Willow Guard

A clear homage to The Witcher, with anthropomorphic animals and a cozy yet gritty rustic 2d artstyle in all that is character and world interaction and retro pixelated dungeon crawler in all that is action gameplay. Pretty awesome! Unfortunately all this potential ends up being squandered due to a pletora of issues. One would expect this game to try and capture monster hunter vibes regarding gameplay. You get your tools that you make from resources you gather up from hunted monsters, to hunt more monsters with them. So, you expect the way you kill monsters is to take them on one on one or in small groups, ducking and weaving between them throwing calculated attacks of all kinds left and right as resourcefully as possible. And that IS what the game delivers...in the first half. Later on in the game, the gameplay shifts to an EXTREMELY different one. A Vampire Survivors type bullet hell, where in you run away in circles from hordes of cpu breaking amounts of monsters that constantly cover the area in hitboxes, as you deal chip damage to them all little by little until you finish them all (which is boring and uninteresting and doesn't deliver on the intended fantasy) except you actual…

If you love dialogue choices with consequences AND you like deck building as an RPG system... Look no further! Willow Guard is exactly as MiTale advertised: Story first, game serves story. The way it should always be ;)

I'm still playing through Willow Guard, but so far, I'm enjoying it! The game has an investigative side where you will navigate the world and uncover clues/evidence, unravel your character's & the world's past, and form relations with other inhabitants of the world. You can choose how you wish to act based on 4 personality types, with each impacting characters differently. Investing in certain personalities unlocks abilities to use in combat, too. As a fan of the Ace Attorney series, these parts of the game reminded me of it. What makes investigations more complicated than simply pointing-and-clicking is having to manage your Focus. You only get so many during each time of day (but certain actions can refresh this number) and each node you investigate in locations costs a certain amount of Focus. These can cost a lot of focus and limit what you can do in one day, but as you progress further into your personalities, you'll find neat perks like reduced Focus costs to investigate. Make good choices, manage daylight well, and unravel the truths of the world! Combat definitely comes with a learning curve. The controls are simple and easy to understand, but the difficulty comes fr…

After having just beaten Willow Guard, my experience with the game can be summited by "Missed Chances" The game is on a very strict timer, you only have so many days to burn through before the end game is upon you, and it is exceptionally easy to reach that point woefully unprepared. Throughout your adventure you will be teased by various puzzles that you lack the resources to attempt. It is next to impossible to anticipate which puzzles just require more in game progress to unlock, and which will vanish the moment you complete a "dungeon" never to be accessible again. There are also many barriers that require specific elemental cards to be in your deck in order to unlock them; fire for the vines, magic for purple force fields, and explosives for cracks in the walls. You are not informed in game that you are able to pass these barriers until near the very end of the game, at which point all of your chances to access those earlier missed opportunities are well and truly gone. If you don't know ahead of time what items you will need for each dungeon, you will miss out on content. If you dont start certain quest lines in time, you will also be locked out of their content (namely the…

A small hack and slash story focused game with animal monster hunters. Choices do feel like they matter and you can tell a lot of love went into this game and its lore. The criticisms on the gameplay are valid as cycling through tools needed to solve puzzles and also running out of specific tools is an issue. EX: I crafted magical fire arrows by combining my magical arrows and fire materials. I had thought "magical fire arrows" would count as both magical and fire in terms of solving puzzles that require "magical" arrows. This was NOT the case and I was soft locked out of some puzzles because I no longer had "magical" arrows. This meant I had to go through most of the game without magical arrows to complete certain puzzles until I RNG rolled another set of the magical arrow crafting card. Near the end game. There was also a strange bug that locked me out of equipping items / abilities. This meant I was locked out of completing certain puzzles. This was after I unlocked full willow guard gear, so not sure if that set's passive was causing issues? Even with all the bugs and issues, this game is still worth a play through as the characters are cool & cute and the story was p…

The first half of the game is genuinely great RPG. The second half unintentionally turns into a sloppy bullet‑hell grind. I like bullet‑hell games, but this isn't supposed to be one. Enemy types may have distinct moves and weaknesses, yet none of that matters when they swarm you in huge clusters. You quickly find yourself repeatedly trying to land a few hits on the blob of enemies, then sprint away while dodging nonstop melee and ranged attacks. Gets even worse when the its a cluster of ranged enemies whose attack is basically a shotgun blast. And if you’re unlucky enough not to roll a poison/bleed card, armored enemies become a complete slog. Resulting with you being stuck kiting them until your meter fills and you can roll again. Over and over again.