Masquerada: Songs and Shadows

The game is good from the audiovisual perspective, but fails when it comes to player engagement and gameplay, which is walking from quest marker to quest marker and listening to dialogue.

i played this game once, years ago, and thought it was solid but nothing to write home about. but now that i'm playing it again, i'm finding the game a lot more enjoyable than i remember the voice acting is great, the characters are charismatic, the music is wonderful, and the pacing feels good so far. be sure to read the lore notes, they add so much to the world and the characters that the game won't feel the same if you skip them. the levels are mostly linear, but i honestly prefer that in a story-centric game rather than ruining the pace of the game by looking for things in every alley i come across (or risk missing out on important stuff). there's also no gearing system to worry about; which also means you don't have to spend time looting enemies after every fight, and no inventory/resource management either - once again, helping the pace of the game. combat is good, imo. there are plenty of cool skills to play around with, but air MC felt very limited compared to the other elements. the companion AI is functional but the setup options are quite limited, and they stand in AOEs if you don't manually move them away; there are also no options to auto-pause during combat, but th…

Pretty fun game with some awkward segments, such as the story feeling a little rushed. Worth a try on a sale.

9.5/10 (10/10 for Kalden if you're LGBT or care about LGBT narratives) Seriously underrated game. Too bad the developer went defunct. The graphics, artistic design, and music are all top notch - easily AAA in my opinion. The game is a real visual treat to play, with vibrant colors that pop, enemy design that is unique, and a soundtrack that is one of the most memorable I've heard since my playthrough of Nier Automata. The characters were all very well written, believable, and evolve in meaningful ways that make you become attached to them, and the game is fully voiced with amazing voice cast that really brings the game to life. They even managed to make the NPCs feel more alive and personal than most games, creating the sense your character actually has history with each of the characters in an emotional way, even if you don't get to see their full history, which is rare in my experience. Lastly, the artistic design of the outfits was superb. I wish other games had such interesting wardrobe design - a colorful fusion of French Renaissance with masquerade masks to accent the costumes. Of particular note, the story felt completely new and original. There were small ele…

This is a fun game. Highlights from me were definitely the voice acting and the soundtrack. Gameplay was fun, art and story were overall really good discounting some minor nitpicks. World building was pretty interesting, though most of it was unfortunately delivered via codex entries. Most of the main cast is charming and interesting in their own ways. Something to know would be that story is linear and combat is bit simpler than typical crpg fan might expect. The environments are really pretty but there is not much reason to explore them which is a shame.

Gameplay is kinda like Diablo but extremely streamlined and straightforward. Main draw is the story, setting, and character arcs. Also, major kudos for how they time the text advance--it matches up to voice lines almost perfectly which is rare.