This Way Madness Lies (2022)

It's kind of hard to recommend this one. I can say I had some fun with it, but I'm the kind of lit crit nerd who is excited by the mere thought of getting to fight Lady Macbeth in a JRPG. If that describes you as well, then you might also have a decent time with this.

The story is sparse, and the characters are static. I get that it was going for a lighthearted tone, but there's just not much in the form of development or tension at all here. The jokes are funny, but the progression isn't madcap enough to substitute for actual structure, and while the first form of the final boss fight is kind of cute, I think the second form is a letdown.

Having said that, there are some interesting ideas in the actual battle system. There's enough depth in terms of character customization and in-combat options that min-maxing is legitimately engaging, though the downside to this is that you have to play on the higher difficulty settings to really get the most out of it (protip: Keep Beatrice in the party at all times). It starts to get a bit repetitive near the end, and I swear some of the regular encounters are harder than the boss fights themselves, but it's there.

I guess what I'm saying is that three out of five stars does accurately represent how I feel about the game, and I'm happy I played it, but I think a lot more could have been done with the idea, and I struggle to recommend it.

Hit the credits on this one, it's very... slight. The theme is really fun, but barely feels relevant since the characterization and story are paper thin. The dungeons are extremely simple, there's no exploration at all, it's basically just a conveyor belt of battles fed to the player at a breathless clip.

Luckily those battles are decent, with a focus on stacking buffs and debuffs to pull off huge oneshot attacks. There's 4 difficulty options which offer a nice challenge at the high end. And the game constantly drip-feeds you new abilities to keep things from getting stale. But there's really not much else there.