Recent reviews by Otterface

DO NOT BUY THIS PORT. Seriously, the game itself is excellent, but the PC/Steam version is mess of hot garbage with its control scheme especially if you want to use a controller of any kind. It feels like a very lazy, bolted-on method was used that didn't go through proper Q.A. I could not get it to properly map buttons, and even when I did manage to get them mapped they wouldn't respond while playing. If you're fine playing with the keyboard then by all means have at. But if you wish to use a controller, good luck. I highly recommend getting a PS1 or equivalent and the original game and play it that way instead.

The game is extremely buggy with graphics that flicker like crazy and sound that constantly bugs out and goes mute during play. I tried several different settings to no avail. I want a refund.

The story and writing of the game is okay. It's entertaining enough, but it's nothing to write home about. The game play overall is very repetitive with little to no nuance that would matter. It wants to be a tactical RPG and town management sim in one, but the lack of substance to the mechanics and stat management as well as bad enemy A.I. make this feel like it's only a step up from an idle clicker with dipping mustards. There are certain aspects to the game play that also feel unnecessarily punishing, such as items and recuritable NPCs disappearing forever if you can't collect them. It doesn't feel like this game went through much in the way of testing or, if it did, any feedback came from a very small circle of like-minded people or wasn't taken into consideration. This had potential. And while I don't want to discount the time and work that went into making this, it feels like it was packaged up, dumped onto Steam's doorstep, and promptly forgotten about.

Absolutely don't buy. It's abandonware at this point. The dev has basically evaporated with no update, comments, or anything for over a year at the time of this review. There's several bugs that are going unfixed with the last update over a year ago. If like me you enjoy somewhat slow sim type games you might get some initial enjoyment from learning all the ins and outs. Unfortunately it gets tedious after a while. There's little to no variety in the gameplay that would hold interest for long. And as I mentioned before the dev hasn't been active for a very, very long time. It's unknown if they'll ever return, but until they do and provide meaningful updates to the game I suggest avoiding it or waiting until it's on deep discount.

I want to recommend this game, but it's very difficult to do so. I like the general game world and some of the concepts, but at the end of the day the bugs outweigh the positives and I'm left feeling like I'm wasting my time. For example, I like to be stealthy, but all the bugs with enemies magically seeing through walls and general brokenness of stealth completely ruins it for me. I'll probably try it again when hopefully more bug fixes have been released, but for now I'd recommend that people pass this game up for something else until then.

I desperately want to recommend this game because the aesthetics are just a lot of fun and I truly love it, but unfortunately there's a few game-breaking bugs that can really mess someone up and have yet to be fixed despite developer acknowledgement.

One good example is the "GeoCity" level. At the start of the level you are tasked with getting money to clear the debt you're in. You're supposed to seek out a few quest-givers and when you're done your debt is repaid. However it is way too easy to softlock by exploring a bit too much and making use of soda cans to launch oneself into places they shouldn't normally get to at first (a mechanic that strangely feels intended) and collecting wads of cash scattered about. One would think this would meet the requirement of wiping out debt as indicated by the quest log, but this isn't the case and you MUST do the side quests. Upon completing the 3 required side quests, your money is set to $1. You then need to collect at least $1,000,000 to progress. If you already collected a bunch of money from the level just prior, you are now softlocked and have to completely restart your game progress. I feel that a way to prevent this in the game code is to just ensure that the player's on-hand cash is a positive value, and perhaps prevent shopping in the various stores until one completes that main quest.

There's a couple others, but that would turn this review into a wall of text along with other spoilers.

If you know what bugs/glitches to expect going in you can easily avoid them, but if not and you didn't follow an intended route you're in for a frustrating experience. Despite this, it's quite a fun game and if you love immersing yourself in the Vaporwave A E S T H E T I C then I can definitely recommend picking this game up.

This game is absolutely amazing. It's very relaxing to play. Huge kudos to the developer for this labor of love.

It could be nice, but the large number of micro-transactions within kills it. Such games belong on mobile, not on Steam.

The description of the DLC does not reveal there are cons to these items which removes your ability to stealth kill (dagger) and causes you to lose life if your clone dies by anything other than you (cloak). Do not recommend getting this unless you don't mind the negatives for the gear.

This game has beautiful artwork and a great (if not somewhat cliché) story that was pretty well executed. The cartoonish style works very well for this in general.

It wasn't all peaches and cream however as I did have a few minor gripes about it.

Crafting: There's no labels for the materials you need to help identify what something is, and you'll often have no idea where to get several of the rare ones that are not sold by the shops or anything, leaving some of the more powerful rewards just out of reach for many.

Skill Tree: The "skill tree" is medocre at best and is gimped by its own simplicity. There's only a few things to choose from, and your highest stat cannot be more than four points higher than your lowest stat. This means that no matter what you do your charcter's traits will go up at a relatively even rate. A true RPG-style skill tree system would have served this a lot better in the long run and would've provided a bit more variety.

Combat: Combat is simple, and that is both its strength and weakness. The combos in this are a ridiculos thing to get the hang of, unless you just happen to be a genius with the controls. I usually found myself just mashing buttons with some dust storm mechanics thrown in. I think this would have been better served by a "Super Smash Bros." style of combo juggling instead of mashing certain combos of buttons to help make combat feel more immersive and engaging.

Map: The map isn't particularly very clear and the quest system really should have a marker over places on the world map to return to.

All of those complaints however are very minor in comparison to the actual gameplay. It's your standard platformer with some very mild RPG elements thrown in, and while I wouldn't call it a full Metroidvania game it's overall a heck of a lot of fun and engaged me nonetheless. The story of the game had me all the way up to the end. I would definitely play again and would recommend anyone who likes relatively simple but beautiful platformers in general to buy this. I loved it and would sincerely hope that a sequel comes about.