I know I've reviewed it on this thread somewhere, but it's long past.
The game is a rogue-lite (heavy emphasis on "lite"). Everytime you move, monsters in the dugeons also move. It's a turn-based system and it is suitable for this game. The town is mostly the same and you interact with the chef to learn new recipes and at home you can customize your spells and stash your loot. Food is used for several different things in the game. (more on that later)
Every dungeon you explore, you'll find more loot than you can carry... so inventory management is very important Some of the loot requires you to identify it (through either spell or scroll). Each dungeon has a boss at the end of the dungeon. The dungeons can be fairly long, depending on what your strategy is to complete it. Weapons/Armor can be upgraded through usage and through crafting and scrolls. Any enchanted items you dont care for (+1, +2 +3, etc) can be used to improve your own weapon/armor through crafting.
You have a pet that helps you fight and sometimes carry items. Feeding it food also helps boosts its stats for the duration of the trip into the dungeon. The food you pick up in the dungeon can be used to create curry recipes and buff your character. You can also toss (just about anything) curry to your pets to give it a super boost. The pets get hungry over time, so you will have to manage the food you have on hand for yourself and your pet. Your pet will pass out if it runs out of life (or go hungry). If that happens, y ou can not progress to the next level of the dungeon.
This game is very frustrating for the wrong reasons:
1) Everytime you leave a dungeon and re-enter, you start at experience level 1. There is very little in the ways of feeling that you've accomplished a whole lot with your character because your experience resets.
2) Nothing is safe equipped or in your inventory!! The monsters you encounter can be cheap... VERY CHEAP! Some monsters can turn inventory into (useless) onions and there is no way to undo it. This is an important point to remember, especially if you carry specialized gear for other occassions. It pretty much limits you to wear only one set of gear... but here is where it gets even more frustrating. Some monsters have the ability to disarm you and there are also monsters that just spend their time looking for objects to destroy.
3) Identify scrolls and spells are way too limited in amount to get through a dungeon. You'll spend much of your time trying to figure out what to keep or what to leave behind because the dungeons get mind-numbingly long towards the middle/end of the game. While we're on scrolls, there are some scrolls that destroy your armor/weapon completely so you need to be very careful before you read them and make sure you dont take any unnecessary risk.
4) Crafting food seems almost random at times and its effects really seems to last a short while. I spent a lot of time carrying food around to get extra buffs, only to find the my inventory gets changed to onions or the food spoils (from monster curses).
The story itself is quite weird, but that's par for the course. The colors are bright and I enjoyed the dialogue, as creepy as some of these characters were. The extras in the LE are worth it only if you have an infant. The spoon is really small and has several jagged edges on the back end of it... making it someone an issue for kids learning motor skills. The bib has a pressed image on it and it faded/cracked over several washes. I can almost no longer tell what game the bib came from. It is also very small and not very useful in terms of trying to catch food falling out of spoons/mouths. The plate is nice and shaped like kuu and my daughter enjoyed looking at it for a few days and ate off it for a few weeks. It's not worth the extra $10 if you ask me, but since I bought one, might as well use it right?
I felt like I spent so much time trying to account for the different ways to prevent cheap shit from happening to me that the enjoyment out of the game really wasm't there. I stopped playing after a while because it just go to be too much. I may end up picking it up again and trying to finish it... but right now, it's sitting on my mousepad in front of me .. just reminding me that this rogue-lite has gotten the best of me (so far). I really would not recommend this game unless you're a hardcore rogue-like fan, and even then, you may find it's flaws outweight it's bright spots.
