254.9 hours played
Written 7 days ago
I need to talk about how much I love this game, but first: Short review
Very satisfactory combat system, great dialogue and characters, nice music and awesome worldbuilding. Play it, it's good.
And now the long one, tried to make it spoilers free if anyone cares enough, I wouldn't recommend reading this before playing the game tho. So... Where do I start?
I remember when I found about this game while watching a Design Doc video, a Bug Fables clip appeared and I was just amazed to learn that a game like this would exist, I loved the red plumber's paper adventures when I played them long ago, and I was so excited about this game that I literally felt like I was shaking, and when I played it? It did not disappoint, at all.
Fights are so fun to play and plan out, the amount of strategies and customization there is goes beyond what my tiny brain can even imagine, so the combat is absolutely delightful. And somehow the lore and characters manage to be on the same level if not superior?
Vi, Kabbu and Leif are very well written, their character arcs are nice, but the dialogue, either from them or from any other bug, is always so enjoyable. I played the game 3 times and I never got tired of it (Could also be because of my terrible memory, but still). I want to praise Genow, while replaying I occasionally thought "If I was writing this, what would they say?" and even though I couldn't come up with anything, what they did say was not only in-character, but also interesting and nice to read.
Worldbuilding is great, I was so interested in the lore that I always wanted to learn more and more, I even got sad when the lore books side quest was over, exploring everything was really fun thanks to both the movement and everything there is to interact with. Music's also good, some tracks stand out to me as absolutely wonderful, but the rest is catchy too.
Two things I want to mention are that, first, the amount of optional content is not only surprising, but I also feel like it's as fun as the main game, to the point where it feels wrong for me to not do sidequests during a playthrought, and second thing is how the game is very much free of "unnecesary" content made only to extend the game's lenght, things like all of the fast travel options, for example, make me feel like the devs just wanted to let you have a great time on this adventure, and after everything I've said it's clear that they did achieve that.
Thanks Mar and Genow for all of this, I wish I could have supported Bug Fables during its development if I had known about it back then, but I guess not having to wait for the game to release was also a good deal. I think i'm done with this game for now, so thanks once again for creating it. I wish the game was even more successful, it really deserves it.
However i did get softlocked once while deep on the cave of trials so i don't like the game that much actually, I know this is a game about bugs but I don't enjoy those kind of bugs.