The game is charming in presentation. The tabletop type play is both fun and highly evocative of a great quest viewed from above. The movement mechanics don't even bother me much... The turn based combat is simple, with few decisions to be made (only a couple of attack choices and rarely does more than one make sense) yet still manages to be fun. The great - and, frankly, fatal, flaw is that chance plays far too great a role in the mechanics. The deck is stacked against you, and, unlike Vegas, there are no free drinks, huge payouts, or spectacular shows to soothe the sting of a remorseless combat RNG and random event generator. This is not to say the game is too hard... 'Hard' implies that good planning, careful strategizing and skill can still win the day. The difficulty of the gameplay isn't the issue, but that the mechanic making the game hard is that you are not given a fair chance. The game warns you that you should expect to lose - but it doesn't explain that you should expect to lose REGARDLESS of your choices. Similarly, even though the odds are against you, you could possibly win through serendipity. Of course, winning through luck alone also begs the question of why I am bothering to play in the first place? This game would be perfectly happy playing without me, comparing one RNG to another RNG and designating a winner without my participation at all. In the end, a game with great potential is devastated by a stilted RNG/AI that cores out and discards the importance and fun of the player's participation like the guts of a jack-o-lantern. For about $5 you should give it a try to see if you can enjoy it despite these flaws. If it is still pricier than that, you should wait.
Not what I expected... Not so much an adventure game as a VERY simple tactical board game (think checkers but where each 'jump' can be given an emotional attitude. The best attitude to choose is based on the mood and mission goals, and is rarely in doubt... The whole thing comes across as aimed at LITTLE kids, intended to show you can resolve combat by making your opponents happy, etc... It's a weird thing. There's not much actual tactical decision making especially since the boards allow pretty free movement, so positioning isnt important. I know they were going for humor here but the whole thing is like trying to get adults to enjoy watching Dora the Explorer. The pace is slow and there are multiple mixed resources (that seem arbitrarily disctinguished) and it just all falls flat. No sense of real discovery, kid's cartoon sensibilities, overly simplified system with a veneer intended to make it seem more complicated, but that has very little ACTUAL effect... Just blah. I like the art and presentation.
