tl;dr: Great little game, but I'm pissed at the writing. ========= WARNING: spoilers after the large white gap ========= I wanna start by clarifying a few points. The reason I am being harsh with this game is because I care about it and made an emotial investment in it. I have a special place in my heart for MLP-related content, and I want them to succeed and be recognized, although I admit that using ponies is an artistic choice just as much as using anthropomorphic animals, humans, aliens or anything else. I am just a sucker for ponies. I also recommend this game. I think it is a very nice game, short but the content length is in accordance with its price. I recognize the effort that was put into every part of it, the music, the graphics, the level design, the effects, the mob design, and all other things I did not list here. I wish it nothing less than being loved by many people as a small indie game. Finally, I must disclaim: I did not 100% the game, I only did one run, and I'm not sure I with to run it again, as I tend to prefer considering that the first runs I do in games are the "canon" events of the story, and that run disappointed me. More about that far below. - Graphics - I think the team did an amazing job with both the sprites and the drawings. I am not well versed into those things, so I don't know what to say precisely, but I want to underline two things I loved: first, the death screens are horrific, in that they made me feel uncomfortable seeing atrocious ways to die, and I think it really did its job well; second, the physical deformations are well done, and I am *not* fond of body horror, so the fact they squick me means they work for me. - Sound design - As with visuals, I am not good with all that's sound-related in games. The only thing I know is that when it's bad, I can't stand it, and when it's good, I don't notice it. I think the ambiance music is really well done. They really match the biomes in which we find ourselves in my opinion. The sounds made by the characters (short voice lines, loud breathing) are great, and I must comment the use of whatever filter they used for the voice lines, because it makes it feel like an old-school horror game. - Mechanics - This is one of the two parts of what I have an issue with, but for now I will leave that aside. The idea of having multiple spells is good. Sadly, I do not think that the length and diversity of enemies justifies having that many different kinds (I played in the normal difficulty, so maybe I'd change my judgment on higher levels), as when you find one specific quick-shot spell you tend to just use that on repeat. The teleportation system is actually really cool in my opinion. I do not think I've seen something similar elsewhere, and it gives quite a bit of challenge to the game. I really loved it. Although I did not use it, I saw in the FAQ there is a sacrifice system to reveal things on the map. Nice addition I think. - Writing - This is the second part of my issue with the game. The biggest part will be explained below (with quite a bit of spoilers), for now I will say that although the premise of the game is really appealing, the payoff to the setup is kind of light compared to my expectations. But I do like the set up a lot, with the nice atmosphere and the mystery of the cube. Now, as for my big issue with this game.... (spoilers below) I assume you are fine with spoilers then. Given the dialogue at the end of the game regarding my actions through it all, I guess it depends on whether I chose to kill monsters and/or free souls. I will assume this, even though I have not yet made another run, and I will use UNDERTALE to explain why I think the design is poor and betrayed my expectations. I wanted to explain it all, but there is an 8k char limit on reviews. I'll jump straight to the end. First thing that really threw me off in the last "level" was Ada just coming in and saying "Abel", and him replying giddily that he likes there is an organ there. She spend what could be hours or days in hell, seeing her friends one by one in states that could be considered absolutely horrible, and she just... sort of acknowledges that Abel is safe, aside from losing an eye? At this moment, I felt like I missed two levels that explained things, because it felt so disconnected with what came before. Then, he goes into a speech about Ada/me being a monster for killing all the monsters, and dismisses Ada when she says it was self-defence, arguing that it might have been at the beginning, but that she took pleasure at some point. I mean... Seriously? It's not like I was actively hunting them, they literally jumped at me, spit things in my face and tried to kill me. Remember the death screens? To me, that's what happened to Ada after she dies. Why the hell would I take it without fighting? And if that was because we lived different experiences (maybe he had the version of the tunnel we briefly see where the cathedral is "angelic" for a second?), but nothing confirms this. In fact, the fact he talks about what we did suggests the opposite. Finally, we get back to the mansion. I thought about trying to kill Abel beforehand, as Ada would probably have felt betrayed, but I assumed she would not go that far. Then, she does exactly this when one of her friends just says "nonsense", and she decides to become queen of the monsters. Why the hell would she kill her friends and not Abel, who said way worse things about us? He seemed to know about what happened, but turned his back on us. This is where I draw a parallel with another game, and think that D'LIRIUM tried and failed to do what UNDERTALE did perfectly. The idea that we just kill things unexpectedly, until we are told that the monsters were actually just frightened, is genius, and the way UNDERTALE did it was great. The reasons I think D'LIRIUM tried the same is because of Abel's dialogue at the end, and here is why I think it fails. In doing so, I will assume there is a "good ending", although I did not try it. If there is not, here is all the more reason why this game failed me. - UNDERTALE has two item slots: armor, and weapon. If you go peaceful, the armor is still very useful. Here, literally every mechanic aside from the sorcery is aimed towards killing monsters. - In UNDERTALE, you can always flee, or try to resolve combats peacefully. Here, they jump at you and kill you, and since it's real time and the whole ambiance is aimed towards making you feel uncomfortable, you don't have the luxury of considering leaving them alone. - In UNDERTALE, doing a peaceful run is hard, but (IMO) not harder than doing a normal or genocide run. Here, if you try to simply avoid monsters, you are but prey. - Finally, the reveal in UNDERTALE makes you realize that everything was avoidable. Monsters were (for the most part) almost cute/endearing. You did not have to kill them. Here, everything makes you want to kill them. Everything is aimed towards killing them. So to me, to have some kind of "who's the real monster now *smirk smirk*" in this game makes no sense. Worse, I feel insulted, as if the game tried to pull a smart one on me, but did so badly while pretenting it was my fault. I feel gaslighted. The worst offense was Abel smugly pointing out, when we say we saw our friends suffering immensely, something akin to "And you left them there without bringing an end to it?". I honestly feel so pissed at that line, because unless I missed something, there is NO WAY TO KILL THEM. I wanted to. I felt bad. I wanted to kill them for their own good. But as far as I saw, the game would not let me. All in all, I think this game is a good game. I think the writing is honestly badly compatible with the gameplay that is offered. I think the writing of Ada is cliché. She deserves better. And so do we.
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