[archived from a cohost post, originally made on january 10, 2024]
when I saw the trailer for this game, I wondered if it would be more of a parody than I would be able to put up with, but I was nonetheless intrigued by its pitch. what if a short rpg was a scattered bundle of memories you had to sort through, in the middle of a final battle you couldn't remember the motivations for fighting in?
to make an effective homage to something requires a fairly deep love for it, so you may trim where needed to make your point, and dwell on the parts that need the time. this isn't a love I assume many have when it comes to rpgs. in fact, it's something I have to fight to make space to instill in people a lot of the time.
here, however, the playful nature of the cuts between story beats trims the majority of the mechanical downtime and replaces, for example, the restful breathing of walking back to town to report on a job well done with the differently stressful development of snapping back to the final battle to see what new dangers need your input, or what else could spur your memory's return. it's a short game, clocking in at about 10 hours to 100% it, so it uses its brief runtime to simulate the stronger moments of a longer game with none of the perceived weaknesses of, say, actually needing to fight any of the random encounters, and alternates them with less demanding VN segments that nevertheless ratchet up the tension in facing the Demon Lord.
it still genuinely hits a lot of character moments within that short runtime, though, and while I felt like there could have been a longer "real" version of this game's story and it would still stand up to scrutiny, the presentation gimmick ultimately doesn't hamper the earnest energy it brings to the table.