OFF

A post-modern RPG like Undertale, before Undertale. But unlike Undertale, it's a very grim, sickening, and filthy world with a negative message. It has perfect dark ambient music that works very well outside the context of the game, and an eerie, pale colored, and highly stylized visual design. It's the antithesis to Undertale. You kill everything and never bother to ask yourself why until it's too late.

OFF is a very influencial indie JRPG like game. It basically anticipated all the undertales, meta themes and weirdness that a whole bunch of indie darlings would follow. It was first released in french, and by the work of its cult fans it got translated in english. Unfortunatly, OFF just isnt all that fun to play by itself.

The game at times feels designed to be frustrating. Its gameplay can be divided into combat and exploration. Combat is a very very simple JRPG turnbased combat system, and the majority of the combat you can get through it by toggling the auto mode. The designs of the enemy creatures are often interesting, but the way you interact with them in combat is always the same, meaning deal the most amount of damage in as little time as you can. You get some RPG systems in place like leveling up and acessing new abilities, as well as finding new equipment to wear. But most equipment tends to be a direct upgrade over the previous, so there is no build variety or any thought involved.

Exploration is the other big aspect of the game. Throughout the various zones you need to explore the locales in order to advance the story, and this is done mostly by solving puzzles at various roadblocks. Unfortunatly these puzzles tend to be off the worst kind, like memorizing a lot of codes from previous areas, others are illogical logic puzzles, and quite a few are annoying to complete even if you already have the solution. I resorted to a guide multiple times because i just wanted to see how the story progressed, and i've very little patience for the brand of frustrating puzzles that the game offers.

Visually its very simple, but some of its more surrealistic moments are memorable for sure, as well as how it distorts the navigation of the player character.

The main strong point of the game is definitly the story, but it only really starts to open up in the final third. The beginning and middle of the game is really way too abstract and weird for you to get attached to the story, but the ending can really be an emotional punch once you understand whats happening. Is it worth preservering through all the dull combat and annoying puzzles? Im not so sure.

OFF is a very good and unique game. The soundtrack and art style are strikingly good and also out there (I listen to the soundtrack almost daily), the characters are often quirky and unique (though they get progressively more messed up as the game goes on), the zones are cool on their own, and the world is very interesting though I do wish it was more concrete.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The biggest thing I love about this game is how the world can be interpreted. My personal interpretation is that Hugo, the boy you kill at the end of the game, is a young and terminally ill boy who has been suffering from a large variety of sicknesses since he was a baby (explaining the creepy and offputting nature of the world, as he can’t fathom what the outside world is like). The Elsens are people who he sees through the window, and the zone guardians are nurses, trying to constantly deal with different issues that he seems to suffer from. The Queen is a representation of both of his parents - people who are fighting to keep him alive. The Batter is the final stage of his illness (probably cancer), which kills the spectres (the small flashes of illness that, while plaguing him, don’t kill him) and begins to destroy his world (“purifying” him), leaving him without the flashes of illness but also causing his body to be left without any of the personality or function it had before. Eventually, the two endings represent how it goes - with the Judge, he doesn’t die, but he is left pretty much fundamentally disabled (hence the names of the Judge’s moves) and will probably never recover. With the Batter, he dies from his illness.

What is so ingenious about this game is how unassuming it appears. The graphics are remarkably simplistic, even for a homemade rpg. It is immediately quirky, fairly surreal, and definitely packed with some subtle but pervasive critiques of basically every aspect of the post-modern, post-industrial world.

But it wasn't until the credits were rolling that I realized this was more than just some quirky, cerebral, indie rpg. I think this game is better experienced than explained, but when you hear "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," you'll realize what this game is actually about, and that realization will stay with you for a long time.

I finally found the balls to finish this game. What a masterpiece.
Whenever I talk about OFF, I always mention the mood first. Its world is relatively monochromatic, the only colors being whatever the ground and walls are - and it's usually the came bright yellow, green, pink, or blue. Sometimes there is red, as well.
The one-note worlds are added to by the uncompromising artstyle of enemies - think January, various Burnts, of which my favorite is the Critic-Burnt. I still hear him screaming for help... and the Whales. The Secretaries are the ones I hate the most.
Not to mention the memorable characters, either, the shopkeep Zacharie, the Judge in his cat-form, and all the bosses to the various zones. Especially Valérie.
All in all, OFF is not a nice game for cute children. OFF is a harrowing experience that you will never forget. Do not show this game to children.

10/10 game, would replay! But only if I had the emotional readiness needed.

Off is a fascinating and relatively short post-modern RPG maker game that really sets the stage for a lot of it's predecessors. Coming out in an era before he concept of an "Earth bound inspired depressing RPG maker game" was as common as it was today, I can comfortably say I was surprised with how fascinating this game is and how much I enjoyed it bar one portion of the game.

On its whole there's not really a reason NOT to check this game out. The sound track is incredible, battles while being a tad tedious, can be auto'd through and never really reach a stage where I'd call them difficult, and each character/boss-fight is incredibly memorable.

The story was... well it was something! But by no means was it bad, but there wasn't an incredible amount of "depth" from my singular playthrough. While I have no doubt there can be more to suck out of this game from closer analysis and deeper exploration I am incredibly burnt out and would probably sooner kill a man than play through Zone 3s pattern puzzle again.

All in all, I liked this game quite a lot. A good 5-6 hours long across a handful of days will be enough to finish at least one full play of the game.