Recent reviews by Bell

the best

I stopped playing when Kent bugged out at me

Jank, maybe I'll try again later

Cute game, though it was difficult to feel touched by it after having played multiple games with similar tropes before.

I also didn't have that much patience for yet another RPG maker game, so I used a guide, didn't really deter from the experience though, I followed it whenever I wasn't sure where else to go, and otherwise kept going as normal.

I've not finished the game yet, but I thought I would say my piece here considering most of the negative reviews.

I do agree that the localization is a bit strange at times, sometimes being unhelpful or misleading. However, I don't think people understand that localization is about more than translating the original work. It's also about making it fit in with the targeted culture, keeping it entertaining and whatnot. Most of the examples I've seen seem to be taken out of proportions, as I personally just find them amusing. It's also fascinating how everyone who's a part of this is suddenly a Japanese linguist (even though they seem to just be listening to a couple of influencers on twitter, who sometimes seem to be missing the point of the phrasing completely).

With that aside, I'm having a decent time with the game. It's a good start, for a spiritual successor, and it is far from perfect for sure. I do wonder if it has gotten any polish since the backer beta, as it really needs some right now. Most of my complaints lie with the way the graphics look, how slow the pacing and general navigation of the game can be, and sometimes how obtuse the side objectives are.

I made the mistake of forgetting to name my main pawn, and the game decided to give it a default name (MainPawn). One hour into the game, I have no idea if you can ever change it in the game past that point. Since it's supposed to be your main pawn, it seemed like I was going to be stuck with it for a long time. That's okay, I can just reload a previous save- oh there's only one save file, and it gets overwritten by auto-saves. Alright, I'll just restart from the beginning? Oops, we're not letting you kill your save file either.

At this point, I figured I wasn't really captivated by the game. From the presentation of the menus, the look of the UI, the controls, low performance (I have a 3080 with a 5800x3d), the drab graphics, the whole pawn system, the one save slot and the scummy DLC practices, I don't know what there is to look forward to.

So, I asked for a refund, because that price doesn't feel justified to me and I didn't feel like going past the 2 hours of playtime I'm allowed to pass judgement by spending another hour doing everything all over again.

what are you doing

This is my first CRPG, and I am enthralled so far.

It's perfectly playable, being out of Early Access now, but I still manage to see some weird bugs along the way. Nothing that can't be dealt with, but I hope they take the time to squash them all along with adding some more quality of life features and improvements to immersion along the way, now that the game is out. Otherwise, it's really solid.

So far, my gripes with the game:

- I wish the camera worked better
- I wish there was a keybind for toggling music on and off, and switching between torch and weapon
- I wish managing party members was less tedious, and that I didn't have to temporarily recruit them to take items from their inventories (This has since been fixed with patches)
- You should be able to dash while out of combat by double-clicking somewhere, or fast-forward
- Graphical glitches sometimes, seizure inducing

Runs pretty horribly on high-end hardware from a couple years ago, and the graphics really aren't worth the lack of performance.
Characters are written like they would be in Marvel movies.
Level design, areas of the game look and feel uninspired.
Weird aesthetics all around.
Suffers from "randomly generated" item stats and level layout issues.
The only souls-like aspects are that... you take a lot of damage, you can roll, and there is a bonfire system.

I refunded, because I didn't want to suffer through the game's dialogue, boring levels and uninteresting combat at hitching framerates.

Worth every penny.
Better than the first game in every way.
I want another.

Abysmal. no other word for it

On Normal mode, combat balancing is through the roof. It does not exist.

The only game I've ever used Cheat Engine to beat.