Presentation:6/10. I do like what's here but goodness is the presentation a bit jumbled, the graphics switch from a lovely PS1 aesthetic to hand drawn, to 16 bit, to modern pixel art. It's a bit of a mess and makes the game feel strange. That being said each asset individually is nice. I do feel the same about the music as the styles switch so dramatically its hard for me to determine what the overall mood of the game is supposed to be, is it whimsy and mysterious? Is it dark and foreboding? or is it light hearted and fun? These were the kind of questions I kept asking myself.
Gameplay: 3/10. I am sorry if this is mean but genuinely I could not get very far at all in this game because of its difficulty, and I tried for several hours. Now I'm no stranger to JRPG difficulty (I've played and beaten a lot of the famous and difficult 8 Bit RPG's), but this was on a level I had never experienced before. I must've tried 3 seperate times to simply grind in the opening area, or at least progress, but the bulb enemies kept absolutely destroying me with their massive health pools compared to the party. I really tried maximizing my strategy with the really cool large pool of abilities and interesting spells but nothing seemed to be able to counter the absolute beefy bois I was fighting. I do think this game has some interesting mechanics, but I wish I could explore them.
Story: 8/10. From what I was able to play I really loved the world you've built here, every piece of dialog kept me wanting to find another thing the characters can interact with so I can learn more about this very strange world. The characters were distinct and the dialog was well written. I don't really have anything beyond nitpicks to complain about, so I wont.
Overall I think this could be a really fun and interesting game, but unfortunately I am unable to find that out for myself because of the insane difficulty, if I am simply being dumb and there is something obvious I'm missing then please let me know because I'd be perfectly willing to admit that. But for now that's where my review sits.