CryptRat
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 10, 2014
- Messages
- 3,625
I just completed Weird and Unfortunate - Things are happening. The game is good, I recommend it, especially considering it's free it is several steps above what I expected.
The game is some kind of modern day/occult/surreal/weird thing. Not exactly Earthbound since you play as adults, but like with all games of this kind it's one of the obvious inspiration for sure anyway (main character even use baseball bats). The characters are bearable, which is a praise, it's not a given, and the story works. What does matter in this kind of games is meeting weird things and visiting weird environments, and the game does deliver in this aspect. I won't spoil more. The screenshots are from early to middle parts of the game.
Some of the characters from other worlds speak their own language, that technically you can translate on your own (or so they say, I did not try). Finishing the game will give a way to unlock translation including for new games.
The game was bigger that what I thought ar first, especially after playing only a bit. It's a dungeon crawler first and foremost and a story game second, if you don't like dungeons then you won't like it. Exploration starts meh, while visiting the town the available part is always small, but the more you advances the bigger the dungeons get, and they are eventually the meat of the game.
There is a post-ending dungeon, that I didn't do yet, and very likely some secrets especially at the very end I didn't get either.
The portraits look bad but the monsters look OK and they are generally as weird as you would expect and the sprites and environments look good. The game took some time to make and it's visible, the environments are much more than plain walls, it's not evident at first because during the first parts consist in the towns, samey red dungeons and samey houses but eventually you'll roam through a lot of different environments. I won't go into details but the encounter rate is low and you'll spend a lot of time just exploring cool maps, more than once they took the time to build several weird maps with an inedite tileset you'll travel through without any encounter and just for you to find some item at the end, these parts shows the best how polished the game is in my opinion, no area ever feels lazy.
Not sure about the music, I think there are a lot of different tunes from which only a few of which are original, I played a lot without music (not because I did not like it), and when I played with music sometimes I thought it was cool, sometimes a bit less.
On hardest difficutlty, which I recommend, and taking my sweet time, I died a few times. The flow of the combat feels just right. Your characters as well as monsters have just enough hps, managing your PSI points is just one of the important aspects you'll think about when upgrading your characters, resistance to elements is a big thing (quite original elements, by the way), there's no way you'll simply win by pressing the attack button and status change effects and skills feel right.
Equipment is banal, nothing shameful nor impressive, items providing even slightly original passives are the exception rather than the norm, and the difference in power mean you will always just equip the last weapon.
The character system is good. Each character has his or her own skill tree where he can buy passives and active skills, but the two reasons it's good is that these trees are flat enough and that the coins use to buy skills is shared among the characters. Overall I'd say buying a new skill does not make previous skills obsolete, the skills, if nothing outstanding, are fun enough and the cost and power of passives especially feels just right.
You can save everywhere.
It's like an above average SNES JRPG, and it's free so it's cool.
The game is some kind of modern day/occult/surreal/weird thing. Not exactly Earthbound since you play as adults, but like with all games of this kind it's one of the obvious inspiration for sure anyway (main character even use baseball bats). The characters are bearable, which is a praise, it's not a given, and the story works. What does matter in this kind of games is meeting weird things and visiting weird environments, and the game does deliver in this aspect. I won't spoil more. The screenshots are from early to middle parts of the game.
Some of the characters from other worlds speak their own language, that technically you can translate on your own (or so they say, I did not try). Finishing the game will give a way to unlock translation including for new games.
The game was bigger that what I thought ar first, especially after playing only a bit. It's a dungeon crawler first and foremost and a story game second, if you don't like dungeons then you won't like it. Exploration starts meh, while visiting the town the available part is always small, but the more you advances the bigger the dungeons get, and they are eventually the meat of the game.
There is a post-ending dungeon, that I didn't do yet, and very likely some secrets especially at the very end I didn't get either.
The portraits look bad but the monsters look OK and they are generally as weird as you would expect and the sprites and environments look good. The game took some time to make and it's visible, the environments are much more than plain walls, it's not evident at first because during the first parts consist in the towns, samey red dungeons and samey houses but eventually you'll roam through a lot of different environments. I won't go into details but the encounter rate is low and you'll spend a lot of time just exploring cool maps, more than once they took the time to build several weird maps with an inedite tileset you'll travel through without any encounter and just for you to find some item at the end, these parts shows the best how polished the game is in my opinion, no area ever feels lazy.
Not sure about the music, I think there are a lot of different tunes from which only a few of which are original, I played a lot without music (not because I did not like it), and when I played with music sometimes I thought it was cool, sometimes a bit less.
On hardest difficutlty, which I recommend, and taking my sweet time, I died a few times. The flow of the combat feels just right. Your characters as well as monsters have just enough hps, managing your PSI points is just one of the important aspects you'll think about when upgrading your characters, resistance to elements is a big thing (quite original elements, by the way), there's no way you'll simply win by pressing the attack button and status change effects and skills feel right.
Equipment is banal, nothing shameful nor impressive, items providing even slightly original passives are the exception rather than the norm, and the difference in power mean you will always just equip the last weapon.
The character system is good. Each character has his or her own skill tree where he can buy passives and active skills, but the two reasons it's good is that these trees are flat enough and that the coins use to buy skills is shared among the characters. Overall I'd say buying a new skill does not make previous skills obsolete, the skills, if nothing outstanding, are fun enough and the cost and power of passives especially feels just right.
You can save everywhere.
It's like an above average SNES JRPG, and it's free so it's cool.
