peak ngl
Reviews for "The DEGENING"
This game feels like it's from the late 2000's/early 2010's. i mean this statement in a mostly good way, and in a bad way. art style is amateurish, but charming. fights are at just the right difficulty, i died enough that it felt like a challenge, but didn't feel unfair. unfortunately, this game suffers from the issue that a lot of old online games have. It's Transphobic. (and might be racist, the black character designs were a bit off, but nothing i could put my finger on.) I can't fault the game too hard on this, as even pico's school had quite a few questionable designs, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. however, the gameplay is what matters most, and it was a lot of fun!
very fun. the fights were challenging enough that it wasnt obnoxious if you lost and had to restart. the gameplay is simple enough. under the assumption that we're meant to be saving the city from a furry convention, or something. because of the art style and general aesthetic i was holding my breath for questionable joke or two, but i was pleasantly surprised. the looping music to some might seem grating, but iirc thats a trope of old flash games, so i think its fitting to incorporate that. if the story could be fleshed out a little more that would be cool. i had to put the pieces together myself, which sucks but overall this game is a great time waster. thanks :3
Stuck in the hotel fight because there's no way to grind after beating the church. Only having opportunities for the player to grind before they actually get stuck is bad game design, especially with no respec option. The rest function also seems pointless because there's no reason not to rest after every fight, it just wastes time going back to a rest spot.
Okay, I did beat it after finding the secret yellow vouchers, but still. If I hadn't lost a couple times in the church fight the final fight would have been unwinnable.
Jin responds:
Respec and save/load added!
Huh, not too shabby of an RPG! Certainly quite nostalgic as I liked peeping the references and all that jazz, but more so than that, what impressed me was how well-constructed the game is! Wouldn't have expected it considering how goofy the game looks, but the mechanics felt very intuitive due to informative tooltips, and the strategy and depth of the combat evolved nicely as you get new party members and get introduced to more and more unique enemy types. Usually I expect these RPGs to just devolve into mashing attack, but I really got into target prioritization, stunning to delay enemy attacks, debuffs, healing, and so on!
Now, it ain't all sunshine and rainbows. For one, as much as I say that there was strategy and depth to the combat, sometimes it did really feel up to luck as I had plenty of fights where I was just unlucky enough to have all the monsters focus down one of my guys instead of splitting their damage, or spamming all their best moves instead of waiting. Also was really bad when you get stuck on a fight and have no opportunity to respec your vouchers to try and fix it, instead having to restart all over. Was also really annoying and repetitive to go back and forth between the rest points for every fight. Was also a bummer that there is no save/load system!
Nevertheless, despite my first playthrough being quite rocky, I just had to come back to this and ended up beating it, so well done on making a short and sweet adventure!