Nice artwork and music, but the opening gameplay is not particularly engaging or interesting. When early reviewers said it was the Second Coming of Chrono Trigger, I took that seriously based on the promo material. But if you're after that type of polished experience, I'd recommend Zeboyd's Cosmic Star Heroine or Cthulhu Saves Christmas instead.
The first few hours I played were interesting and drew me into the world sufficiently. However, even the opening mission, I had concerns about enemy reinforcements as a 'gameplay mechanic.' I brushed it off because the rest of the RPing elements were cool and I enjoyed working on my MC's build. But then after about 3 missions and the recurring trend of gobs of enemies showing up out of nowhere without warning, the vibe was killed for me. The game is average at best, but when enemies just constantly show up in the middle and ends of fights, it's not tactical. I spend my resources based on each encounter and, if I can't assess the threat and my approach, it's simply rubbish. I could replay the fights with a posteriori knowledge and probably beat them. But after spending 30-40 minutes on a series of fights that would not end, only to die when a new wave of enemies respawned, I decided that was my line. I stopped caring. I'm not replaying long, barely interesting combat sections because 'GOTCHA!' was added in. If a GM did this kind of crap during any tabletop sessions, I'd flip their table in a heartbeat. I guess I'm glad I got the trilogy during a giveaway. I don't recommend actually paying anything for these games. The UGCs I've seen don't seem to justify even giving a download.
I got this game for cheap and what a load of wasted potential. This version and the Steam one both have a game-breaking bug near the end of the included campaign where the game locks up during a scripted NPC event while in combat. The mechanics all seem to function well, however, so props for that. I sadly can't recommend when the game ships with a broken campaign and even the best fan-made content that one can download isn't particularly good. I'm moving on to Dragonfall next, but SR:R remains one of my biggest CRPG disappointments from the past decade.
