an incredibly "eye-opening" experience if you catch my drift :-))

really comes at you hard and fast with its oppressive baton pass of wildly varying moody-ist pleading with the player in its calmly authoritative speaking voice, plus thematic beats that go in orchestrated directions. these can range from the seven cardinal sins, ego death, to less archetypally abstract points of interest such as trick-or-treating skeletons!

possibly my one game to conquer them all, so to speak. i love the characters so much and the locales of gaia in general; truly mwah

cool dungeon crawler, this. play it!

if you've ever felt uncomfortable in your own skin being and appearing in the corporeal visage your warbling globule of a consciousness conforms to, and also strived to amend that veritable discomfort out a palliative and therapeutic pity but risked losing your sense of anchorage and homeward-ness because nobody except for a chance meeting with another like yourself offered a surefire way forward -- then play this game. it's one that sticks with you to the grave.

meh, not entirely unplayable, but not the survival horror fare you'd typically expect out of early fifth gen titles either. it's unique for sure, though i do wish such games spoonfed you clues to puzzles way less. great thematic throughline though, with it sticking faithfully to the Cthulhu mythos as afforded by the "genius" of HP Lovecraft. but of course, liberties with the veracity of some expository elements indebted to worldbuilding had to be taken. but, again, that's possibly the least of its aims here.

tirelessly toiling away in the "i haven't a care in the world and i strive to resolve all lifelike scenarios in my periphery through a self-imposed pact of nonaggression and humanitarian deeds" pastures while also showing those who are similarly inclined the ropes...!

great movement mechanics. i enjoyed wandering the different areas wondering whether or not i've already explored them. who knew not implementing a map toggle-switch into the game at launch (configurable as of the newest patch) would work so much wonders for player ingenuity and for you to truly test how well you know your bearings when only periodically and subconsciously scanning your position relative to the environment in-game?

a dizzying display of neon colors and rays

it just hit me that i've been secretly feening for phal-

played the Mint route only. the game's brilliant as-is, with touches of chainable elemental magic which you can use in synergy with one another to overcome puzzles and one-on-one npc encounters. often bossfighty in nature though, most of them. once you activate an event there's no way you can back out of it unless you die and keep using up all your revival coins or restart the game from your last save point.

played stages 1 through 6 on easy; therefore not the full experience. left shoulder button on my controller's busted and i don't really feel like going through the hassle of remapping the keybinds. i'll complete it someday; from what i've played it's been really cool. really gotta nail the rhythmic flow of a lot of verses and one misclick can completely derail your clean streak

loved every moment of my (mostly blind) playthrough! the characters were lively and energetic and full of embodied humanity (i liked Yoshika the most, her bond with Boku was especially heartwarming to me) and the breadth of interactiveness present in the game ran the full mile of fun; from tight-lining with smaller rods and fishing for rare fish up in the mountains to engaging in bug battles with the siblings, there's no shortage of things to do with each passing day of Boku's summer vacation!