Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

In the indie reinassence gaming has been living today there has been a number of them that are heavily inspired by beloved older titles, many times they are also directly impacted by the lack of new entries in a series, or by the decay in quality of the current ones. Those two cases are not rare in the gaming world, as any fan of a franchise purchased and gutted by EvilAssholes Games would attest, and as such, many titles came forth offering to give you the experience you can't get any more... but can they? Are they replacements for the beloved dead goldfish? The short answer is **no**. They can't. Because while they might share similarities they can never truly and fully replicate the feeling a game gives you, because what makes a game loved isn't just the structure or gameplay, but also a lot of other factors that are unique to them, often impacted by your personal experience as well. This happens because games, in their nature as art, extend further than the physical and within human emotion in ways that are unique to each. You can learn how to paint like DaVince, but you will never be able to recreate the Mona Lisa no matter how skilled you are, as its value exists beyond the painting in its canvas and, at worst case scenario, you will be seen as a petty forger, trying to climb-up on the steps of the talent left behind to fill its vaccumn. The new goldfish is a different goldfish, even if it ends up living far longer, even if it ends up being objectively prettier, it will not replace your love for the previous one... **NEVER!** ... But... ...does that means the new goldfish can't love you? Does it means it also can't make you happy? If it can... why are you making it feel worse by weighting against the emotions of you felt for previous goldfish? Doesn't that feels... unfair? Maybe... wrong? ... ... Why did I bother to say all of that? The answer is simple; because I think treating Bug Fables that way is incredibly unfair to the game's own qualities and it often overshadows talk about the game itself. So, what is Bug Fables? Bug Fables is a fantastic, tightly designed and extremely fun RPG with an amazing world to explore and an absurd amount of content and good characterization and worldbuilding that can bother on unbelivable in contrast to how simple the game looks. The combat is fast and very satisfying, making great work of all three party members and the game just gives you so much to do that is easy to get sidetracked from the main quest and get wrapped into something else, be it cooking, doing sidequests, etc... all better due to how enjoyable traveling through the map is, either with your skills or the game's excellent fast-travel system. It's clear a product of passion and care that, while it might start a bit slow and derrivative on the surface, morphs into it's own beast as it goes along. The game is not perfect, the pacing of the story can be a bit off, and the lack of proper villains and more tangible developments in the first part makes the chapters less interesting than they could be. The unlock of certain skills could've handled better too as they can feel arbitary, the attack inputs aren't very varied, the medals as well could have been more diverse and interesting... but that doesn't truly detracts from it's overall quality, which is why it really bothers me to see this game being treated as a mere Paper Mario wannabe trying to offer a similar experience after the series got dragged to the 100th floor of the Pit of Trials with Sticker Star, and I can understand why a lot of people who enjoyed the game would think like that, but is it fair? Bug Fables is not a previous goldfish, Bug Fables will never be a true replacement for Paper Mario... but should it be? Does its feelings for you need to be weighted unfairly like that? Does it needs to replace the old love instead of being a new one? Even if your original intentions were aiming for the former? Does you need to love it because is the same species as your previous pet? Will you love it as it's own being? The answer you can only find by playing the game and treating Bug Fables as Bug Fables. I hope you have fun and that it can, at least, give you some of that previous joy along with the new one. It's a game that I throughly loved and would give a heartfelt recommendations and I want to see what you think about it!

tl;dr: 9.5/10 +The story is well-written +Entertaining platforming and puzzle sequences +Great fighting system +The soundtrack +2D sprites are fantastic +...even has a fun card game -Minor problems in few particular locations -The 3D graphics may look outdated I absolutely adore this game <3 Bug Fables: An Everlasting Sapling, is an RPG, mixing 3D platformer genres, j-RPG and Paper Mario inspirations. There will be a large amount of logical and platforming puzzles, as well as fighting, and even more dialogues to read. Honestly, I did not expect that much content from this game. Besides main tasks, we can take a lot of (and I mean a lot) of sidequests, some of which will lead to new locations or functions. For example, at some point we may get access to a… card game, and then take part in a tournament. Needless to say, exploring these possibilities took me around 60 hours of gameplay. Such amount of content really says a lot about love the developers had for the Bug Fables. The logical and platforming sequences were fun, and the story was surprisingly interesting and well-written.The fighting system revolves around using different character’s abilities against enemies, similar to the rock-paper-scissors configuration. Some of the abilities, however, required pushing the same button in a really fast succession, which I did not like - thankfully, the game’s accessibility settings allow you to change it to more suitable ways. The graphics… exists. The game uses a mix of 3D locations and 2D character sprites. And the 3D graphics served me a nice memory trip back to the late 90’s-early 2000’s. I didn’t mind that, in fact, everything fits well together. However, I absolutely loved 2D sprites - I believe, these keep the very essence of this game - they are cute, charming and creatively use insect features to underline the character’s traits and emotions. The soundtrack by Tristan Alric was a masterpiece. The game also runs fine, without bigger performance problems. I remember a particular area though, with a large water-freezing puzzle, in which I got soft-locked several times. I wish there was an option for resetting the location - cause I had to restart the game itself xD. There’s also a stealth sequence in one of the levels, which was interesting, yet also weirdly executed - with enemies having an irritating range of detection. Overall, this game sparks joy and absorbs for quite a long time. It deserves a solid 9.5/10. I loved it!

My favourite game of all time. I've played it on all the secret modes and the new content from the update. I wish I could wipe my memory and play it again.