If you're not a fan of Nihon Falcom's other titles, don't play this. If you are a fan of their other games, also don't play this.

The story is as noxious and shallow as a petri dish. I normally would balk at skipping or fast-forwarding through dialogue, but it is all but mandatory for this game, as the pacing is extremely slow and the direction of the cutscenes is very rudimentary and almost totally static. I can think of many JRPGs from earlier generations that have more charm in the execution of cutscenes.

The combat is a trite, 3-button hack-and-slash snoozefest. When it became clear that I didn't need to fight even 10% of enemies per level in order to keep pace with the boss difficulty, I started beelining through every dungeon. As with the Trails games, the most fun gameplay element is customizing your characters by changing equipment, slotting enhancements into weapons, and raising bonds between characters for mechanical bonuses.

If the game was just uniformly awful then I would've walked away, but the most damnable and most frustrating part of the experience is that there's almost something there. It's not a good game, but it's a game with a couple of good ideas that it hints at periodically and fails to deliver on.

As one of the top players globally (refer to my screenshots to see my ranking in previous seasons), I used to pitch people on how free-to-play friendly this game was. At this time, I can't continue to make that recommendation, and I am taking a break from the game.

The monetization is now impeding game balance, progression, and overall enjoyment. Several of the most recent paid (or de facto paid in the case of cards like Kid Omega, which could not reasonably be earned for free) are more or less mandatory in the current meta. Trying to anticipate and counter the wallet warrior decks is joyless and climbing the ranked ladder this season has been a chore as a result.

Limited time events have sharply decreased in quality this year. Returning events were made less fun to play and more stingy with rewards.

The focus on squeezing every drop of blood from the stone has also caused the app itself to degrade over time, both on PC and Android. Known bugs and visual glitches have stayed in the game for several patches and updates.

If Second Dinner corrects their course and makes the game consistently enjoyable for F2P, I will return to the game and update my review accordingly.

I would love to see more indie games with this style of production. The graphics, while not cutting edge, do a great job of delivering the clear visual aesthetic that the team had in mind. The voice acting has a real edge to it that a lot of AAA games seem to miss, and it lends a special chemistry between the NPCs especially.

It would be a disservice to dismiss this game as a walking simulator; I felt engaged throughout the playthrough and there's plenty to do in this game even if there isn't a strictly defined lose-condition.

Keep an eye open for future releases. Looking forward to seeing where this dev goes next.

Improved boss fights, level design, and the removal of yellow filter at the cost of horrible performance. DX:HR ran much better than DX:HR:DX, and you can't even find it in the Steam store anymore.

Great gunplay that rewards different playstyles, high-quality AI that adapts to your tactics, surprisingly relevant lighting and physics for a game that came out in 2005, and more gratuitous bullet time fighting than John Woo can shake a polished handgun at. Not as spooky as the name and box art might suggest, but a fun shooter overall.