Inferno

This past weekend I played this game on my stream.
Overall, it seems to be the quintessential RPG Maker game, flaws and all.

The game begins with a seemingly thoughtful inclusion of a "I'm not sure" option when asked to set your difficulty for the game...except, it does nothing. It doesn't act as an option to explain the difficulty options, it doesn't do anything intelligent to check the player's competency to set the skill level appropriately, it doesn't do anything. It seems to merely act as a "Button-Mash Prevention" system. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with it other than just being typical weird RM jank. It wasn't well considered or well thought out, it just exists as a hack to stop players from making an incorrect selection.

This type of weird RM jank just runs through the blood of the game.

Dialogue uses *asterisk* uwu *asterisk* text to pantomime actor's actions, rather than taking the time to draw different expressions for their bust art or to animate the sprites to convey the action.

After experiencing the dialogue, you'll find that you have 5 party members to start. I suppose I appreciate cutting right to the chase, but it makes it rather difficult to get to grips with each party member's strengths and weakness and find their role within combat. It's a lot of information to juggle right at the start. None of this is aided by the fact that there is no tutorial for the combat. Though, honestly, perhaps the developers felt it wasn't necessary since it seems to use a barely-modified default RM combat system. Skills have basically moon-runes as their description that mean nothing to the new player, so not only is there a missing tutorial, but just trying to use the information provided via the system is utterly alienating to anyone unfamiliar with whatever the devs were thinking.

Finally, as with many RM games, there are a ton of inconsistencies within the game's own logic. For example: At one point you're told not to go near the cracks in the floor because they are dangerous (as an aside; this serves no purpose for the game - the cracks don't deal damage or anything). However, later, you encounter an obstacle: a crack in the ground. The solution? Jump over it, of course. However, there are tons of cracks on the ground throughout the entire game, but those are impassable tiles, you cannot jump over them.
At one point, the characters panic "Oh no! These boulders are in the way!" and the main character says, "NP, I can punch'em to death". Was this tutorializing that you can clear boulders that are in your way? No, of course not. Outside of this cutscene, that interaction means nothing. Any boulders you come across while playing cannot be interacted with and they will just impede your path.

I think some of this stuff would be pretty easy to overlook were it not for the fact that this game is a commercial game, with some weird business practices around distribution. Speaking of inconsistencies: their website seems like a scam when you can buy the game not on sale for half the price on Steam or Itch, but if you buy it from their website you have to pay double. It's just such a weird decision since it seems like the core player base for these games are people who are familiar with this company and the games they make, meaning the people who are most likely to check their website. So it almost looks like they are taking advantage of their biggest fans by charging them the most money for the game.

If you'd like to watch my experience with your game, I've linked the archive below. You can click the timestamps to jump to when I start playing your game. Prior to playing the game I also did a deep dive into the company's website and business practices. That portion of the video can also be found in the timestamps.