this game ♥♥♥♥♥ this game rules play it if you like dirt and mud and stuff and theft

There's a good game here, but it's really hampered by a identity issue that makes repeat runs start to drag.

Worldbuilding is great, the entire formatting of the game as a skeumorphic operating system is fantastic, the story and dialogue are fun, and there's a decent amount of stuff to unlock. All these make for a solid indie game that I think most people would enjoy.

Now onto the maybe-nitpicking-but-still-important-to-me stuff.

First off, the game is slow. Too slow to make it engaging as a tower defence as you spend realistically 90% of the time playing just watching it play out. 2x speed feels like it should have been the default, and it doesn't go higher than that.
You might think because of this it could work as a semi-idle game, but no, it pauses roughly every minute for you to take your turn.
Well then does it work as a roguelike? Well, yes and no. You have a good amount of control over your build, and you definitely *can* make put together good builds by paying attention to synergies etc, and builds that work it very different ways.
However.
They all feel identical to play.
Occasionally you'll have a run where you have lots of card draw or mana generation, and that's a change of pace, but the actual tower defence part? It's just watching a sea of damage numbers, there's rarely anything interesting happening.
And the crux - the endless mode. When you beat a run, (not a difficult thing by the way, I have like an 80% clear rate) you are prompted to go into endless mode. Since the main game is pretty easy, I assumed that the endless mode would be the The Actual Game, so to speak, the part where you really put your buildcrafting chops to the test, but in reality it's just an afterthought. There's no real thought you can put in after this point, you just play the same cards over and over, hoping for a yellow that will break up the monotony, but most of them will just be structures you can't build because you're at the cap. You just sit there, gradually scaling, until suddenly you go from killing every enemy before you even see them to losing the game in about 30 seconds.

This is a good game, don't get me wrong, but there's a melanchiolia in thinking about the things it doesn't quite do well enough.

Fantastic entry in the series.
PC performance is iffy, but not "overwhelmingly negative" bad. My 7 year old cpu can still churn out ~40fps on max everything, 2k, no dlss, 1.2x supersample.

Fun if brutal combat, excellent exploration, great character customisation without even counting the ability to slap in your own custom sprites, and an engaging and unique progression system with decent variety to it.


I have only 2 actual issues with the game:

It feels wrong that most bond characters are just straight up better than the player character (the only thing that keeps the pc relevant is the fact that you're usually a couple levels ahead if you switch your team up at all) and all the basic recruits due to their additional unique personal trait. It would be nice to just have a list of traits you could pick one of in character customization.

Second, and this is an issue a lot of RPGs have, PLEASE, GOD, JUST TELL ME WHAT THE STATS ON GEAR ACTUALLY DO. Good, fleshed out tooltips are pretty rare in RPGs, but it's a broader issue in this game cos there's some pretty important mechanics like bond characters and manpower that just aren't explained. Thankfully, there is a fantastic guide in a google doc that has comprehensive explanations of all the game's core mechanics and a spreadsheet with an explanation of every gear stat in the game cos they're sometimes not particularly intuitive (e.g. "Critical" is crit damage and crit chance is called "Threat"). I'd recommend at least a cursory understanding of how bonds work and how manpower is gained, otherwise your progression might get a bit stumped in some areas. Also beating the game is impossible without bond characters.

If these seem like nitpicks that's cos the game is great.

Completely unfair but in a good way

im gonna cry

first