Mewgenics

I have very conflicting feelings on Mewgenics. While the core game itself is very well done and the presentation of the game is very charming, I find there's a lot of baggage attached to the core gameplay that quickly starts to bring the experience down the more time you spend with the game. I think the easiest way to describe the issue before going in depth is by comparing Mewgenics to Edmund's other indie darling, The Binding of Isaac. While Isaac is a game that only gets more fun and opens itself up more the longer you play it, I've found Mewgenics to be the opposite. I'll start with the good, the gameplay. Mewgenics has very solid gameplay, it is a tactics game, but despite that it's really easy to get into while still managing to retain some fair depth. Most classes feel very well thought out, the synergy you'll find classes stumbling into throughout your runs makes each run feel fresh even among builds that on paper seem similar to previous ones you may have already used. The combat is tight, most enemies have abilities that are interesting to play around in a vacuum before you even begin to factor in how your cats may be able to interact with them. Mutations and items are a nice extra layer on top of it all, they do a lot to make it feel like you can build your cats in any direction you want and constantly open up new strategies that couldn't really be done before. I would not go as far to say that Mewgenics is "The best tactics game ever", ultimately I think the actual strategic depth is a bit lacking. I've never really felt like I've been making tough decisions as I would in a game like Fire Emblem's normal difficulty (Let alone something like Maddening/Lunatic, the difficulty I tend to prefer in FE), but I also don't think this is a bad thing. Mewgenics runs feel more in line with the type of run you'd get in Isaac, relatively straight forward with the only real decision making being choosing what item to take in a Devil Deal, for instance. This means Mewgenics gameplay feels more "Pick up and Play" than a lot of other tactics games, which is nice in itself. The game design compliments the more shallow strategy decisions, and I think it works quite well and ends up fairly unique for the genre, I can't say I've really seen a tactics game quite like Mewgenics. I would like to add a paragraph soley to point out the soundtrack made by Ridiculon for this game. I've never been particularly fond of their work on Isaac, the soundtrack is nice but nothing there is particular memorable (With a few notable exceptions such as 'Living in the Light' and 'Morituros'). I did like their work on 'The End is Nigh', however, at the end of the day that games soundtrack is remixes of classical songs. Very good remixes, but not exactly the best showcase of their skills. I bring Ridiculon's previous work up, because I need to make it crystal clear, their work on Mewgenics easily blows everything else they've made out of the water. It's hard to exactly pin down the "sound" of Mewgenics, because every area goes a completely different direction in the genre used. Despite the variety of genres, almost every single song in the game is a banger and a testament to just how good Ridiculon are as musicians. Even if you end up deciding the game isn't for you, I IMPLORE you to at least listen to the OST online, it is one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard for any game, period. Now, with the positives out of the way, let's talk the bad. First off, the entire "Management" aspect of the game is, inexcusably, tedious. By the time you've cleared the second chapter of the game, you'll find yourself having to constantly shift through 30+ cats before you can start a run, to than have to shift just one more time through your item storage to equip your cats. Mind you, the UI is awful, there's no filters at all for sorting through cats and the filters that exist for items is so lackluster that there might as well not be any at all. Don't think you can just skip the chore of it either, every night you have plenty of new kittens to sort through, lest you want your cats to start killing each other and items are practically necessary for the games harder challenges. There is absolutely no reason for the management aspect of the game to be so tedious, the devs have said it's for the flavor of "Being a crazy cat woman", but ultimately I do not feel like that when sorting cats, I feel like that when I am actually playing the game. It's contradictory to the "Pick up and Play" nature of the game I described earlier, and makes the end of a run feel more dreadful than rewarding. When you do, finally, start a run however, the game may just decide that you aren't allowed to have fun. There is a mechanic called disorders and parasites in this game. Basically, they're just weird innate skills/items that have a downside in exchange for some unique upside. I actually quite like disorders, I think they're very fun to build around especially once you unlock the ability to give select ones to your cats manually instead of relying on random chance. However, that's the key point, WHEN you can give it to your cats. During the middle of a run, the game may just force a random disorder on you, and due to the nature of them, usually what ends up happening is one of your party members is suddenly much weaker, if not useless, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Disorders tend to be too specific to be generically good, and are prone to just ruining whatever build you drafted for a cat. Mind you, once you've built a cat there is very little room to "pivot" their build if you get a disorder thrown on you, so if it happens you also can't really work towards limiting the damage. I mentioned parasites, I'm brining them back up now because they're just disorders but worse. Same crippling effects, very few have an upside that's worthwhile even if you build around it, and to top if off unlike disorders that have their own unique skill slots, parasites take up your item slots and can't be removed. Disorders at least have the courtesy of letting you keep all the passives and skills you've gathered. Bluntly, getting either of these things mid-run isn't fun and can make a run feel like a complete waste of the players time. Which is the main point of criticism I want to make, it doesn't feel like Mewgenics respects your time as a player. Management takes forever, when you do finally get to play the game it can just decide to end your run an hour into it through no fault of the player. I haven't even mentioned things like needing a second save to get all achievements, despite the boss it's tied to being infinitely replayable in a single save or how higher difficulties like Impossible basically require meta strats, something you can only do through insane min-maxing of breeding, with those strats devolving into "Win in one round before the enemy even gets to move" elsewise you'll be swamped with lazy unfair modifiers that can make some of your cats builds outright useless, or how house upgrades require so many cats you'll likely beat the game before maxing out half of them. It feels like Mewgenics is constantly spitting on you for wanting to play it, despite what it has to offer under all the negatives being quite good. In Isaac, if I lose a run I just lose. In Mewgenics, not only do I lose game progression, I also get to waste time going through all it's archaic systems unlike Isaac where starting a new run takes all of eight seconds. At a certain point, it just stops being fun and starts feeling like a chore, a feeling I've never had with Isaac. To me, Mewgenics feels comparable to release Afterbirth+ for Isaac. There's good ideas here, they just need to be better realized. However, as it currently stands, unless you have the patience of a saint, I can not recommend Mewgenics to the average player.