Recent reviews by Judge Cudge

The writing and story ranges from weak to abrasive. Sometimes venturing further into the realm of seemingly disliking the common elements of the game's genre when it becomes 'meta' in an unpalatable way.

The art is pretty good, and is what sold me on buying the game hoping it would live up to its polished aesthetic.

Gameplay wise, the game would be fun if they didn't ruin the Paper Mario combat by not paying attention to what they were doing.

To explain, the variety of 'attack minigames' is incredibly low considering it's a derivative system. They disinclude obvious easy alternatives seeing as they have a solid background of games to draw from.

Considering this, the fact that there are more than a few 'repeat' minigames within the character's incredibly small skillsets, and further that these repeats are on moves that are used so often, as they are the default bread and butter attacks, is even more egregious.

Compounding this and maybe the most damning, is the lack of understanding that these minigames need to work with the flow of combat as opposed to interrupting it for long periods of time.
In a more polished game all combat minigames except ults should resolve in at most 5 seconds, usually less.

The result of this lack of attention is that nearly every turn of every combat, you will spend 20 seconds playing the timing bounce minigame as the blue hair woman, then when the ninja girls turn shows up, you will spend 20 more seconds playing her exactly equivalent timing bounce minigame. Every fight, large and small, becomes a chore because this move is costed/balanced around being your basic all the time use magic attack.

The game seems spot playtested instead of runthrough playtested, otherwise they would have realized something this abrasive was a problem immediately.

Regardless, outside of them increasing the pace/limiting the duration, changing the mechanic or scaling & cost and expected use case of some of these minigames; this in addition to throwing in at least one or two varieties of mashing games, short memorization games, stick-flick timing games etc. there will remain a game ruining problem.

I can't recommend the game because of just how obvious this problem is, how easy it is to solve, and how bad it is for the game experience.

The gameplay becomes unfun near immediately, this because even the most pathetic weeny fight takes ages of watching yourself time A presses. These moves are so important that avoiding them would be a challenge run, and doing so would be limiting further the already miniscule pool of actions and combat minigames present.

A tiresome, legitimately bad, consistently incorrectly designed videogame whose only saving grace is that roughly 1/3rd of its classes play somewhat interestingly.

Multiplayer's disinclusion makes no sense considering the pawn system is by the dev's own words 'designed to feel like multiplayer', and the only reasons against MP given were "what if people need to go to the bathroom or have scheduling problems?". Which considering these aren't problems in any other analogous game, makes these inarguably moot.

Fast travel being limited was proposed as some sort of bold design choice because the dev thought that if a game made travel entertaining enough, fast travel wasn't necessary.
Unfortunately, though the roads and cliffs of this game are a cut above some, nothing about the trudging around in this game is interesting enough to warrant travel in its current form. He has failed to justify this choice.
It is painfully tedious to get around in this game, especially in the moments when you are in large swaths of enemyless territory or towns.

Carry weight is pathetically low, and therefore demands constantly retrekking back to town when trying to make progress.
And this is obviously at odds with the aim of an entertaining adventuring experience as one, gathering things spices up travel, so being consistently put into a position to refuse to gather loot makes travel more boring. And two being forced to retread ground consistently will cause overfamiliarity with territories and again compound how tedious they feel to navigate.
The tiered stamina drain altering system for weight is just further insult upon further injury. Compounding this already ridiculous choice.

Though the combat can 'feel cool' every now and again, it is fundamentally flawed specifically because the pawns are not human beings, but are nearly as strong or stronger than the player. So you aren't them, but also cannot vicariously empathize with their triumph the same way you could watching a friend do something cool.
This altogether means your AI companions go out and thrash things, and 90% of the time in the midgame it becomes more time efficient to pick berries and other items off the ground as the game autoplays itself. A solid team comp will not lose regardless of your input, and as a mage your input involves you entering a janky chargeup cutscene and draining your precious slowtraveling energy. More often than not, you will not bother stunlocking yourself and draining your tragically small stamina bar in an effort to pretend to play the game.

Further, as a mage, the oft toted best handled class of the game in terms of novelty, the 'flavorful' dependence on allies to aggro enemies off of you leads to swingy feast or famine gameplay that's entirely out of your hands. Your AI allies either do or don't manage to do this, and it is a rarity to encounter a death that is meaningfully associated with your own behavior.
You can speed up or slow down the rate at which enemies die, or maybe sling a debuff that changes things up, but on the rare occasion difficulty rears its ugly head, you being snap oneshotted or multihitstunned to death in a game that lacks dodge mechanics will always feel like bad luck, for the unfortunate reason that it near universally is.
If you gave your warrior the taunt move and aggro passive, and immediately attempted to get behind them and the other pawns the second a fight started, then you have exhausted the full list of options associated with self preservation as a sorcerer.
Cast the most efficient spells, and hope that the enemies decide not to hit you, they usually wont, but sometimes will.

So the combat is bad, the balance is bad, the AI is bad, the exploration and travel is bad, the secondary mechanics are bad, and there's a comically large hole in the design where multiplayer is supposed to go, but simply doesn't. And all of this not for lack of cash flow or ability, but specifically because these systems were chosen on purpose despite being obviously wrong by a strangely confident hack.


All of this doesn't even begin to touch the ocean of smaller but no less frustrating problems the game is littered with. Button mapping issues like run being B, pickup being B, and high five being B. So every time a fight finishes and you go to loot an enemy, your allies will high-five cuck you. Sometimes multiple times.
Teleport stones are also picked up with a single B press, if you try to run anywhere near a teleport stone you placed, an obviously common occurrence, you'll pick it up with no prompt or indicator. (Only ten out at once BTW! Super fun!)

Mage's can hover, but are incapable of casting while hovering as the charge becomes slower than usual and cannot be sped up like when you are grounded; making it nearly combat useless. The basic staff attack for the mage does comically low damage, and is roughly one sixth of the equivalently geared melee classes basic attacks. The charge staff attack though stronger is slow enough that missing will screw you over if you were depending on its hitstun to not get whanged, and unfortunately ALL STAFF ATTACKS UTILIZE INVISIBLE UNCONTROLLABLE LOCKON, meaning all misses will be impossible to predict and not up to you. You are never able to do anything other than guess what will be blasted the rare moments you need it.

I could go on for ages more.

But know that even without mentioning the terrible buggy launch and business practices around the MTX DLC, which are genuinely egregious things both, this game more than deserves the score it has received.

This is just actually a bad game, on account of the fact that the game play is bad because it was designed poorly.
I wish I could say it's a roughly polished gem or some such, but the proportions are all off for that metaphor.

As it stands, this game is worth about 10$ for its novelty if you if cheat/mod out as many bad choices as possible.

Not terrible by any means, but not as immediately gripping as other similar games and with a few flaws that make it noticeably worse in my opinion.

One is that the adherence to the chess ruleset of 'do one thing a turn' is incredibly cumbersome and time wasting for a lot of builds. Considering the fact that most units require at least two other units to be killed, that means you need to get each and every one of the opponents units into a kind of mini check mate. You usually cannot just take them.

This isn't a death sentence for the game, but considering hits don't deal accumulative damage, they just total up and either kill or don't based on exceeding a threshold, you can have your time wasted by needing to spend 5 turns moving multiple units who all move like rooks into place just to finally trap one wily enemy, even from an invincibly advantageous position. It's regularly tedious.

Second, is the game has a unit fatigue system, meaning you can't just invest into making your favorite units strong and then regularly employ a particular strategy to avoid the aforementioned tedium. This was my least favorite part of darkest dungeon, and I hate it again here.

Having a more robust action economy than simply passives or full turn eaters, and having a game whose balance can handle people consistently playing it in their desired fashion would go a long way. Without them this is a miss for me.

A reasonably interesting game that is forced to be boring.

A clunky generic looper shooter with nothing going for it over its already mediocre competitors other than lower expectations and flash in the pan popularity.

The game would be strictly improved by a distinct class system, an entirely different non-battle pass method of progression, larger more unique and overt upgrades, and actual story progression with hand crafted missions, enemy locations, and bosses instead of just 'big enemies'.

As it stands you just arrive at generic locations and fight one of two RNG swarm flavors. And the best thing to be said of the gameplay is that you will laugh at how hectic it is on occasion. There is no 'high' worth chasing other than this, and it comes mainly from losing. With the losing coming mainly from clunk, glitches, and instant kill effects.

As a Magicka fan I was glad to see some of its design inserted into this game in the form of how you order in support drops. But one, so much of your character's power coming in the form of stratified orbital dropped care packages feels lame, disjointed, and samey. And two, the Magicka-esque DDR minigame, despite being a fun homage, is at absolute odds with the gameplay, and is as far as I can tell just an incorrect choice for the game.

It does obviously increase the chances of you dying in one hit while momentarily distracted by the minigame, but again the game being funnest when you lose doesn't exactly stand in its favor. I'd much prefer to be elated by success and progression.


Regardless, I'm glad Arrowhead is getting some money, even if this game doesn't deserve to be how they get it.
It's worse than Darktide, and Darktide isn't even worth playing.

Game's great. It's like Across the Obelisk, but better. And Across the Obelisk is already a good game.

An intentionally badly designed video game. That is unfortunately, still actually badly designed.

The levels that you have difficulty completing based on your tools will stay in the roster, eventually with the last unbeaten one becoming the 'final level'.

Once it achieves 'final level' status, it gains new elements that make it require even more steps to complete.

The game advertises the possibility that you will be unable to complete a level, but unfortunately that isn't just a neat eccentricity of the game, it is the actual effective aim of this system. The level you can't beat with your options is lasered in on by your failings, and then expanded.

It would be fun if getting stuck was a rarity, but that's what the level system actively pursues.

If some of the items were changed to be more effective even just at their most obvious job, and you could bind buttons to different guns to make 'combo'ing polished instead of janky, it might be something more.

As it stands it is all and only a purposefully frustrating game, that fails even to be the 'small neat toy' it appears to be trying to be.

This game is actually excellent. It's exactly what it appears to be, which is a cutesy JRPG with training, pets, and gathering as supporting mechanics. With its quality preventing it from falling prey to the usual shortcomings of its genre.

So instead of being clunky, tedious, and campy; it's instead polished, engaging, and charming.

It's not as is if there are no snags, but all of them are minor.

Altogether a great game.
Anyone looking to buy it hoping it lives up to what the aesthetic promises will be more than satisfied.

Great game. Toothsome, unique, polished, charming, extensive, and intuitive.
I will offer a larger review once I've played more, but it seems great so far.

This is a game where you simply and only press meaninglessly distinct buttons in bloomfoggy locales.

As far as I know from fully beating one 'orb dimension' and boss; your powers, capabilities, and movement never permanently increase. And the manner in which your 'interact' button conditionally changes are nonsensically disconnected, boring, and meaningless.

For example, early on in the game, you need to get down from a higher location. You press a button and a stone staircase appears heading downwards.

Later on, you need to get from a lower to a higher location.

Here, instead you pull a sticky switch orb that tugs its gooey tether across a groove in the ground that appears fleshy and perhaps living. After pulling it across this arced groove, totally disconnected from it a few feet away a giant wafer thin beetle looking creature nearly the size of the room you are in unearths it self and stands stock still. There exists a giant button on its back, and since it is flush with the ground you walk on to it and press it. The behemoth creature then minutely adjusts its posture, forming a 25 degree slant and allowing you to walk slightly upwards to your implied destination. How 'cool'.
End of room.

Every puzzle is like this.
There is no connection between form, function, and meaning in this game.

This combined with the fact that nothing changes the status quo of the game, means I can't recommend it.
For a second I thought otherwise when I acquired a little drone buddy that could remotely activate things in the overworld, but roughly a minute and thirty seconds after I received him he was permanently removed from my character. Why? well because inside the desert dimension there is a randomly crashed ship from who knows where considering how dimensions and the outer space contained in these worlds works.
And the little drone buddy decided this particular activatable was his fated final destination.
What did the ship that ate the only buff in the game do exactly?

Open a big door.

The game merely functions, and looks fine in the way nearly every other textureless polygon indie game looks fine.
All other possible aspects you might wish to find are either weak or nonexistent.
The thought would be this game might just be for true blue puzzlefans, but the puzzles were not particularly challenging unless they became briefly unintuitive. To the games credit, that was relatively rare, but present.

Regardless, with the game being virtually nonexistent otherwise, it instead might only tickle the fancy of some walking-sim enjoying video game tourists. Those who are for some reason so stilted even in that sub-genre's bad tastes they are excited to walk by all those aforementioned, textureless, purposelessly arranged polygons.

Game's really good. Gives you a bit too much rope to hang yourself with, and certain fights are either trivialized or hairpullingly frustrating with/without certain builds.

Once the systems click and you finally make an inarguably good robot you will fall in love with this game. But when that same robot that worked so well in so many different locations suddenly can't work at all for a fight, you'll be mad again.

Still a fantastic time, just expect periodic big bad feelings.