Ogre Tale

“I find it very hard to recommend this game. It had everything to be great: improved graphics from Phantom Breaker Overdrive, a less chibi art style, and what looked like a deep combat system akin to Overdrive. Sadly, that is not the case. While the voice acting presentation and graphics of Ogre Tale are among the best in the anime beat 'em up sub-genre, the actual gameplay lacks far too much in variety and quality of life improvements, resulting in a mashing nightmare or, quite simply, boredom.”

“Pressing up jumps, but that's also how you go into some rooms from neutral, so you always jump when trying to enter rooms like the jewelry store from the subway. This isn't mechanically broken, but it's visually weird and feels like something that needs to be polished.”

“The gameplay doesn't truly take off until you learn your special moves, but the enemies and gameplay just aren't interesting. The game is pretty much all based on your equipment rather than focusing on any element of the combat mechanics whatsoever.”

“How these guys create Vanillaware-quality graphics and a distinctive art style with decent combat and then waste it with short and mindless levels easily completed in sub-3 hours with no effort, only that long because it's padded and you might get distracted by side missions hoping for something to do, is just terrible.”

“The art is nice, the music is great, but it is trying too hard to be a Vanillaware game aesthetically and it picked up all the clunky combat along with it. I just wish I had the Phantom Breaker battle system back.”

“If you liked Phantom Breaker, you will probably enjoy this too as they feel very different, but similar in graphics styles.”

“The soundtrack is really solid.”

“Also, sell the soundtrack, please...”

“Whilst the player can freely switch between each character at any time, I would still advise focusing on one character; otherwise, grinding might be necessary as only the character who completes a mission will receive XP.”

“The game is practically self-aware of how tedious its pacing is.”

“Lots of side missions and grinding to do for that 100% completion.”

“The game is not optimized at all, leading to frequent frame drops.”

“I experienced significant lag and stuttering, indicating poor optimization.”

“The lack of optimization makes it nearly unplayable on lower-end systems.”

“Some achievements are buggy, and I ended up using an achievements manager to fix them (slotting a jewel in a weapon never registered), and there are two skills I cannot upgrade because it simply will not register the kills/combos with it.”

“It has its problems, sure, and that's ignoring the glitches which they are working on and mostly fixed. I only had one issue that may have been my own; even so, it's definitely playable. The game, when you get how to play, is great and can be expanded with various scrolls/equipment. Much like others, I wish the scrolls weren't permanent, as it means you get your final weapon and if you scrolled it, you can't really replace it or get a new one unless you can only own one, so you can discard it and regain it, but who would ever risk that?”