okay, i want you to take in this image. really absorb the information.
I’m level 16. I’m in chapter 6. I’ve been playing for about 4 and a half hours. there are two out of 8 question marks on the bottom of the screen turned into portraits.
You’ll note that those 2/8 question marks are reminiscent of classic pokemon’s 8 gym leaders. except these are just, uh … like dungeon bosses youve beaten? Neither have been particularly interesting, regrettably, but they could be- this game has you start with multiple interesting moves on every character you have! they couldve done more! also i mean iunno i can respect “your save file lets you glean your progress at a glance” but … man, you dont have to ape the gym badges thing.
you’ll note further that, again, i am on chapter 6, and have 2/8 of these achievements which are important enough to be displayed prominently at the bottom of my save file. i will belabor that point again, because it’s important for what’s about to come. i am one fourth of the way through what they are visually communicating, to me, is an accomplishment worth showing off, and i am on the sixth chapter of this book-game.
i am also still in the tutorial.
i wish i was joking, but i am not. the gameplay loop, nearly five hours in is and has been,
watch cutscenes that lead you up to the dungeon you must go into -> go through the dungeon
with each trickling in one new game mechanic. Now, that last bit isn’t a problem - it’s totally fine, and normal, and good even, for a game to start with some aspects of it locked behind some excuse of “Oh, sorry buster, I’m still setting up my shop!” or "Gee … if only that pass were cleared, my master would be able to return … ". i think thats totally fine! and good! its okay to slowly widen the range of possibilities in a game while the player is still learning its other elements. especially when those possibilities don’t even have a use until later in the first place.
but this isn’t just that. this is also just kinda, depriving me of the core dungeon crawling loop. hell, half of these dungeons have expressly started with all of my items (which naturally i had already deposited if they had even allowed me to go to the town square and do so, which they did not always allow) being deposited without my permission and then being handed a set of items to start with. i don’t think its necessarily bad to try to teach the player that they’ll want to bring certain items into dungeons - thats an important thing to learn! i just dont really like this as a way of doing it cuz it isnt teaching me that, its teaching me that items dont matter and i dont have to clear my inventory after a dungeon cuz the game will do it for me. thats the teacher taking my homework and writing down my answers for me and then giving me an A.
what i’m getting at is that this game is patronizing to a degree that i absolutely do not think gives kids enough credit. i’m not opposed to games having better training wheels than the ones i grew up playing, i think thats fine! but this just goes for so much longer than it needs to, especially because the core systems arent even what makes a mystery dungeon difficult in the first place! its not about learning how to play it, its about learning how to play it well. and this game isn’t even really teaching the former, let alone the latter.
its talking down to its presumed child audience in a way that i just really dont appreciate! kids are smarter than theyre given credit for! (and, again, cannot stress enough, this games attempt at teaching isnt even teaching anything important)
also fuck me, i, TWO. EIGHTHS. OF THE STAMP-WORTHY GAME EVENTS. and it is still tutorializing and giving no opportunity to really engage with the game itself. you wanna know what happened at 4.5 hours in? the two main characters finally put on scarves. we waited 4.5 hours for these little pocket monsters to have a canonical reason to put on scarves. they coulda just, had the scarves, man
oh also all of this is taking place in a literal school for kids that is written in a way that makes me viscerally uncomfortable as BOTH a former teacher AND a former child. your little friend just loves adventures and is very like, Spectrum-Codedtm, and all the other kids AND the teachers all just relentlessly talk about how theyre annoying and put other people in danger constantly without any empathy? like, yeah, this kid needs to learn that other people are impacted by their actions, but they don’t need every child and adult in their lives constantly telling them that noone wants them around. that sucks so bad! these teachers are awful! the kids stink! it makes me physically uncomfortable!
2 story-exposited scarves out of 5.
gripe, the fox’s eyes are too far apart, and the manual presents the fox inconsistently (off model etc.). Unsure if this is a tribute to manual art being all over the place or just a dumb thing that annoys me and only me.