Athenian Rhapsody

The game is enjoyable and the characters are fun. People are a bit too hard on this developer since this is his first game he ever made and this is ambitious title for a first game. The humor isn't my flavor of tea but it still squeezed a laugh out of me occasionally just by being so over the top dumb sometimes, coming back to this after playing deltarune chapter 3 and 4 I think people using those games are a comparison is unfair and I think there's a cult of personality thing simply because it wasn't made by Toby Fox. I found this to be more enjoyable than the recent installments of Deltarune. I don't understand the who trading card business with the saves however. I'm eager to see what improvements await the next game he makes.

Athenian Rhapsody is a tough one to talk about, and that's probably by deign. Like some others have pointed out, this really feels like it wants to be the next Undertale/Deltarune. Like the parallels are really obvious, it wears its inspiration on its sleeve. But to me, it comes across as an experience that wants to have its cake and eat it too. You'll spend hours slowly walking around and getting into battles with wacky creatures making dog bark and fart noises, but then after 9ish hours they want to have a serious discussion on the merit of your soul and the fate of the universe and such grand topics. There are some attempts at soft humor but it feels like there's a pretty significant tonal shift that does not feel earned by this narrative, and that just rubbed me the wrong way. More than that though, I can't say I really enjoyed playing through the bulk of the game in general. I didn't absolutely hate it, it was tolerable enough for me to play and get the "True" ending, but I didn't really like it. The combat feels clunky, the humor gets grating, and there ends up being a lot of backtracking through areas with nothing to do but to slowly walk just so you can get one interactable thing. I think just one upgrade to your movement speed would have made moving around less of an issue, but that's not the game that we got. Specifically for the combat, it feels like a much worse version of Undertale's fight/mercy system. I can't speak on the fighting since I went for a mercy run, but trying to befriend everything was a massive pain. Not only does it usually take 3-4 turns to mercy an enemy, but they also randomly change what options you have for mercy and you have to keep trying things to see if they work. Sometimes actions have followups that fill the bar more, sometimes they don't. A combat can get dragged out to 7-10 turns if you always choose the wrong things, and that just becomes grating. You're better off running from most fights after you get the initial befriending because otherwise you're wasting your time. The boss fights are a bit better, as most of them just operate on a timer, but the way the hitbox of your character works was a constant issue and I regularly felt cheated by the hitboxes of the bullets. There is an option for casual mode, though I don't know if choosing that locks you out of anything as it does put a permenant mark on your save file. Now, I will say that one of the primary focuses of this game is the replayability. I don't know how much can possibly change beyond the genocide/pacifist choices, but the customizability of your rhapsody and the ability to exchange those experiences between players is a pretty big part of the menus and the dialog at the end of the game. I have only completed one playthrough, but I'm not exactly itching to go back quite yet. If I do go back and my opinion changes I'll adjust this review, but for now just know this is how I feel based on a single playthrough of the game. Overall, I would not really recommend Athenian Rhapsody. It is an okay game that tries its best, but doesn't really end up paying off the time invested in playing it. If you're really itching for another Undertale experience with different characters, you might find some fun in this. But if you're on the fence about the humor or the combat, I would probably look elsewhere for now.

Dr.illness is really cool, Remember kids stay in school!

Loved the game all the way through except for one part. The one pain point in the game i had [spoiler]At the end before fighting the hero you have to go back to finish encounters with all 20 side characters, made no sense and was the first time i stopped having fun. All i had to do was enter richards house and talk to him then i could go fight the hero. I dont really see the point of this in my rhapsody im supposed to make decisions not have the game make them for me.[/spoiler] Rest of the game is phenomenal though been looking for an entertaining and challenging game this hit the spot will go do my other 2 runs.