This game is a passion project, single developer, while making when they were still working, this game as far as I know is in development since 2016.

I will not give a thumbs down to not tank the reviews, but from good intentions and ideas the world is full of it, now with proper execution? Not so many, the idea and visuals of the game are gorgeous, but it was kinda misleading at certaing point.

Now, it is released, and is a product for the world to consume, is cheap, but is honestly 2 hours long 100% completed cheap? Personally speaking, no, but is good to help the developer, specifically if they plan on releasing updates and expanding the game, which I hope so, since if you played the demo, the game have around 30 minutes more of gameplay and you are done with.

I followed the development and had high hopes to be honest, the marketing of this game was around the combat and costumes, you barely fight, and your gameplay is 90% flashbacks with barely possibility to enjoy your costumes actually exploring the game or playing the game, what you saw in the demo is the far as the exploration and open world goes, the game really ends 30 minutes after that, there is barely any secrets or rewards for exploration or for the sake of exploration (which I am putting here because the developer freeze a lot about how he liked open world and exploration in games and tried to bring this PS1 era feeling to Welcome to Doll Town), which you do not have any exploration at all, you can run of course around, pray that a glitch or bug does not break your game with visuals, you barely have time to enjoy your playthrough as Yumi with your costumes (the cover character), because the game is only flashbacks, you can roam around but without a purpose or something to do, is not that fun after 10 minutes.

Have severe oversight glitches and bugs, in the school portion if you leave the school when asked to go to the roof, you get teleported to the entrance of the city, and can only go back to the school if you reload the game and your auto save throw you there again, textures glitching, V-Sync not working so you have a lot of screen tearing from afar in certain scenes, only options available are sounds, and the support on controller only works for XBOX/8BITDO ones, Playstation controllers only works the analog and it works if you mimic xbox controller on DS4WINDOWS, the cat part is really buggy, you play as a cat and clip through walls all the time, the camera is really laggy and if you play on mouse and keyboard the sensitivity make your camera fly away, I played on controller, there are a few errors with text, for example, when you will get a note in school, it says it could not be translated from "school note", but the visual bugs are massive, flickering lights and scenarios and everything else I pointed out.

The game is charming, the ideas are great, but is too short, and the marketing was pointing in the right direction with an extremely under deliver, even the demo people were expecting it was going to be more and not that the demo was 80% of the game and 100% of the map and combat experience, I think this game shoukd have been released as a prototype for free or cheaper, to get attention for a bigger project, which I hope the dev keep updating, because the movement is cool, the combat idea are great and you feel the punches, but is really barebones and barely any time to enjoy those mechanics, and people were really, really expecting that we could free roam and engage in combat and run around the city with more than just two sections and 3 enemies.

The story is alright, and too short, it was going to be enganging, I wish it was but right as it started, it just ends.

Again, great visuals, great costumes, the game is charming, the scenario and atmosphere, it does plays really well, but it lacks in their strongest points, which could have been exploration and combat, and not a 2 hours experience, with the demo delivering everything from the combat, slightly dissappointed with this, but hope you deliver more updates, like I said, the price is cheap, but is not cheap for a 2 hours experience, as a symbolic price okay, but hopefully we get updates and fixes.

TL;DR at end.

This game is intriguing; the game's foundation is interesting and good because it is based on Elden Ring with its mechanics, I really have fun with it.

The gameplay loop is good if you like souls-like games.
There are several characters with various build options and weapons to use, with different skills and move sets, various skins to buy with in-game currency, and unlock by playing.

My problem with the game is some design decisions. First, the game seems to be just a mod created by fans, judging by how things work.

For example, passives are acquired through each weapon's passive, so you accumulate weapons with the passive you want to use, plus your main weapon. It seems like a lot of band-aid hotfixes that modders create to add a mechanic without significantly altering the game, which is strange to see coming from the company itself. It would be much better if the stats were chosen as buffs/modifiers or power-ups that would accumulate on your main weapon, with different colors in the description according to what you acquired during the game.

Something that changed the gameplay would also be interesting, for example, "this dagger's passive now turns your weapon into a greatsword, and every perfect parry knocks down monsters, but you can not move with this item in hand."

Some creatures are a waste of time because it takes time, is a detour and you do not get rewarded, dragons for example, even with a good RNG, it takes a lot of time to kill it and the rewards are not good, and makes no sense for a game that is fast paced and a race against the clock, unfortunately for this specific game design, things like this should be an option and not a "ignore altogether or your run is done".

The game have RNG map modifiers, snow storms(Will drain your FPS), permanent burn, bursts that drain your level if you get hit, and the only way to remove those modifiers is killing the respective bosses, the idea is good, but execution not, you need sometimes to run across the entire map, wasting time and a big of a detour because of an RNG, and the issue is that the buffs you get from those monsters are completely useless, if they tunned a bit better, the idea would be great.

Map, we should have an option to select maps or "delete" maps from the rotation, the DLC map is frustrating and not good at all, again, would be something "frustrating" and challenging, if was a normal souls-like, what makes it frustrating bad and not fun, is because the game is a race against the clock, unfortunately this game is not fun to explore, or discover things, you do not have time for it, you need to "optmize" routes and such, which is, personally, a bad design for a roguelite-ish.

I have fun with the game, I will keep playing with my friends, but unfortunately I can not recommend with this price, it lacks so much simple features, and I think the major problem for the majority of people who play alone or duos, including myself, the lack of penalty for people leaving and not having an option ro reset/give up the run right away, people literally quit because of anything, down one time, quit, map was not the one they wanted, quit, seed not the one, quit, every single time, and god forbid if you want to play the hardest difficulty with randoms, your experience will be even worse, probably people will quit in the first minute or so, they REALLY need to put proper punishment, because is a waste of time for everyone else.


TL;DR: Game is fun, lacks key features like map selection and variety, the copy paste of souls-series does not always work because of the format of the game being a race against the clock, the price is not worth it (get on sale), lacks proper punishment system since people leave the matches even because the seed of the map not being the one they wanted.

This is an MMORPG mobile port from the dead Blue Protocol that never released here, an overhaul with a lot of more issues.

This game first of all, is 100% old school MMO grind based fiesta, you will spend hundred, thousand of hours grinding gear, BiS stats, the gameplay loop is just grind and lifeskill.

Let me get it out of the way already, the story is atrocious, if you are used to FFXIV or WoW level of lore, give up and remember the old MMO days, but worst, this story and sidequests are made of chatgpt or a child that their top reference and god tier storytelling is sword art online and in this game have the depth of a saucer, the negative review is not based on story since you can just skip everything spamming esc, which is great.

Now, the real issues.

The main one, server instability is the law, the game DC if an instance is full every single time, lag the entire instance with frozen characters for everybody, and sometimes you even lose bosses because of it.
There is only ONE server for everybody, so if you are from OCE you will play with 300ms, because the server is probably hosted in Miami or something, I play with 120ms.

The server is channel based, they call it "line" here, but is the same thing, different regions have different amounts of Channels to hop in, which is an issue since everybody is in the latest region and only have 150 channels, which happens to explode very so often, and there is a massive issue in changing channels with always an error message saying "failed to connect the line" or "connecting too fast, try again later" even if is your first time clicking to change.

The systems are atrocious, more than 20 different currencies for a lot of different systems, you need to farm gear killing bosses or running dungeons, the drop is RNG and the Sub stats are also RNG, you need good substats for your BiS so keep on farming, it is like black desert farm with killing world bosses and enhancing the items, you have a gear score system as well that is basically how much you pressed the forge button to put your item in 100 refine, people rush this without looking at sub stats just to say they have 20k+ Gear Score, but at the end of the day, their gear are REALLY bad in the long run, sadly, some content you are locked behind gear score, dungeons, raids and such.

Which open the door for another problem, gather, craft and limited resources, all of this you need to proper gear up, the game does give you some stuff to accelerate the process, but in the long run you will NEED those things, the life skill system in this game is probably the worst, you have a limit of "stamina" for life skill while doing things that you need for upgrade/refinement, but you can buy potions to restore 100 of the stamina, is limited by weekly those potions, or you can drop your credit card and buy as much as you want, all of this is attached to the fact the life skill leveling is pain fully slowly, even with the weekly quests, because not only levels unlock things, you actually need mastery of said life skill to properly enhance your gear, and the only way to gain mastery is spending the "stamina".
Yes, you got it right, you need to spend an absurd amount of stamina to unlock 4-5 mastery, to then be able to spend more stamina to gather the materials, and then more stamina to craft the resources and then you try to enhance your gear or gear slot, which, mind you, the craft system and enhance are ALL % based, is not 100% chance of crafting the material nor enhancing, of course there are items to prevent that, but better save for the 0.3% chance, since is scarce, and on top of that, when you farm the bosses is not a 100% chance that you will drop the gear for your class, unless you drop a chest, so add more grind into it.

Massive oversight on how map works, there are a few mobs/locations/hunts that you do not have fixed positions on the map, and you need to call out in chat, the problem is, you can not post a ping in chat or coordinates, because the game just do not have it.

Another massive issue, Auto Play, the game have a button to auto play for those who want to afk farm, just beat the world bosses to death without looking at the screen because of the grind, is just an official bot, which honestly, is fine in open world, the issue is when it comes to Dungeon and Raids, this thing should be completely off, people do NOT know how to configure this, and just press to walk with auto play turned on, people do zero damage, dies like crazy, and leave the instance every single time, period, the system is great for open world, now they should completely remove from Raids and Dungeons, is just such an oversight and stupid idea.

Fishing, aside from life skills, fishing is something important for endgame, food and such, fishing is a solo thing, is not even in life skill section, the problem is, it takes around 3-4 hours to level up one level, with you losing your lure and fishing rod and having to buy, and the game does not have an auto fishing, you have to manually play, and this time can change per level since you do not just fish when the "!" appears, you have a stupid minigame to reel the fish, with the risk of your line breaking, or fighting for 2 minutes to get a random thing out of the water, could be fun, if everything around it was not so badly made, the XP rate and how grindy it is.

Market and currency, is a joke, you can not buy anything from the market with your coins, because they have two different currencies for this, aside from the billions of currencies, you have some currencies with "bound" tag and not, to use the market you need to use your currency that you earn playing, but you actually can not, because you need the same currency with the TRADE icon, and you can only transform this currency into bound money and not the other way around, and to get this you need to sell items with the trade tag, you can't sell everything either, or you just buy the trade coins with cash.

Multiclassing, yes, you can multi class in this game, unlock all classes in one character, but is just impossible to be playable, you need limited books, limited coins, and in game money, to unlock your skills, level up your skills and upgrade your skill tree, everything that you can only get dropping your credit card or wait weeks/months/years to gather everything, this part for ONE class is fine, but for more than one, is just impossible and not worth at all, you just can not grind those items, they are locked behind weekly shops or locked behind content that you can do one time weekly and have RNG to even be able to get ONE of those items, to level up skills sometimes you need 30 books, you get ONE, now put this with the fact you will need to grind gear with all the issues and steps I mentioned before, and there you go, is already hard to gear up properly one class, two is just impossible, better to just create another character and rush everything up, ALSO, you CAN'T pass gear to other characters, which is just straight up stupid on purpose, you do not have a shared stash/chest for all the characters in the account like Black desert or a lot of other MMOs does, so yeah, you can't gear up faster, so if you ever want to change your class because is atrocious for you or because everybody is playing and you can't find parties to run stuff with because is stacked of your class, time to grind everything again.

Dungeons and Raids, the difficulty is not there, is not mechanically hard nor anything, the boss just get more resistence and more damage, the harder the difficulty, is just to lock the gear score behind a shallow boss, just one shot in every skill and that is it, the difficulty part is the players in auto combo just walking forward refusing to even click for basic mechanics.

Look, aside from all those issues, there is a good game behind it, I think is the "potential" good game, everything is there but they just do everything wrong, sadly.

This game is pure art, stunning visuals all draw by hand, ost and gameplay, responsive commands and rewarding for pressing buttons, the punches, slices and skills feels so good and responsive, I played the multiplayer with a friend of mine on parsec, and downloaded on my PC the demo just to give the review, overall gameplay is amazing, such a small team with passion for their project, creating a solid beat 'em up, the game feels like castle crashers and streets of rage had a child, but more stylish, the heavy artstyle inspired by Mike Mignola is insanely well done and well crafted.

The voice acting is impressive, the OST is amazing, and having Mick Gordon as a guest was such a good choice, the gameplay is just impeccable, combos are easy but also have a lot of in depth if you are used to fighting games, my favorite gameplay style by far was Cider, the aircombos and hook to keep making combo and mixups with the granade was so damn satisfying, incredibly well done, I really can not wait to see the entire game and play through it.

Incredible game, tainted by a now shady company since 96% of SNK belongs to Saudi Arabia now, we now see that was just a straight up lie that the buy out would not affect the company, after the recent events.

( https://www.gamesindustry.biz/snk-saudi-arabias-96-ownership-doesnt-affect-us-in-any-way )

I recommend 100% this game because is probably the last piece of the old SNK in modern times we will have.

The review is negative because I refuse to support a company powered by one hella of a dictatorSHIT, that are trying so hard now investing to games and sports, and even paying people to clean Saudi Arabia image after a bunch of horrible crimes (Like the reporter Jamal Khashoggi that Saudi government tortured and dismembered back in 2018 because he was critical about the Prince), mass murder or their community, and other things.
( https://dawnmena.org/saudi-arabia-is-now-using-diplomacy-like-sports-to-whitewash-its-image/ )

And they PAY people to try to clean their image, like mentioned above.

( https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/12/the-instagram-influencers-hired-to-rehabilitate-saudi-arabias-image )

These same people are the ones in charge of SNK now, not to mention they shoved in their new game, Fatal Fury (Garou), after years and years of waiting, they were able to shove Salvatore Ganacci that is a artist made by Saudi since the guy and his family are like, since ever, good friends and works for the Prince, and of course they added the world famous rapist, Cristiano Ronaldo as a character just for marketing and with zero regards, curious enough, EVO happens in Las Vegas, which is the place Ronaldo is banned to step because of the sexual assault charge, of course nothing happened back then other than that because the guy is drenched in money and saudi partnership power, the man himself admitted to the crime.

( https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/cristiano-ronaldo-new-documents-emerge-in-rape-allegations-a-1241349.html )

I am not supporting this company in any capacity from now on, I knew the things were bad when SNK got 96% bought, but with the way they are leading Fatal Fury, things just got worse, it is sad to see something that was supposed to be celebrated, being full of controversies because of such government.

Unfortunately by now, the marketing will be huge since is Saudi, and they will just go on with it and nothing we can do about it.