Recent reviews by octobot

As it is only a DEMO of the remake, I still have some hopes for it to be reworked properly, because as far as I saw there are minimal changes to the game (it's a 17 years old RPG... please).
I was skeptical of the negative reviews on here at first, but after completing the prologue I understood why people seem to be generally upset.

The new combat system is nice, the wait in between turns is slightly annoying but tolerable, the movement is clunky and uncomfortable still. The music however ruins it completely. Alias Conrad Coldwood managed to create an iconic atmosphere for the game, one of eerie, depressing emptiness, a rough and truly dark world, which in the current version is lacking compared to the original, there are only few remnants of it in the overall OST and sound design. It would have been, SHOULD have been best to expand on the original OST instead of replacing it entirely, perhaps only reworking the quality of the tracks. By no means do I disrespect Toby Fox's work, but his music's style does not match this game in the slightest, and from what I know he is not happy with it either.

I like the addition of visuals to the shop and inventory UI, not a fan of the Zone 0 pillarbox art though as it looks wonky (really rough uneven lines, The Judge looks really weird anatomically, the corner of the platform he sits on crosses into the line of the tail, it overall looks like low effort fanart). There are pretty much no changes to the main visuals of the game, same world sprites, same talksprites, same combat sprites (which I still like, so no issue here), same weird graphs during explanations of the world lore (again, it used to be a bizarre quirk of the original game I did like, but it is in low quality and feels outdated by now, especially with the art style the remake took), therefore the change in the original art style to something more fanart-esque on both the pillarbox art and the steam page takes away from the charm of what this game used to be, and looks like a mishmash of both. It lacks consistency. It would be best to either rework ALL the visuals and implement a change in art style to something that reflects the style of the fangamer merch and art (since to me it seems like the whole reason why a remake was considered in the first place), or maintain the original, crudely shaded, "hand drawn on paper" black and white style found in both talksprites and combat sprites, and keeping it in every section of the game or its store page.

Overall, for a remake, the demo is very underwhelming, considering that the complete version will most likely be purchasable. With the promise of a remake, I genuinely hope that a better result will be delivered in the end, but if this is the turn it will take, I feel like re-releasing the original game on steam would have been the better decision in this case.

mrrrp

walked up into a corner in the mirror labyrinth to turn around from side to side forcing two bunny reflections to have some awkward small talk, featuring passionate personal voice acting for the both of them

Just lots of game breaking bugs that require lobby restarts bug after bug.
Not such a low possibility of spawning in the void, sburb discs might not spawn in and have to be cheated in, the dowels dont work at all when two punching cards are used but the double slot instinctively makes you think it requires two of them (it doesnt and you wont progress if you use two), bug making you invisible to other players and unable to attack, struggling to equip weapons and clothes which just drop onto the floor instead, unstable and disorienting gameplay that doesn't tell you much of anything, you are prompted to read a tutorial as a steam guide which i guess is too lazy to have been implemented in the actual game. Me and my friends tried to make this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ work for several hours, at least four. We ended up uninstalling it. A complete, frustrating waste of time. Potential could be there, but it is genuinely unplayable and for a game released a year ago, this is just depressing.

While I know this is more of an advertising gag and a memey attempt at a comically cheesy dating sim, it's a waste of time in my eyes.

You get literally what you expect to get when you open the game: you can't date anyone besides the man in the title.
This is not only highly disappointing because the rest of the characters are likable and interesting, but it's also a missed opportunity that would have made the game actually worth selling and paying any money for.

Colonel Sanders chases after you and tries to desperately date you more than you try to. Trying to engage with other characters, you are inevitably pushed back towards his route and it quickly becomes boring. Even the choices you make are irrelevant as they're not even considered throughout the main story and don't carry long term consequences unless it's a sudden game over. Whenever you don't choose the right option to date the character you're forced to date to, you get a game over and have to replay that segment. (at a certain point, you're even forced to replay the whole game from the start)

A few more things I didn't like: the interface and the volume management. Simple save-load mechanics would have been fine, no way to go back and re-read something you've missed, only figured out that you can fast forward by holding the click instead of clicking the button constantly halfway into the game. Volume management is also messed up as even if you lower the main volume, the music blasts at high volume whenever you reopen the game or finish it.

An advertisement would have been a better route for this one, but since they decided to actually make a playable dating sim they should have put more effort into it. Not from the visuals point of view, which seems to be the only strong point of this sim, but it's just lacking and boring.