Annihilated

Its the world's most okayest game of all time. I've played through one route fully The mage one where she doesn't get her magic back, doing both the superboss (first ending i got) as well as the run away route . I've also started, but not finished, the routes of two other characters (Hero and Priest). I feel like I have a complete enough grasp on the game to give my opinion on it. The gist is that you pick a character at the start of the game to go through a mostly linear story with. You will always proceed through the same levels fighting the same bosses, including the same final boss. The thing that changes is the context of the adventure; though you visit the same places and meet the same characters, your choice of partner will greatly influence the tone and direction of the narrative. Some are more naturally lighthearted, others lean further into the horror, and some are heavier on the lore while others are lighter. Generally speaking, from my experience, each character gives a complete enough picture of the general story and what happened, but to truly get every last detail you must play through multiple routes to see multiple perspectives. Combat in this game can either be skill based or choice based, based on your preferences. The chance based system is a lot easier, in my opinion, but a fight going bad is also out of your control (you DID leave it up to chance after all). Meanwhile with the skill based system, if your timing is good enough, you can virtually always guarantee the result if you want... but only IF your timing is good enoug. In this aspect I think the game does well, as both systems have their merits and tradeoffs, and having both allows everyone to experience the game and plot in the way they like. Another interesting thing in the combat is that its based around disposable weaponry. Each enemy carries a unique item which you can steal off of them as long as you're not carrying too many items already, each with its own durability and effect. Breaking an item gives some kind of power boost but also... well, breaks the item. You can wait until it runs out of durability or break it before then, which is a nice little layer of strategy. Where it falls apart for me is two major aspects: The translation and the difficulty. To be blunt about it, the translation is god awful and the difficulty is both too easy and too hard at the same time. First, the translation: Its incredibly obvious the developer used machine translation for this game. Pronouns will randomly swap, the subject of the sentence will be misattributed, and sometimes entire layers of context are lost or the scene is telling you the wrong version of events. Its hard to give exact details without spoilering, but around one major midgame decision I found that what the game presents to you as a choice, and what the choice actually is, are wildly different. The character who offers you this choice says something VERY different from what actually happens when you pick either option, and this is the kind of mistake you can only find in a game that wasn't translated by hand. I do not respect machine translation on a good day, but especially not when its used in such a careless and unproofread manner. Second off, the difficulty. To be blunt, the game can be entirely brute forced because it allows you to infinitely retry any time you die, just being sent back to the start of the floor you're at but allowing you to retain all your EXP. You start with no items, but you can use the currency you get upon dying to purchase a few starter ones if you wish. The thing about this is that its very easy to get trapped into a "death spiral" until you just get lucky with drops; if RNG favors you its almost impossible to lose fights, but if you just get nothing to work with then you can get hard stuck on certain boss fights until the item drops just happen to roll your way. Past a certain point I stopped really thinking about the combat as I knew I could revive infinitely, so I just brute forced my way through the entire game. I even beat the super boss by dying about thirty times to it as I noticed it getting weaker with each attempt, then using the game over currency to buy every item I needed to close out the fight. On my first run. Its not a bad game. "Overwhelmingly positive" seems to imply a lot of people liked it a lot. I cannot, however, look past the absolutely awful translation quality when the game is *this* focused on its narrative, as well as the fact the actual gameplay is pretty shallow once you look under the hood.