Roots of Yggdrasil

In general, this game can get a little monotonous because of the repetitive nature of the loops. The islands don't really change, so you are looking at the same landscape over and over. Still, if you're a determined person and like consistency, the gameplay is consistent; and you can kind of lock in and get tasks done. Upgrading your base (The Holt) is pretty enjoyable, and you get to be strategic on how you'd like to apply your upgrades to benefit your loop experience. That is one of the more customizable features of the game. And you can switch up the different buildings and scions to use to make the experience a little more novel. I am finding that I enjoy the progression of the characters as you get to know them more. It is just a lot of work to progress their stories.

Ugh. I want to like this game but it gets very monotonous very fast. The loops are short and the "upgrades" so incremental that you don't actually notice them. It *looks* like there are lots of things to unlock and level up, but "leveling up" your housing units and leaders doesn't actually do anything aside from give you more rewards at the end of the cycle, which is a really strange way of signifying that. The writing is so-so and the little text animations, while cute at first, become grating really fast. I'm normally someone who enjoys reading the story, but I found myself skipping through most dialogue. There are two different upgrade systems at base, both of which are poor examples of their kind. One is 'free-form' and based on the building you do in the loops, but your resources for this are random and once you have a bunch of cards it's impossible to see what you have without scrolling through each one. It gets incredibly tedious to figure out what you have and how to place it, especially because that's also one of the most annoying parts of the loop itself. The other is a "skill tree" but you're locked into options based on which specific acorn type you've acquired. It's like the game wants to give you lots of paths to go but then makes all of them so narrow that you really end up having no flexibility at all. It's a big meh from me.