Recent reviews by SoftGoat

Anodyne 2 was my favorite game of 2019 and one I still think about to this day. With rich character stories exploring themes of self-identity, cooperation, anxiety, and quite literally breaking out of your shell, every setting of Anodyne 2 has been written beautifully with gameplay that reflects those feelings perfectly. Melos and Marina really knocked it out of the park with this game and I cannot recommend it enough.

Gameplay: Fun exploration and puzzles are seamlessly integrated to the story. The game is mostly split into a 3D overworld with 2D subworlds that each carry a distinct retro aesthetic - 3D with the low-poly, low-res PS1-era graphics and 2D with colorful and strange 16-bit graphics, akin to late GBC or SNES games. The 3D sections are mainly for exploration and moving from subworld to subworld. Your ability to turn into a vehicle helps traverse the beautifully barren landscapes to find a wide array of surreal characters, some who need your help to cleanse their anxieties or regrets in the 2D sections. The 2D sections are a series of top-down dungeon puzzle screens, similar to the first Anodyne, though this time you've upgraded to a vacuum to solve puzzles and defeat enemies instead of whacking them with a broom. Between the wide array of puzzle mechanics using only the vacuum and the engaging character stories, the 2D sections are some of the most fun and thought-provoking experiences you can have.

Story: Exceptional. Every single character tells some story of their struggles that you can help overcome, ranging from basic problems with sloth, gluttony, and wrath to tales of personal pride, social anxiety, prejudice, and self-discovery. Never have I had a game made me think about one-off characters so deeply as Anodyne 2. Melos and Marina have once again combined these amazing character studies seamlessly into the gameplay, reflecting these issues in the puzzle mechanics that encourage you to think just a bit more about what you're doing.

Art: Extremely subjective. If you are nostalgic for or admire the reverse engineering of retro game aesthetics, it is phenomenal. If you find the low-poly low-res overworld jarring and a bit immersion-breaking that is also completely fair. The 2D sections are more timeless as most sprite-based graphics are, especially with their colorful environments. The character designs are extremely interesting, often being a characterization of one exaggerated feature that ties into their personality, positive or not.

Sound: Phenomenal soundtrack in some places, very natural ambient music in others, some more sound effects for general gameplay would be nice. Melos has made the entire soundtrack minus a few tracks on his own, and as with most indie games, the soundtrack can widely vary from location to location. It's never jarring or out of place, and each track definitely hits the tonal mark its area perfectly. The 3D sections often feature slow sweeping ambient sounds that echo nicely to match the barren landscapes, while the 2D sections carry the same reverb but with more prominent and often upbeat melodies and percussion. The sound effects for movement and actions in the overworld and subworlds could use some more variety, but the ever-changing soundtrack helps balance that out so it's not too distracting.

Overall: 10/10, excellent game, please give this a play if you find the aesthetics and gameplay elements interesting.

P.S. This game is also a blast to speedrun, with a lot of easy to learn movement tech and clipping that one can almost call an intended mechanic based on the game actively encouraging this.

TL;DR - Beautiful world and graphics, interesting though easy combat, solid idle game mechanics in the kingdom building subgame, and the typical JRPG massive array of fetch quests and collectables.

A fantastic and faithful successor to one of the best PS3 exclusives out there, Ni No Kuni II has been an absolute blast to play. The story is interesting when backed by the laws and people of the various kingdoms you come across, making it an experience where you honestly start to feel more like a king than a standard JRPG hero. The graphics are phenomenal, running very smoothly over 144 fps for me (there is an Unlimited or 60 FPS option in-game) and they really nail that charm you'd expect from a game whose predecessor was animated in part by Studio Ghibli. My only complaint is that the overworld has chibi sprites which don't fit too well, however they are cute and make it miles easier to navigate your own kingdom. You have fast travel right off the bat, however to use it you have to activate checkpoints at various spots in the world or cities. Ultimately you end up discovering a lot on your own the first time though, then later you can just teleport to the places you want easily.

Combat takes place in a seamless transition from exploring to fighting when in dungeons which is made better by the hack-and-slash elements of combat. The system is surprisingly deep for those who want to try it out, but it's not necessary so most people will just lock into the one thing that feels most comfortable for them. You have a lot of options available and you're free to try something completely different and not feel too crippled by boredom of the hack-and-slash go-to combo curse. Encounters from the overworld are not seamless transitions, however I never really felt like they were too jarring.

The kingdom building subgame is fantastic and if you're a fan of idle games, you'll spend a LOT of time upgrading. You earn money for improvements and research over time, so while you're off adventuring, your kingdom accumulates gold for you to spend on it once you return. These upgrades include buildings for crafting weapons, armor, upgrading spells, stores, various passives for exploring, combat, etc. As you recruit more and more citizens to your kingdom you'll be able to place them in buildings to research more upgrades, send children to the mines to give you materials, or have them occupy special buildings for various stores and services. I LOVE this part of the game and once you get it rolling, it's hard to put down.

The last gameplay mechanic is the weakest in my opinion: Skirmishes. This is essentially a little RTS scenario where you command an army of units led by various civilians you recruit. You can only have four units at a time surrounding you, which you then rotate to just...run into the enemy units. There's not a lot of depth to these battles and the difficulty/levels ramp up pretty inconsistently when there's only a handful of repeatable encounters. However, you can use a small amount of kingdom bucks to give your army some boosts before the battle which helps in the end.

Overall Ni No Kuni II has been a delight to play and I've barely been able to put it down in these last few days. There is a lot of standard JRPG content such as big monster killing and fetch quests complimented by hundreds of materials, weapons, and citizens to recruit. I wholeheartedly recommend this as a Ni No Kuni and JRPG fan.