After three decades of gaming, this is the game I wish I could play again for the first time more than any other. Simple yet challenging souls-like combat wrapped in a cozy vibrant aesthetic that evoked feelings of wonder and nostalgia I was surprised I could even still experience from modern titles.

Do yourself a favor and go into this one blind. Knowledge is literal power in this world and the feeling of accomplishment from solving the multitude of puzzles seamlessly embedded in the environment is unfortunately a one-time experience that should not be missed.

Not a genre I normally play, but the masterclass in animation and storytelling on display here was absolutely worth branching out. This is basically an entire award-worthy superhero comedy series tied together with a passable dispatching minigame (and hacking miniminigame) between scenes. The actual dispatch gameplay is seamlessly integrated into the narrative and interesting enough to not get stale the first time through. All the characters feel and interact like real people, and the resulting humor is phenomamal throughout.

Now for the bad: the biggest negative here is replay value. If you want to make an alternative choice and see the results, you need to first copy your save (which will otherwise have progress deleted when you select a previous scene - it warns you about this) and then replay the entire game from that point. You cannot speed-up or skip cutscenes you've already seen. You cannot avoid doing all the dispatching sections again. You must re-experience the entire game from that point whether you want to or not. With a game over six hours long, this is... not ideal. On the plus side, the choices you make have interesting enough consequences for this to become an issue in the first place.

Replay value aside, the only other negative I can think of barely worth mentioning is that episode 4 randomly opens with a fairly unnecessary sex scene that can make viewing with certain audiences potentially awkward (and the game's "visual censorship" setting does not really help you here). Nudity exists elsewhere as well, but it's less explicitly sexual and more directly relevant to the plot and/or played for comedy.

Overall the game is incredible at what it does, and its only significant issue solely affects subsequent playthroughs. As someone who was on the fence myself, I strongly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested.