Mewgenics

Well, first of all, I really love this game. It's style and charm are not for everyone, but it has a lot of character. Second, the music is spectacular, probably the best thing about this game. The gameplay is brilliant, I haven't had this much fun in a tactical rpg for a while. That is, of course, until I finished Act 2 and started act 3. The game is very good, but it's in this part where Edmund's love for chaos over balance really hurts the experience. After a while each run stopped feeling fun and just became stressful. This is because losing a run in this game can be severely punishing. You lose your cats, which in this game in particular, with its breeding system, can mean losing up to hours of achieved stats, mutations and abilities. This possibility could make the game more fun for some people, probably, but for me its just a reminder that if I lose a game I might need to complete a ton of Act 1 ♥♥♥♥♥♥ runs to get back to the power level I already achieved. Now, this in itself wouldn't be that much of a problem, if it wasn't for the [b]extremely[/b] punishing nature of the runs. Which is not a very apt term either, because "punishing" would indicate that you made a mistake in the first place. In tboi, for example, picking one particular item in a run could make it essentially over (for expample, picking ipecac with split shots or rubber cement). In this situations however, you have the freedom to just [b]not[/b] pick up the run ending item. This is not the case in mewgenics. With most random events, you can't even choose not to roll the dice. This could be a fun mechanic, if a little anoying at times (like pills in isaac for example (and even then you can always choose not to pop the pills)), but in reality, the random events in mewgenics can and will be EXTREMELY punishing. I'm talking full on god tier runs just dying because your cleric randomly got poopshock syndrome which makes every entity that is not an enemy get covered in ♥♥♥♥ and die whenever you cat breathes. And let me remind you [b]there is no way to prevent this[/B]. Just hoping for good luck. Take the lake event in the desert, for example. This one you can choose to ignore. The first two times I angaged with it, the bad outcome triggered, turning one of my cats into a kitten with 1 health and no damage. I always ignored the event from here on out whenever it appears, because I doubt the good outcome would be as impactful to the match as effectively losing one of the cats. So it feels like the correct decision is to ignore the random events as much as possible. It's this two facts combined that killed my motivation to engage with this game. Not only it feels like you have no control on the outcome of the run (because of random unavoidable middle fingers), but in the case that one of this game ending outcomes happens you can end up losing hours of breeding progress. And you CAN make a game extremely punishing. Take Fear and Hunger, where a single mistake can result in your character losing a leg and the run being instantly over. But there is the catch, in Fear and Hunger you actually need to commit a mistake for the punishment to show. In mewgenics, it feels like you just trip over and unavoidable wire that just announces "your cat has gonorrhea now so the match is over, now all four of you cats are dead, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself". The only way to fix this in my opinion would be either make the breeding more consisteng and less depending on luck to make the randomly losed matches not as punishing, or lower the random "♥♥♥♥ you" events as much as possible so that if you lose a match is actually because of a big mistake you made. It might be skill issue, or it might be like the game arriving at Act 3 it's just not designed for me. The first several hours of Mewgenics were extremely fun, but I would not recommend this game to anyone actually willing to beat it, because it feels more like a breeding and gambling chore than a fun cat game.