chore and get old very quickly. It doesn't feel like the grid adds any sort of strategic depth to the combat.

The slow paced nature of the combat system could maybe be excused if the enemies themselves were at least a tad bit interesting but the enemy design is atrocious. Every single enemy I have seen has looked stupid and not threatening. A squirrel with wings? Seriously? Who would want to fight "monsters" that look like that. I felt bad killing enemies that look as helpless as the lot I faced, they all look like they belong in an injured animal shelter.

And the monsters are not the only thing in this game that looks bad. The entire presentation is uninspired and bland. The game world is barren, the maps between cities are basically corridors with the occasional chest thrown at the side of the road. Truly genius level design. Thanks to this, and the aformentioned combat system, there is 0 incentive to explore the game world. The technical proficiency in which the game was made is also lacking, the game has little aesthetic merit as everything except the menus looks cheap. Textures, models, animations are all medicore.

The only redeeming quality this game has is the music, which was actually quite fun and varied. Other than that, nothing in this game is well done and can even remotely compete with the better games of its genre. I was promised this game excels in "world building" but this just a flat out lie perpetuated by several communities online that operate like an echo chamber. Yeah, all the NPCs have dialogue, but since this dialogue is written so poorly it just feels like a waste of your time. The world, characters and missions were so uninspired that I couldn't find anything that would give me incentive to keep playing this.

Nothing in the game sets it apart in a good way, nothing stood out as exceptional, if I didn't know any better I would have thought this was made with the newest version of RPG Maker. One of the most generic and unimpressive jrpgs I have played in a while and I guess it's no wonder it's totally ignored and forgotten outside of a few niche communities. Skip this game, there is no merit to be had here.