![]() ![]() Square Enix may be pretty hit and miss with their games, but they almost always hit the mark with the music. Take not I did not 100% the game, just played through the worlds, did some extras, and then game over. It took about 20 hours on stream for me to beat it, which is a reasonable amount of time. As of this moment, I have not read the novel though admittedly I am curious, and will probably shell out the money at some point. Therefore, the only way to truly get the complete story is to buy the novel. Sure, it is cute, but the game’s over at that point. You do get to see how the people you helped interact with one another… in the credits. The opening cutscene shows how your character found Balan and his theater, and how you defeated the bad guy but… not much else. There isn’t an overarching story that ties the world’s together, just bits and pieces scattered throughout. Each world had a self-contained scenario of a specific world’s troubled person, such as a tornado destroying all your crops to your classmates thinking you’re weird for liking bugs. There actually is a story, but it was released as a stand alone novel that you had to pay another $10 for. The story for Balan’s is basically non-existent… kind of. You did it! Now do it perfectly to count! I played the Switch version however and I’ve heard it runs the worst so I am curious how the others versions play. ![]() Lastly, I did have some slowdown and just chugging while playing Balan. Which, while it looks really cool, isn’t necessary for anything to beat the game. Drops – by the way – are little gems you get throughout the worlds as you play them and feed them to the bird like Tim’s who work for you and make your hub world have more and more pieces to the Rube Goldberg contraption. The better solution would be to give you the Balan statue as long as you didn’t miss any inputs and increase the amount of drops you get for perfect inputs. But to tie something like this behind a QTE is aggravating, especially if you want to try again because you need to beat the boss and then get back to that specific bout in that specific world. The statue helps to unlock additional worlds as there are regular Balan statues that don’t require Balan’s Bout. Speaking of 100%, you’d better get all the QTE’s 100% correct because if you get anything less than a perfect on a single input, you won’t get your Balan statue. ![]() Balan’s Bout aren’t necessarily required to complete the game, but they certainly help and are required if you’re going for 100%. Now, while the costumes were the most egregious, we do still need to talk about the Balan’s Bouts. Some of the costumes you can find, I fully recommend stocking Frost Fairy. An actual hit point system would have helped the game’s playability instead of losing the costumes you needed to complete the levels. Why, game, why? Why make that a feature? It’s not fun to go back to a previous part of the level and regrab a costume, or have to stock up on a useful/needed costume for later. Also – let’s not forget that I lost my costume when I got hit. If each costume had a jump button in addition to that costume’s gimmick? That would have saved the game a lot of issues right then and there. I actually encountered a scenario where I wasn’t wearing a jumping costume and had to get hit in order to revert back to human to regain my jump. However, some of the worst costumes were the ones that had a specific role or impeded the game play, such as not allowing you to jump… in a platformer. The only redeeming quality about them was never being required to use it after acquiring it. Some costumes – looking at you, box fox – were completely useless and added nothing. In fact, if the game had reduced the amount of costumes I would score it higher. There are a heck of a lot of costumes that are essentially repeats of themselves ad nauseum. Costumes can also take jumping away, so keep that in mind. Now, it’s important to note that aside from jumping, costumes give you your powers. A world of junk, although, you may not realize it initially.
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