The Lonesome Guild

It's polished for what it is, but combat and overall gameplay mechanics are too basic for my liking. It has decent bones, but I wish it had a bit bigger scope for either mechanics or puzzles. There's are character levels, equipment and talents for progression, but they don't meaningfully add to a game because it's not built to make use of those things. My suggestion: try the demo before buying.

Having just completed the game, it was alright, but I wasn't really drawn by anything else the game had to offer. I thought I'd enjoy this game a lot more when I first sat and listened to the menu theme (it gave Kingdom Heart's Dearly Beloved energy), but I was disappointed by how the plotline developed and lack of responsive combat. I liked how developed (some of) the characters are. They have motives clear and cut and you know what they stand for, especially when it intertwined with a location of interest. As for the party, I find that the last two lacked story relevance and were only recruited to fill the party pool. I'm sure there'd be more reason to like them in their quests, but with how the story was up until that point, I wasn't optimistic. The overarching plot, for how deep it became, was dumbed down to the point it felt cliche. It began feeling more like your typical fantasy pipeline, and with how much filler interaction there was, turned off the story entirely for me. I'm the type of gamer who could forgive the story if the gameplay was nice and vice versa. The combat ended up being a miss: It took me the longest time to start getting use to the dodge because it didn't *feel* like I'm avoiding enemy attacks. Rolls just felt awkward with how necessary it is and how often I set myself up to missing a basic attack. I got tired of repeatedly going into *battle start animation* and *battle end animation* to add onto my annoyance, one of the main reasons I loathe to revisit old areas. I actually liked the skill trees in the current system. Skills being locked behind Ghost's relationship makes sense, and the upgrades that mechanically improved the skills made using them feel better. I was overall baited by the art style and premise, and left with a mediocre experience. The game tried too hard to cater to both children and adults, that the story fell flat and combat unsatisfying.