Ulasan terkini oleh Neocheese

Got time to waste? 3 Coins At School would love to waste it. Enjoy flicking coins between the fingers of your classmates as they gaze soul-lessly into the abyss.

To be honest though...feels like a browser game.

Overall 7.5/10

Music: 8/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Art: 8/10
Story: 7/10

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is a very thoughtfully built passion-project game created by one guy over the course of four years. That being the case, this game is pretty incredible.

Music:
There is a huge quantity of music. Over 80+ tracks cross the span of the game, and each song is carefully crafted to match the theme of different areas you explore. I found myself playing a few of the tracks on loop around the house. Truly pleasant stuff. That being said, there are also tracks which aren't so pleasant, and intentionally so. There are many points in the game which delve into darkness, and the tracks accompany these dark dives quite well. That said, most of these tracks are fairly short, running 1-2 minutes on average. In a few places, the music can be pretty repetitive, especially if you're grinding. I would've appreciated a little more variety in fight music from battle to battle, but this is a minor complaint. Every major RPG has this issue.

Gameplay:
Overall quite solid, the gameplay has lots of strengths and few weaknesses. What stands out about the gameplay to me is how well the battling scales late. In lots of indie RPGs, if you grind a little bit, you can easily become a god and crush every enemy thrown at you. With the exception of a couple of small exploits (which are difficult to pull off and feel rewarding anyway), you have to approach most fights with caution and care. If you get into the habit of mashing z to grind, you'll die pretty quickly. I grinded to level 99 with most of my characters, and several of the fights in the late game were still incredibly challenging. This difficulty might frustrate some people, but I personally enjoyed having to think out my strategies to earn my victories. Another strength is the variety in choices you can and have to make. The core mechanic of the game is that your main character can transform into different monsters, gaining (and losing) different strengths and weaknesses. Your party composition can vary greatly depending on what portion of the game you're in, so you're sometimes forced to mix up how you approach your fights. On another positive note, random encounters are semi-optional. If you're a high enough level, you have the option to skip them entirely. Also, dying isn't the most punishing thing in the world, in that your progress is saved, but you lose a bit of your money as punishment. That was pretty refreshing. As far as downsides go, menu surfing can get a little bit dull. This is a weakness of lots of RPGs, and Jimmy is no different here. Grinding felt necessary to fight some of the bosses, and I generally like to avoid grinding when possible. There were also a few mini-games sprinkled in that were nearly 100 percent dependent upon luck. Very frustrating if you're trying to complete it fully. Finally, some of the puzzles thrown in were pretty obtuse and hard to solve. Not necessarily a problem, but sometimes being obtuse isn't quite the same thing as being clever. This wasn't true for every puzzle or mini game, however. Overall, definitely a net positive.

Art:
The pixel art for this was very simple and non-remarkable. The sprites were reminiscent of Earthbound and other RPGs of that era. The animations, if there were any, were very simple and uncomplicated. That said, none of this is necessarily a downside. The world in which the game takes place is a light-hearted and child-like place which is starkly contrasted by occasional horror and gore. The Earthbound-influenced art, by its nature, pulls lots of people back to their childhoods. This is important as you're asked to relate to an 8 year-old kid while traveling through an imaginitive world. Therefore when you encounter something dark and twisted among the happy glow of youth, you really feel it in your bones. You really remember what it can feel like to be scared as a kid dealing with the unknown. Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass does a great job of pulling you in with humor and charm and shocking you out of it with stabs of the macabre.

Story:
Major spoiler-free - Very minor plot spoilers - The story itself follows, as mentioned earlier, an 8 year-old kid on an adventure with his family and friends. He encounters things both light and heavy hearted along the way, and he's forced to grow on his journey. All of the side-trips and optional dungeons you can explore introduce you to lots of interesting characters and really immerse you in the fantastical world. That said, the overarching plot and themes are left to your "imagination" to a certain extent. You're forced to learn the context of the story through bits and pieces earned here and there. I enjoyed the story-telling technique, but I feel it fell a bit flat in the end. The pay-off for the effort exherted by the player is not rewarded well. There is a certain "end" you can reach with more to do after attaining that end. The first ending feels quite "open" and seems to be encouraging you to continue exploring to get a true ending of sorts. However, this is far from the case. Further exploration continues to deliver the "bits and pieces" I mentioned earlier but fails to culminate in any sort of ultimate closure for the story. The earlier ending is the true ending, and that's that. While I enjoyed the journey taken (which was likely the point anyway), I felt the end was underwhelming.

Bugs:
It's worth noting a few bugs are present in the game which heavily impact gameplay. First is that the game stutters quite a bit. You'll lose a lot of frames for no particular reason from time to time. Some patches from the dev have abated that some, but they are still present. Also, there are a couple of game-crashing sprite error bugs which can really blindside you sometimes. Save your game. Save it a lot.

Summary:
The game is great. If you don't enjoy turn-based RPGs, this one probably won't convert you. However, if you do, this is one of the better ones I've played. Huge amount of gameplay which scales well and stays interesting up until the end.

This roguelike has very simple mechanics. Kill stuff. Get stuff. Kill tougher stuff. Get better stuff. The control scheme is a little bit too simple for my preferences, and the attack animations are boring and flat. I hit a bug in which I was not able to attack part way through my first run. Really a major turn-off when I was already not quite feeling it.

Ultimately, the game feels a little too simple and unpolished to be fun. It needs work.

8/10 - TL;DR - Great story, emphasis on choices...but felt a little railroaded. Excellent gameplay. Excellent artwork. Excellent soundtrack.

Story:
(MINOR SPOILERS)
This was a very artfully executed RPG with a masterfully told story. The opening alone is one of the strongest openings I've seen from a game in a long time. The main characters had interesting backstories which I felt compelled to figure out. I've not had a game make me feel as much as this one did in such a short period of time. All that being said, I felt a bit railroaded in my playthrough. I was forced to make horrible decisions (which is fine), but I didn't feel that what I chose affected the story very much. I remained very much an anti-hero though I did my very best to play the "white knight." Not the worst thing in the world, but that's where I think there could've been some improvement.

Gameplay:
The battle system is reminiscent of Earthbound. It is turn-based and filled to brim with interesting status effects and skills. The combo system used by the main character (and a spattering of others) was very visceral and felt quite fulfilling. I was also impressed by the massive roster of pickable characters to choose from. Finally, one of the coolest elements of the game is the overworld exploration. Lots of traditional pixel-based RPGs are viewed top-down, but this one is a sidescroller with platforming elements. It made for engaging exploration.

Artwork:
The art of this game was what drew me in initially. Most old-school RPGs go with the traditional JRPG/anime theme, but Lisa stands apart with its gruff biker-types and washed-up middle-aged drug addicts. The art isn't beautiful. It's quite ugly...in the best way possible. If you're looking for a game that ventures off the beaten path in terms of artwork, I highly recommend Lisa.

Music:
Lisa had one of the most bizarre soundtracks I've ever heard from a game. That being said, I loved it. Widdly 2 Diddly managed to add wonderful atmosphere to a very unusual game. It even played off of old RPG tropes (success music sounding less than successful) that managed to make me laugh from time to time. And when the music wasn't making me laugh, it was making me feel more intensely the painful moments of my protagonist. Excellent soundtrack.

5/10.

This is a heavily story-focused game. No combat...which is okay!

You follow a selected protagonist through a series of difficult life choices. The way Vagabond Dog wrote the story, you really feel invested in the characters and the choices you're making. That's definitely a positive. However, as far as the main story goes, I feel that many of your choices don't have too much of an efffect, and sometimes I felt too railroaded. I don't intend to spoil any story-points, but I felt a little cheated by the ending.

Beyond choice-making, the game has a few minigames to play in order to earn cash. 99 percent of them felt like grinding in an old RPG without any of the fun of a battle system. As I stated before, no battle system is okay. However, I would expect the minigames to be somewhat entertaining if they're going to be replacing it completely.

Overall, this game is worth checking out if you enjoy throw-back pixel-graphic games and an interesting story that makes you think. This game definitely is a standout for being different and interesting. The entertainment quality simply suffered in a few places.