Solatorobo: Red the Hunter

Probably the most upset I've been that I don't feel like I could score a game higher in quite a while. Everything here is perfectly on point besides the gameplay itself. The story is great--especially in the back half--the music is some of the best on the DS, it's a technical marvel, the characters are super well written and get you to empathize with almost everyone, it got me to actually care about the worldbuilding which is a sign of good worldbuilding--it's so, so much more fully-realized than Tail Concerto [テイルコンチェルト] in functionally every aspect.

But it's just not that fun to play. It's not frustrating like Tail Concerto often is, which is a positive, but it is fairly boring and repetitive and it leaves the game to be carried heavily by all of its other aspects. Aspects which are only partially present in the first half, which made getting the full experience here a bit of a slog. In many ways Solatorobo is a better Xenoblade Chronicles 2 [ゼノブレイド2]--there are frankly enough shared elements here that I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if Takahashi played this and took inspiration--but it still maintains a weirdly lopsided pacing which heavily favors the back half, even if Solatorobo's better in music and character writing and worldbuilding and most things. But maybe the one thing that XB2 does do better than this is, is that it's got a fairly dense combat system which, while not amazing, does a good enough job at holding your attention for however long you've gotta do it, which I just can't say for the simple A-mashy combat in this.

Underbaked gameplay seems to be a common issue for CyberConnect2, which is really sad considering how clearly passionate they are about the Little Tail Bronx series. Any amount of research into the history of the franchise will tell you this, but it really comes through in the work itself, too. I really want to share this passion but for every minute I was enraptured there was probably 5 minutes of me just travelling through a dungeon like I've travelled through every other dungeon so far. This is an issue with frankly most JRPGs, but it is especially prominent here, even with its relatively short runtime compared to its peers at only about 20 hours. Even though the gameplay has a lot of issues here it's a huge improvement from Tail Concerto and if the quality improves the same amount from this to Fuga I'll be very happy, not holding my breath though.

Overall pretty good, but it hurts how incredible this could have been if the gameplay was just a bit better.