Now-a-days, it's not super often that I'm genuinely surprised by a game. I often hear about a game long in advance and become distinctly aware that it's my thing before picking it up. I saw this game mentioned a tiny bit around September, and thought it looked interesting, so I slapped it on my wishlist and didn't really do anything. One of my good friends gifted it to me for Christmas seemingly on a whim, and I was like "I could use a nice short, <8 hour indie, so let me try this." Over 40 hours later, and I have finished one of the best games of 2018. Easily.
The setting is the MMO world of crossworlds and you play as an avatar named Lea who is going through this world in the hopes of regaining her lost memories. Almost as a joke to other JRPG like games, her "voice module" is broken which manifests itself as her not being able to talk properly unlike much of the other characters. Despite being just shy of a silent protagonist, Lea has an extremely present personality with a couple of small examples below:
smug:
aghast/embarassed
She is a very expressive character, and it's hard not to root for her and the great side characters who make up this game. All of them are filled to the brim with charm and truly bring to life the idea of playing an online game with friends. The story itself is also quite excellent with some very good twists and turns. The only issue I can really think of as far as the story is concerned is that there occasionally can be fairly long stretches between story beats as the story will sometimes take a backseat to whatever the characters are doing in the in-game-world like dungeons.
With that being said, it doesn't particularly matter that much as the dungeons and gameplay in general are very, very good. The dungeons are very reminiscent of what you'd expect to see in a classic Zelda game, and similarly, they are extremely well put together. There were a lot of moments where you generally feel like a genius for solving a puzzle that looked daunting or even impossible upon first look.
The gameplay itself is a top down ARPG(you can see a very early area here as an example). That while not particularly inventive works very well and is a lot of fun to play around with especially when mixed with the game's puzzle elements during the boss fights. However, the most fun I had with the combat is probably during the "PvP" segments (light spoilers, but you get an idea) where you face against other "players"(in game characters) in the game. It's havoc and fighting against the players and each using your own set of special skills and dodging/guarding to get through it is such a great feeling.
Ultimately, I feel like I've heard very little about this game, and I wanted to hopefully put it on a few more people's radar. I saw another poster mention that this game is the Hollow Knight of 2018, and I kind of agree. The amount of good content is staggering, and the game is just excellently put together all around. Don't sleep on this, Era. Especially if you're a fan of JRPGs, you shouldn't be missing out.
Here's the steam link as that might show the game off better than I can. (It has a demo as well!)
Edit: Also on sale at humble until 1/24!
The setting is the MMO world of crossworlds and you play as an avatar named Lea who is going through this world in the hopes of regaining her lost memories. Almost as a joke to other JRPG like games, her "voice module" is broken which manifests itself as her not being able to talk properly unlike much of the other characters. Despite being just shy of a silent protagonist, Lea has an extremely present personality with a couple of small examples below:
smug:
aghast/embarassed
She is a very expressive character, and it's hard not to root for her and the great side characters who make up this game. All of them are filled to the brim with charm and truly bring to life the idea of playing an online game with friends. The story itself is also quite excellent with some very good twists and turns. The only issue I can really think of as far as the story is concerned is that there occasionally can be fairly long stretches between story beats as the story will sometimes take a backseat to whatever the characters are doing in the in-game-world like dungeons.
With that being said, it doesn't particularly matter that much as the dungeons and gameplay in general are very, very good. The dungeons are very reminiscent of what you'd expect to see in a classic Zelda game, and similarly, they are extremely well put together. There were a lot of moments where you generally feel like a genius for solving a puzzle that looked daunting or even impossible upon first look.
The gameplay itself is a top down ARPG(you can see a very early area here as an example). That while not particularly inventive works very well and is a lot of fun to play around with especially when mixed with the game's puzzle elements during the boss fights. However, the most fun I had with the combat is probably during the "PvP" segments (light spoilers, but you get an idea) where you face against other "players"(in game characters) in the game. It's havoc and fighting against the players and each using your own set of special skills and dodging/guarding to get through it is such a great feeling.
Ultimately, I feel like I've heard very little about this game, and I wanted to hopefully put it on a few more people's radar. I saw another poster mention that this game is the Hollow Knight of 2018, and I kind of agree. The amount of good content is staggering, and the game is just excellently put together all around. Don't sleep on this, Era. Especially if you're a fan of JRPGs, you shouldn't be missing out.
Here's the steam link as that might show the game off better than I can. (It has a demo as well!)
Edit: Also on sale at humble until 1/24!
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