mqstout: Fast paced? Turn based?
Make up your mind. Anyone going to try it out to consolidate the conflict? Is it just a word? Or does it have turn timers (which is bad), or QTEs or something? All offense and no defense?
It has a lot of things in the "pros" column to check out, but that wording could be a giant "con".
It's been a minute since I played it but I'd say "fast paced turn based" is a pretty accurate way to describe it actually -- it's a very "simple, hot and deep" take on the genre. There's only a couple of basic verbs you have -- bop thing, fling spell at thing, etc. -- so there isn't much choice paralysis. Where the large part of the tension comes from is that you don't quite have action points or a limited number of attacks. The game will happily let you attack an enemy as many times as you want, adding more and more hits onto a chain, doing more and more damage and getting closer and closer to killing that sexy, sexy demon, all the while your risk meter (or whatever it's called, like I said it's been a while) goes up and up, and the higher the risk of you getting a critical fail, which is Really Bad -- at that point it doesn't matter how much HP that demon has, or what you have...you're probably not going to survive the next attack, and you might have, if you'd have stopped attacking and ended your turn without your guard broken.
It is so simple and it is so basic and yet it informs a ton of tactical decisions. There's three enemies and three characters; do you split up and risk chaining a lot of attacks, taking them all out in a turn but getting killed if you miss, or do you play it safe and gang up on them? The animations and movement/attack speed is very quick, and since the game less about selecting from a large number of options and more about picking how much of your chosen option you want to do, it really does feel like a much quicker-paced iteration of the SRPG. I hesitate to say "arcadey" in case that might turn you off, and I hesitate to say "elegant" because that might make you laugh, but it's the kind of game that takes a relatively limited number of pieces and does exponentially more with them that you'd expect. I'd say it's minimalist, but there are three billion levels, character design options up the wazoo, a colorful presentation, and just the hugest bara tiddies everywhere, so I don't know if that's necessarily appropriate.
The level design is also one of the games greatest unsung strengths -- honestly my biggest problem with the game is that there was *too much* of it. If I remember right there are three major areas and I just completely run out of steam in the second after doing a couple of dozen levels. None of them are phoned in, and they're all varied -- some are arenas, some are mazes full of monsters, some are exploration heavy, and most have some kind of gimmick or twist. It could have easily been split into three different games, or some DLC. So many of these games the levels are randomized, or just functional, or little more than a field for the combat to take place on, and that's not the case here at all.
There's also a party management layer that I don't quite remember, but you do grow your party in different ways (no classes, a series of stats that everyone has in common that you'll eventually diversify, I don't remember if there were perks) and there's some social link kind of system that I don't remember too well either, but it's there if you like that.
Honestly I did buy the game because, you know, sexy werewolves, and I didn't really expect much of it -- it surprisingly turned out to be one of the most interesting SRPGs I've ever played, and I'd highly recommend it if you're a fan of the genre.
