Recent reviews by TMA-2

This goes back to the tried-and-true 2.5D style pioneered by the first two titles, while keeping some of the elements introduced by Trine 3 (the lower-rated 3D one). Namely, things like Zoya (the thie— err, "entrepreneur") grappling onto rings instead of wood, being able to pull objects around and connect them, Amadeus (the wizard) being able to move while levitating, and imo one of the best changes — not having to draw boxes to conjure them, instead selecting them from an inventory of sorts, much like Zoya and Pontius change their weapon.

However, some things that are lacking since Trine 2: Pontius' hammer, Zoya's over-loaded shooting ability, wall jumping (!) which makes Zoya feel far less agile, instead replacing it with pre-determined handrails you grab and jump from. However, you cannot use the grappling hook with them, which feels ridiculous. This is unfortunately carried over to Trine 5, as well.

The story is much more involved, and like 3, has full, well-acted cutscenes and stronger characterization (especially compared to 2), but it also doesn't feel like a bloated AAA game. It still retains an "indie spirit" if that makes any sense. The voice acting, of course, is on-point as it pretty much always is, with the characters feeling more fully-realized than ever. That was one thing Trine 3 got right, as did 2.

Another thing that has returned, fortunately, is upgrading, similar to Trine 2, in the form of a skill tree you can spend XP on (which means Zoya's fire arrows and Pontius' charged sword are back, plus many other interesting abilities). There's also an increased focus on multiplayer, especially local, but I didn't explore that side much.

Technically, you also no longer have a launcher (thank god), instead booting directly into the game, with a varied and useful options menu. The game is just as amazing-looking as Trine 3, with increased fidelity of character models and plenty of impressive vistas in the background, with a dynamic camera that changes angle as needed to focus on a puzzle, a fight, or to just barely draw your attention to collectible or XP bauble at the edge of the screen.

Easily the weakest element for me, however, is how the fights happen. Instead of enemies spawning at certain locations, or running into them, there are set triggers where you're locked into a Super Smash Bros-style screen with floating platforms and a certain number of enemies that spawn in you must kill before you're allowed to progress. This stinks in my humble opinion, and feels overly "gamey" compared to encountering enemies in the wild, or just having more room to work with while taking them out.

One other small change that could go either way is the loss of visible checkpoints. You no longer regain health and save at the blue (or orange) checkpoints as in Trine 1-3, opting instead for regenerating health and only knowing a checkpoint has occurred when you see "Saving..." appear in the corner. Otherwise, they're entirely invisible. Personally, this is a con for me, as even though the levels flow well, they're still cut up into discrete sections with X amount of XP and this or that collectible to find.

If you liked any of the prior Trine titles, I guarantee you'll like this one, and if you like 2.5D one-third-platformer, physics puzzle, and brawler games, you'll certainly like this. However, since all the games (even 3) are so good, I'd recommend starting with the first, as although each game has its own self-contained story, there is some small amount of continuity carried over, and playing through them in order as I've been doing, has added to the enjoyment when there's a callback or reference to an earlier event.

I decided to take a chance despite the negative reviews, and got burned. Mazes (seriously), broken maps, dubious artwork, all for one idiotic fetch quest. Caveat emptor.

Without having seen all the endings (but at least the major ones that involve sacrificing yourself or Mollie and either sticking with it or backing out), I really enjoyed this. I'm not sure I want to see any other endings, though, even for completion, as the former two were difficult enough, to say nothing of the latter (unthinkable!). So, it's probably going to make you cry if you're given to that, as it's majorly bittersweet in most aspects, made more so in how relatable I think most people will find the characters. However, unlike many narrative-heavy games, it earns those moments of joy or sadness by not having any deus ex machinas or last-minute revelations to set things right or wrong — just flawed people trying to make the best of a terrible situation that they aren't responsible for creating. You're given a pretty wide range of decisions — possibly a little too wide at times, as I think the number of choices could be cut down slightly — in guiding Cora through her various challenges.

But, due to the variety of choices you're given, it has high replayability. And the choices you make almost entirely feel that they lead up to a given outcome, making them feel more "real" (i.e. "you got this outcome because that's exactly what you chose"), which fortunately skirts what can often feel like nonsense logic in many VNs (i.e. "you got outcome Z because you chose A! isn't that a great twist?").

The downside to placing such a narrative-heavy game in an RPG engine, instead of a more conventional VN engine like RenPy is that text doesn't skip nearly as quickly, and save for saves (pardon the bad pun), if you wish to see multiple endings or especially to get all achievements, you'll be watching unskippable cutscenes and credits many times over. Fortunately, the quality of writing and pacing makes it worth the minor effort in seeing how your choices affect the story. It never feels like it drags or speeds ahead without time to digest the events.

Speaking of effort, the one real negative I have to give it is the lack of controller support. It's simple enough to re-map controls to make it compatible, but you shouldn't have to. The controls are dead-simple: Accept/Interact, Back, Pause, and move. The B button is already recognized as Back, so I'm not sure why A isn't recognized as Accept/Interact. A relatively small downside, but it's more effort on all players to map controls than for the developer to just support controllers from the start.

On the visuals, the engine is definitely put to good use with lazily moving cloud shadows outdoors, dust motes, dynamic lighting and weather effects, blowing leaves, and foley to match. The tilesets and sprites are pretty much all recognizable at first glance, and don't detract from the gravitas of the story playing out amongst them. However, I did find it a little hard to believe that the inside of Cora's house is as big as it is given how tiny the exterior is. Perhaps it's a House of Leaves situation that is just never pointed out. I'll let it slide, as realism isn't the focus here anyway.

The voiced partial dialogue ("so...", "um...", affirmatives and negatives, etc.) is delivered well, and during a later scene at their last supper when they're crying together after a heated conversation over what to do, quite uncomfortable in the best way. It'd be amazing to play through a fully-voiced version, but also more difficult to experience, I'm sure.

I'm looking forward to playing more titles from this developer, although I think a more typical VN format would serve the story, and how it's experienced, a bit more. The times the RPG movement is utilized for gameplay are very few, although due to the aforementioned quality of visuals, there is a certain nostalgic cuteness to a lot of it. If you're a yuri fan, this is a (bittersweet) must-play, and the bitter is relatively tame compared to other titles I've played (Symbiotic Love, for instance). However, due to the aforementioned wealth of options, I'd say it's a definite ought-to-play for just about any fan of narrative-focused games with fully-realized, humanistic characters who aren't so much tripped up by external circumstances as by their reaction to them.

Utterly fantastic, especially for what I gather is essentially the first major release from a single developer doing everything other than the music (which is also good, and fits the atmosphere and story perfectly). Like most cyberpunk, it has very strong Blade Runner influences which it wears on its sleeve, right down to the central themes of AI, sentience, autonomy, and transhumanism, There's also a pretty strong neo-noire influence, especially in the protagonist's emotional journey through the story. Plus, it's yuri, which is usually a strong bet I'll play it. But it also didn't feel forced, i.e. "every girl in this just happens to be gay, what are the odds." The relationship that develops feels organic and is incredibly heartwarming.

The artwork has a rough, worn, sketched look, which uses a very limited color palette of mostly grays and tons of electric-looking reds with fantastic noire-like use of stark lighting and plenty of dramatic shadows which really matches the feel of the world. It's clear the developer/artist didn't overextend themselves trying to do more than necessary, which is still a lot. I can't wait to see how they've improved in the next title -- and there had better be one!

In terms of choices during gameplay, I got the bad ending the first time through, as I didn't see where the story was going, and didn't trust who I believed to be the antagonist given their actions early on. I may be slow on the uptake, but I genuinely didn't see where it was going until about a third of the way through, and was still surprised by how all the threads connected later on, especially in the epilogue. Fortunately, there aren't a huge number of choices for the length, and they make sense in how they affect the ensuing events.

The ambient, pulsing soundtrack (synth-heavy, naturally) really pulls everything together and heightens the immersion, never outstaying its welcome. Tall order for me, as I often play VNs late at night, falling asleep while they're still running... explaining the 20+ hours I have logged for this. I've grown irritated of many BGM tracks in my time due to this habit, which inadvertently makes a pretty good test for how quickly they lose their flavor.

In summation, if you enjoy VNs, cyberpunk, neo-noire, yuri, or any one of those discrete elements alone or in combination... this is a must-play. It's a little on the short side, but with the two endings and fairly meaty epilogue, it's still worth it, on sale or not.

Amazing job, Radi Art.

cute, short (~3-4hr) yuri-centric retro platformer with an oddball story told via VN-style cut-scenes, marred only by pretentious dialogue. the nostalgic game play, pixel art, and chill music are all very well-executed. certainly worth the asking price -- even more so if it's on sale or you're a fan of the genre, or yuri.

along the way, you fight various youkai, zombies, swordsmen, etc. as well as automated security turrets both stationary and mobile. the character movement isn't as perfectly dialed-in as other modern 2D platformers (Super Meat Boy, Celeste, et. al), but definitely feels true to the 8 and 16-bit era it draws from, before the days of easily-implemented physics engines. the difficulty curve is pretty well-done too, with new climbing elements, hazards (mostly floor spikes and aforementioned turrets), and enemies presented each chapter, building on those previously introduced. it never struck me as either unfairly punishing or easy, although a higher difficulty mode (or extra DLC levels) might be welcome additions if anything further is planned for it.

the story-with-a-story B-plot is almost entirely forgettable, and feels largely inserted as a means for the characters to go from point A to point B, i.e. "to get in the building of Evil Corporation, you'll need a keycard. that's located in the building next door on the 17th floor restroom. to get onto the 17th floor (the elevator is broken, you see), you'll need another keycard. that's located on the 11th floor office. to get into the office, you'll need another key (...)" ad nauseum.

on the other hand, the A-plot involving the player character, Fumika, and her love interest, Ayumi, had me rooting for their happy ending, despite the latter essentially being sudden girlfriend appearance, and having severe aloof manic pixie syndrome on top of being overly-verbose and quasi-philosophical in every other line -- although to be fair, a lot of this is at least partially explained later. the romance feels like it develops a mite too quickly given Fumika is supposed to be fairly reserved, and has never met Ayumi before (iirc). but within what I can only gather is a couple hours in-game, she's ready to confess. despite this, the story does have some interesting twists and turns, as well as some interesting meta-referential concepts brought up.

which leads to the largest issue: the writing. the word used most often here seems to be 'pretentious,' and I'm inclined to agree. most major characters feel like they're written with the same voice, using overly-long, flowery and often stilted sentences with plenty of alliteration, puns, and wordplay. all of which served to make the dialogue nigh-impenetrable less than halfway through, at which point I often found my eyes glazing over and skimming large chunks to get the gist which would have been better served by much fewer words. I can't tell if the developer has chuunibyou (it certainly comes through in Ayumi's dialogue), logorrhea, or both. much of the back-and-forth is between the aforementioned two characters, and after a while feels like a single person having an internal dialogue.

over the course of the romance, there are also a decent handful (no pun intended) of mildly enjoyable softcore ero scenes, albeit nothing shown is more racy than nipples and non-explicit digital-genital contact with the uncensor patch. in the default version, the images are further covered and thereby the actions more implied, although everything is described in excruciating detail. the narration in these scenes is possibly the most eye-rolling of all.

the graphics and artwork are relatively simple, but everything is clean, uncluttered, and easy to identify at a glance, which within the limited resolution and color palette is an absolute must. it's just too bad the same less-is-more approach wasn't taken with the writing. at least given the overall length, it doesn't overstay its welcome.