Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan

I don't have an option for English? Hard to understand this game at times.

Wanted to like this, but it is just so very tedious and slow. Let me also clarify there, not in the story department, which itself sorta zips along a rather standard JRPG trope route. The setting is very nice, art is unique. The game has a lot of things going for it that makes it stand out. Then you get INTO it and just...ugh. Its almost like fighting itself over how it should be and how its presented. The combat can be very ...interesting, but will be one of the things that makes it so sluggish. Every fight, every time is a drawn out deal. Even after a few hours into the story and your "power up" you dont FEEL powered up. Especially as long as a boss fight can take. Combine with some QoL features that will make you sigh, like some awkward platforming bits in maps to get around in zones to get around to...zones. Its just...slow. That is in the end, as i said at the top, the sad part in the end. You want to like it. From the start you get hooked and then once its in you almost immediately go "Oh, wait...ugh maybe this improves" The art style however is solid, but you can't rest a game entirely on that alone.

It is a JRPG-style beat'em up game with Wakada forever aesthetic ( I know, this one is at least 10 years older than the reference). The hand-painted characters look nice, but not long after the start, they already feel outdated, and the animation style feels like the early 2000s. The gameplay is repetitive and mostly action-oriented button-smashing. It gets old pretty fast.

I backed the Kickstarter for this game over ten years ago and finally got around to playing it, and it is SUPER impressive for a studio's very first game. It's got beautiful art, great character designs, excellent music, and a complex and interesting battle system (that I don't think I was properly engaging with because I mainly just spammed special attacks, haha). But what I really want to gush about is the writing. The thing is, this game is riddled with text errors (unsurprising since the devs are based in Cameroon and the game was written in French). Text overflows, weird word choices, inconsistent spelling of character names, even the occasional code string showing up in dialogue--all stuff that a good localization QA pass would have caught. But in spite of that, the quality of the writing shows through. It manages to clearly explain some pretty galaxy-brain-level concepts, and every character's dialogue is unique and does a great job of conveying their personalities. Enzo and Erine are wonderful protagonists. Best friends since childhood and now a newly-married royal couple who find themselves thrust into situations they are not prepared for, they're both flawed in…

A warrior comes To reclaim his ancient land He guards his own land

The art style and colors doesn't feel quite right, the cutscenes doesn't feel quite right, movement and interactions doesn't feel quite right, the combat just feels wrong. The game isn't fun. Honestly i can't really find anything i like about it.