Chained Reviews

I am so close to liking this game, but as it stands currently I wouldn't recommend it. The rough edges detract enough from the experience that a good chunk of my 2 hour complete playthrough ended up being annoying. Gameplay: The core mechanic of the game is actually better than I expected, and there's a lot of interesting variation that could've been done with it. That said, the chosen variations aren't that interesting, or don't live up to their potential. The move counter seems like something that would be important, but it's actually totally ignorable for the entire game. I wasn't even close to losing on turns once, and even racked up 200+ turns sometimes. It's possible I just accidentally over leveled, but I wasn't trying to in particular, and I ended the game at 16 when there's an achievement for 15, so I think that's just how it's balanced. It becomes a game of mashing out anything valid as fast as you can, because there's no incentive to be turn efficient besides the time extra key presses take. Scout gains some abilities that actually do interesting things later on, and I think having those come up earlier and trigger more often would've made the game a lot more fun. For most of the game, Scout is basically just a flavorful timer that you can ignore moment to moment. Some gripes here: one of the attacks it uses early on does actually matter, but it feels really jarring, because it applies the effect as soon as the attack animation starts, not when the attack lands or the color changes. The weird extra fast fill at the end of the trace meter is a very unintuitive and isn't really signaled well. My only loss came from this mechanic, and I was completely bewildered how I could've lost without even getting attacked. Still not really sure what that's about, but it does make me end my runs early just in case. Objectives are a solid foundation but the details made a number of them annoying. The main offenders here were the ones that rely on specific attacks by Scout. Most of the end of my time spent playing the game was just sitting there letting Scout attack me and hoping I would get the RNG for it to use the right one. Thankfully you can abuse the attack selection to get it to use it repeatedly, but it still took an off putting amount of waiting. The skill usage ones are kind of weird too, since they encourage doing short runs and resetting. Progress bars on the objectives would also make it a lot clearer what actually counts. If Scout hits me with the relevant attack while there aren't any tiles out, does it count? Couldn't ever tell. I kept waiting for the tutorial to end and briefly thought the game had broken. It should get you out of there pretty quickly. User Interface: One big positive here, I did really like the apartment. The upgrades are a nice touch, and the minimal interactivity it has makes it feel more like an actual place. The keyboard controls are unusable on my keyboard, with no option to remap. Had to use controller. The trace meter has a transparent background, and that background has red swatches going through it that are the same color as the bar, making me occasionally think I am in much worse shape than I am. Please let me go through text at reading speed instead of listening speed. This got pretty annoying. Story: Eh, it's fine. Met expectations.

I bought this on sale and at 2 hours (ish) of gameplay to get through the full story, this felt like perfectly good value. I enjoyed the game. The gameplay was fairly straightforward, with some interesting attacks added for Scout later on (and some choice in how you choose to use your own), but what I most liked was the story. The feel of the apartment was also good. It might have been nice to have the option to choose which parts of the apartment to upgrade but that's a (really) minor point. I notice that at last one review says that they were waiting for the tutorial to end, but as I remember it there was a clear prompt to let you know to exit once you were happy knowing what was going on. If not, well, now you know! All in all, well worth the £2 or so I paid for it.