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This games strength lies in combat strategy and gameplay. Characters are rather one dimensional and very stereotypic in a anime sense, you will figure that out quickly when starting to play the game. Furthermore story isnt anything special and neither does it grab you with it at any moment. It is more like something to keep gameplay going on and while not utterly bad, you really just dont care enough about it. Regarding combat and upgrading your mechas, you get to select and accuire different passive/active skills, purchase and equip different armors/weapons.. equipment will be unlocked with the story progress, skills are unlocked on skill tree and experiences you will gain on battles. After main story there is "end content" with quite a lot of alternative story and battles with it. Cannot comment much on that since my interest didnt keep on with end content, but it is worth noting there definitely is enough content for asking price. Play and stay for battles, not for characters or story.
If you have played any Doom game prior this one, you know what to expect. There are secrets, some collectibles and arsenal of weapons to slaughter demons. It is nothing spectacular nor anything to write home about. Probably will keep you entertained for one playthrough if you are up to these kinds of games, but personally i cannot see myself to ever replay it again. When deeply discounted, it is worth the time it provides for completing the game. As a shooter game overall, it is rather average.
Game is quite TellTale-esque game experience with most of its gameplay; you get to make some choices, have different conversations and reactions with folks around you and choose how to handle different situations. Game does include also optional combat sessions, which are... fine, i guess? They are straightforward, nice way to have a break once in a while during the journey. Then there is the infamous elephant in the room. I cannot say with good faith game wouldnt include rather lot of inserted thoughts and certain aspects some find offensive or are got enough of them, considering current world and its flow. Personally i didnt find it bad, though at certain points of game developers seemingly rub in in your face. Nevertheless, your character and her friends are wanted by officials for their special powers which play crucial role in combat and storywise and you fight them because of that. Not because of.. "woke". Thing that mostly annoyed me were multiple occasions where when choosing way to respond on certain situations the whole game would softlock; no ones says or does anything, basically game is waiting for some input or conversation to end before activating my choice - however nothing happens. This happened constantly and only way to resolve it was to exit to main screen and load last save. Luckily game autosaves constantly so there is not a long way to go to same situation. I have no regrets buying this game and with TellTale-esque way things played out, this could have chance for interesting sequel to show what happens after. May it become reality or not, this was enjoyable for what it is.
World does seem beautiful and since this demo is more like "alpha" build it needs to be treated as such. However, after around 10 minutes of playing: - Character started t-posing through the world in great speed - I somehow triggered infinite torch bug that caused torches to be constantly added into my inventory (currently over 180 in inventory and keeps on going) - Jumping worked about half of the time, perhaps because of the earlier reasons Nevertheless, cannot wait to get my hands to full (and ironed) game!
Like others have mentioned, do not get tricked by thinking this as your typical Kagura game. While first 2 chapters give you good and quite good layer for story and goals, it only gets better after that. Game is full of twists and turns, characters are likeable and soundtrack very fitting to keep leveled feeling. This game has one of the greatest and most enjoyable stories i have experienced in a long time. Definitely recommended! It is worth noting game has 2 different endings, but only one of them is true ending for this game and unlocks New Game+. Keep that in mind in case you end up thinking earlier "bad" ending being the real one. P.S. Here wishing to see "King Exit" at some year to be available once again..
Game starts with 3 "heroes" each with their own deck pool. In each fight as long as each hero is alive you will pick a card from their pool to your hand to play. If one hero goes down, that characters pool is out. You can unlock 3 more heroes as far as i know. While every character has their own pool that consists of attack, defense, passive/active buff&debuff and what i like to call "special" cards, they dont differ that much from each character meaningfully enough - just a bit strategy changeup and otherwise you can keep on playing each run similarly to complete them. You gain trinkets, potions and equipment which give nice diversity for overall aspect of the game, but unfortunately especially equipment give so little bonus that it feels a bit unnecessary to use your time trying to min-max stats that way. On the other hand i felt trinkets are well diversed to make rather big impact on your runs if you end up missing good ones for your strategy. Equipment, character level ups (gaining access to new cards) and trinket of your choice will be with you between new runs, card decks however tend to start from the "starter pool" without ability to keep some cards from last run. So basic thing going on here. If you got the recipe and ingredients (accuired from past runs) you can also brew potions for your new run to help you out (max 4 potions at the time). Also yes, there is a way to remove a card from your deck and it is not even that hidden feature - you just need to know who can help you with it; it is not something you can do in every step, that would be odd choice. I dont find the game ugly, too difficult or bizarre. It is nothing groundbreaking, but neither it is anything awful enough to make you not purchase the game (especially on discount). You will get your fun out of the game for couple of days if nothing else.
So basically this is short story telling about traditions and how they will not always represent what they necessarily should and how they can be changed. This is completely visual novel with no gameplay aspect. This was my entry point to Brok universe and it kinda worked as introduction to different characters, though especially some shown during credits were a bit odd since they were not shown even once earlier during VN. While writing was nicely done and overall visual aspects appealing, i loved music - would definitely say that was high points for me, also in building beautiful aesthetic for the experience.
Honestly there is not that much to say on top of the other reviews. Or overall at that matter. Dialogues felt at times all over the place, very unemotional and monotonic. Story itself is nothing too spectacular, but has at least that goal all the way through as a reason to complete it. There are puzzles and item combinations, but some of them are rather.. illogical. There are not that many items so you will figure them out rather quickly, but may still be left wondering why developer did end up with such solutions. Overall it is nothing too miraculous, you will get one evening spent with this game. It is not something you would ever come back to though.
While true that To the Moon, Bird Story, Finding Paradise and Impostor Factory have their own stories to dig through, they do have connections to past parts so it is recommended to play them in order. Every game has their own topic to handle and it can frankly fall into personal opinion which tears you the worst (in sincerely good way). For me it is this one. Admittedly not having Eva and Neil as playable characters did first feel a bit bore, but in the end it didnt bother at all. Story is intriguing and builds well during its short spawn of time. This and all the games in the series are worth to play through to indulge yourself with something i would call "experience".