Absinthia Reviews

So gay and i like it

Finished this yesterday and overall I'd say I like it. The combat mechanics are really solid, having to do a balancing act between regular attacks, skills and MP regeneration made the combat consistently engaging, I was playing on Normal, but even with that the regular encounters never felt mindless. I'm not too familiar with RPG Maker so I don't know how much this deviates from the usual, but it felt pretty unique to me at least. The areas you explore were all right, pretty standard but definitely not bad. I wasn't a big fan of most of the lategame sidequests(with one exception) since they felt kinda short and didn't tend to move the characters forward or even let them interact all that much, the main story locations were generally good though. I generally like the cast of characters here, the main cast are very enjoyable and I really enjoy the dynamic the have with each other, their interactions were generally the highlight of the game for me. All of them are queer which is generally something I like and I feel it's handled well here, their identities are all important to their character and come up a quite a bit, but they've got plenty going on besides that. The side cast fares a bit worse unfortunately, I'm not big on Lillith, she feels a bit too generic to me. I like what the game was going for with her interactions with Freya, but I just felt like the execution wasn't all there. Ruthea is also not great, I like her when she shows up, but she really needed more screentime. Despite being important to Freya's backstory she only shows up a couple times which makes the resolution between them feel a bit undercooked. As for the general plot, this game is really going for something more character centric which I like and it's well executed, but the general plot beats are pretty generic, basically just a compilation of fantasy tropes. I can't say I found this world or most of the major events all that interesting, the interactions between the main party was the thing keeping me engaged, not so much the story around them. The game tries to have comedic moments pretty frequently and these are a mixed bag to me, generally it's great when it's not relying on reference humor or memes which is unfortunately pretty often. Still got a good amount of laughs out of me, but also quite a few groans. Visually the game looks pretty good, not blown away by the pixel art, but it does look pretty nice. The OST is also really good. I did notice some performance issues during battles in the late game side quests, the laptop I played this on is pretty old so maybe that's the reason, the issue was also generally resolved by quitting to the title screen and reloading so it ultimately wasn't that big of a deal. Overall I'd say I definitely have my issues, but I still had a very good time with this and would recommend it if you're looking for a good indie RPG.