Recent reviews by Ptival

This is, unfortunately, not a good game.
(TL;DR: 1. Play with a walkthrough, 2. Ditch the Thief, 3. Even then, the game is somewhat mediocre.)

Essentially, it all boils down to extremely outdated game design that makes the experience quite unsavory.

One of my biggest gripes is the obtuse structure of the game. I have been playing it without a guide, and it has required many poorly postsigned small triggers:
- Figuring out what to do once you have the Earth Crystal is a bit hard. I had found the next important town, but see next bullet for why I was stuck anyway...
- Got stuck because I did not notice that in Crescent Lake, if you go behind houses in the top-right corner, there is a small passage that leads to a whole other small area.
- Had to look up online whether what turned out to be the Levistone was obtainable, since it looked important but was not clearly reachable. It turns out, while most breaking ground tiles are bad, one breaking ground tile gets you there, but it's not clear which one that would be from the geometry of that level.
- Figuring out what to do with the Levistone is extremely obscure. You have to remember that an NPC was very vague in one town, and to guess that you should talk to him again now that you have the Levistone.

In general, while at the beginning of the game a dancer character helps you know where to go next if you're stuck, from some point onwards she just seems to say "heh, whatever". And at this point the game has opened a lot and there are multiple things to track, this would be the best time to have a helper...

My second biggest gripe is that the game systems just seem badly designed.
- Dungeons are very long, I guess this forces you to stock up on items and use them, so maybe that's better than many other FF games. The maps in this version are a godsend, because the dungeons are full of long empty corridors that would waste a lot of time exploring without a map.
- The Thief class is garbage. My Thief is just a bad Warrior.
- Elemental stuff doesn't seem well thought out, sometimes it might not even be implemented? The Fire Sword has worse stats than the Ice Sword, but in the ice dungeon, it seems best to keep the Ice Sword because elements just don't seem to matter.
- Most fights are best fought with auto-attacks from everyone, to save MP. The only reason to waste MP is large fights where auto-attacks are too slow.

Now on to the good points:
- The game is absolutely charming.
- The music is iconic, and has not aged poorly. (unlike the grating Dragon Quest themes)
- The QoL adjustments are welcome, taking this extremely tedious game to a fairly tedious game.

Overall, I'm having an okay time, but I would never recommend this game as "a good time".

Not an excellent game, but an excellent story. Probably my favorite narrative of the recent years! <3

Excellent Zachtronics. Feels more varied thanks to the outputs being interpreted as different things (numbers, letters, pixel values, etc.).

Not for everyone, but it's very pretty, hard fights (make sure to parry or you will die a lot), and the timed things are not really a problem if you're not trying to beeline through it.

Somewhat unique game, nice vibes, interesting puzzles, doesn't seem to overstay its welcome.

It's just a super pleasant game to play casually.

Excellent addicting card game, you don't need Poker knowledge beyond learning the different types of hands. Try the demo, and you'll likely be convinced you want to play the full game!

I do not condone racism, sexism, and calls to hatred. As such, I cannot recommend this game.

Slightly better than HITMAN, same formula, still a very good game with awkward interactions at times! :-)

Most fun I've had in years!

The learning curve feels never-ending.

And when you think you're good, try some hoops!

Just tried the game for a couple minutes and so far it's fairly solid!

It plays as one of those games where you go forward to the beat of a song and must avoid obstacles.
It is fairly hard but never unfair: obstacles are well telegraphed. Every time I lost it was because of my mistake or the speed, not because I couldn't have seen the obstacle.

Only little downsides so far:
- no way to quit with the gamepad AFAICT (Esc works)
- the white/blue world is very bright, the shifting between world changes contrast a lot and is hard on the eyes