Recent reviews by Youka

Worse than the first one!

Customization is still an illusion. You get better equipment with story when you need it, no way to get stronger earlier. And you pick exactly the weapon and armor with the right element for an area, no more variation. "Soulslike" is a clear lie!

Progression is scripted, barely anything is a "choice". Doing area A or B first is everything you get but doesn't matter.

Still many programming bugs (loosing loot, stucking enemies, ...) and annoying visuals (foreground obstacles block your view, enemy effects not visible in ground, etc.).

The absolute fun killer is learning bosses! Some attacks have no movement, they just hit immediately. Visual attack hints don't help, the delay is random. As player you can't rely on reaction time or tactics. Just die one or two times, learn the few attack pattern and have an easy third try... again and again and again, every boss the same boring way.

To make fighting even more horrible, the controls are very VERY clunky and enemies can stagger you for an easy 2-shot-death.

Summary: The gameplay truely is the weakest part of the game. Story is okay, graphics and sounds nice.

Very VERY melee & tank hating game.
Most mechanics clearly favor range & mobile characters.

For some crucial contents you need to be far overleveled (e.g. trials).
You'll find DPS check bosses and small arenas completely filled by aoe effects - win fast or change your build completely.
And sometimes one-♥♥♥♥ kills by normal mobs surprise you - more rng than your decision.

The endgame is roguelite: compared to PoE1 the developers target more hardcore players and tell casuals "We don't want you anymore."

Stealth, 2D and unique mechanics in a fantastic combination!
My favourite game of this genre so far. It's not too long to get boring and not too short to waste potential. Enjoyed it every evening after a non-challenging work day :)

One of these games which are made artifically difficult even to an unfair extent. It's more brutal than real life and often RNG dominates over logic.
Sounds like save-scumming is relevant but wait: saving the game is restricted! The game doesn't value the time of players.
And if this isn't enough, the tag 'Survival' is missing here because of all the maintainance tasks the player has to care of: eat, sleep, repair, relations, ...
You can buy this game for the story but hell not for RPG.

This game is incredible cute, has all the basic JRPG mechanics, an interesting story (not too deep but also not flat) and some nice minigames.
It's possible to 100%ed it in ~50 hours. There's a NG+ with new content which is worth to play. I recommend to play on difficulty 'Hard' because grinding makes most enemies too easy.
Don't wait for discounts, the little developer deserves the full price for his great work!

The Voice Acting of this game is amazing!
Furthermore it's fine polished with a lot of cute elements, good challenges and fun exploration.

Towards end it just gets ridiculous.

So much hardcore stuff it seems this game was optimized for speedrunners. Especially some bosses are just dps checks before the whole arena just burns and flashes - you don't see anything anymore and get killed by full area damage. Many "When you health is under..." talents and core content like talent points by highly frustrating "optional" quests are other examples that it's no fun but just work towards the final.

Character progression is also very slow and skill choices early exhausted. The game gets harder, the scaling doesn't keep up with it. It turns out to be more "action" than "rpg".

As often: great artists, nice sound effects & music, good programming, etc. but the game design isn't well-thought-out.

Not really a metroidvania, just an action plattformer.

A story barely exists, exploration feels very unrewarding and the important stuff is all part of the linear progression. Gameplay feels very repetitive and fighting is just fun against bosses.
I would've loved the programmers and graphics artists would have paired with a better rest of a team.

Pretty average metroidvania.

A big negative point:
The story is plain but the developers use it to push their "women are better than men", "homosexual is more normal than heterosexual" and "a single powerful person is at fault and nobody else" leftist nonsense on the player! If the "LGBTQ+" tag would have been set correctly for this game i could have avoided this annoyance.

As usual for Sakura games:
The story is simple but entertaining, the art beautiful, characters very cute, music catchy and some scenes you melt away :3

Though it's hardly a recommendation because of the writing style:
Every little, boring detail is mentioned and reading all the text a tiring drag.

If you already like Sakura games: buy it!
If you value your time and don't like reading a lot: not your game!