The first question I asked myself after finishing the tutorial for TailConcerto was,'I wonder how they're going to make an entire game out of this'.

The designers left themselves with too little to work with. It was immediately noticeable how limited Waffle's PoliceRobo was, weak jumping, tank controls, niche movement tech, a pea shooter main weapon and the ability to grab and throw certain enemy projectiles, bombs. The movement is passable during exploration, but you lack camera control so genuine platforming is a mismatch outside of one notable, 2.5D Side Scroller area.

Tail gives into its multi-media identity. I purposefully won't count, but guess there's about 40 minutes of animated content that is threaded evenly through the short playtime. The story and the three most prominent characters fit their arcs into that time, but also twice too many secondary characters making due with one chapter where they needed two.

All combat is 'Now for a room with N+1 Bulletsponge Mecha, destroy them to progress' (if you ignore the collectable 'Kitten' enemies on the game cover). The spice is that you can risk returning bombs to the enemy, but the reward is so consistently low that you'd only do so in boss battles. The optimized play style is kiting and potshots, balanced only against your patience.

There's not much to say about the frequent bosses in the first 3/4s of the game. They're boring but passable bags of health that can be beaten about 10% quicker if you engage with the bomb mechanic. The problem is the last quarter. Three particular bosses in a row. The first two are clones save one attack and are a massive difficulty and damage spike. Even with bombs, each of the last three bosses require about 15-16 cycles where your instincts tell you 5 would be reasonable.

They require 'experimentation by death' as you independently discover that you must now grab bombs from the side that a certain attack can never be reliably avoided. I spent about 40 attempts between the three where I suspect I had no chance of actually winning.

Early on, before the game begins to incessantly rattle the cage it built for itself, the exploration truly feels like a pillar of the design. The world is well textured, but blocky which makes for explorable architecture. The only 'optional' level outright improves the game by giving you a free flight set of controls and floating islands to treasure hunt on (though, mindbogglingly, you can only play this level early as on return visits they give you infinite flight). Considering the game's aesthetic and theme of flight and sky islands, it's a real wonder this isn't the entire game.

I think about as low of this game as possible while still thinking it could be recommended to somebody. I can just feel how much other games would want to cannibalize it for its parts; it's free flight system, it's low-cel environments and architecture, FMV animated sequences, 90%+ Voice Acting, beautiful sprite work embellishments. But it's just not fun enough and looks better on the shelf. Frustratingly, it probably wanted to be there anyway.