D&D + Miis = Absurdity! Miitopia Review!

The Miis, first introduced with the Nintendo Wii, are a simple yet weirdly charming addition to the Nintendo line-up. They were simple in design, but could replicate not just real life people, but also famous fictional characters. In 2017, Nintendo decided the best way to capitalize on the popularity of the Miis was... To give them a surprisingly ambitious RPG. Yeah.

First, some context. Before Miitopia was released, there was a simple simulation game known as Tomodachi Life, which basically let your Miis act out a slice-of-life anime series, complete with slapstick hijinks, love triangles, holiday celebrations, and delightfully trippy dream sequences. Within Tomodachi Life was a minigame where four of your Miis perform a parody of Final Fantasy. That minigame became the basic template for Miitopia. Although the inspiration for the gameplay seems to have shifted. Rather than being a parody of Final Fantasy, this game draws its inspiration from Darkest Dungeon. Both games involve a party of four heroes automatically progressing through mostly linear dungeons with the occasional branching path, with the player only taking control when the party encounter enemies. Unlike Darkest Dungeon, your Miis don't have to worry about a Stress gauge that slowly drains them of their sanity as they are forced to confront increasingly disturbing monsters. Nor do they die permanently should they fall in battle. Basically, if you're interested in Darkest Dungeon but are turned off by the Stress (pun completely intended) of micromanaging a party that could kick the bucket at any time should you make a bad call, Miitopia is basically a simpler, more beginner friendly version of Darkest Dungeon's core gameplay.

Our story begins with your Mii (who will serve the role of protagonist for the remainder of the story campaign) wandering around the peaceful meadows of Greenhorne. Yes, Greenhorne. As in, Green-Horn. This game is filled to the brim with puns. Anyway, after a quick trip into a small village populated entirely by Miis, an evil Mii known as the Dark Lord appears and steals the faces of everyone in town except for yourself (and the dubious mayor). Seeing as your Mii is by default a Lawful Good character he/she decides to rescue the stolen faces and confront the Dark Lord. A mysterious amulet given to them earlier by a worried mother Mii awakens dormant power within, and your Mii becomes a Dungeons & Dragons style adventurer. After meeting up with even more adventurers, your Mii goes on a heroic quest to rescue as many faces as possible, beating the crab-cakes out of horrific monsters and collecting treasure. 

The core gameplay consists of a party of four Miis traveling through an area automatically, while random events play ever so often to keep things from getting too repetitive. These events could range from finding a treasure chest containing a new item, an enemy encounter, an argument between party members, or even just some silly nonsense such as one of your Miis taking a quick nap, or getting their MP restored by sitting on a cactus (don't ask how that works, not even I know, and frankly I don't WANT to know). But once an enemy encounter does break out (guaranteed to happen at least once per area), we dive into the combat system.

 

Each party member has a set of abilities and skills based on their class (which in this game are called Jobs), with basic attacks being painfully weak but don't cost MP, while stronger attacks and spells will require that you spend a certain amount of MP. However, unlike a lot of RPGs, the only Mii you, the player, can control directly is the very first Mii you create for the campaign, with the rest of the party being handled by A.I. Said A.I. tends to vary in terms of intelligence and performance. On some Jobs, the A.I. is a crucial aspect of the team, always making the right play at the right time. On other Jobs, the A.I. tends to be laughably stupid, such as wasting precious healing items when they themselves have a spell that heals the entire party, or spamming low-tier spells when they have a higher tier and thus can do more damage. The Tank and Flower classes are the worst offenders. The Tank's gimmick is that it has the strongest psychical attacks in the game, but certain abilities have a chance to hit other party members. Its later skills ditch this gimmick and deal more damage and don't consume nearly as much MP as the skills that have a chance to hit allies. However, an A.I. controlled Tank will always prioritize using skills like Wild Shot (which has a 30% chance of hitting an ally) and Human Cannonball (which requires that you sacrifice a teammate in order to deal tremendous damage) over Laser Beam (which never hits allies) and Hot Shot (which is literally a better version of Wild Shot, and with no chance of hitting an ally at all). 

The Flower, meanwhile is supposed to be equal parts defensive wall and supportive healer. But for some reason the A.I. for this Job seems to refuse to use healing spells, and as such wastes healing items like potions and bananas. On top of this, the class can grant buffs to party members by altering their emotional state, and the A.I. is overly fond of making party members get Angry (which boosts the power of basic attacks in exchange for disabling the more advanced skills). Now, on psychical Jobs like the aforementioned Tank or the Knight, this is by no means a problem, and in the case of the Tank its actually beneficial, since it stops it from spamming Wild Shot and Human Cannonball. But on the jobs that are heavily reliant on skills or spells for their role, such as the Wizard or the Cleric, this can be disastrous as neither of those Jobs are meant to use their basic attacks.

What makes the A.I.'s incompetency on those Jobs even more baffling is that it handles other jobs perfectly. The Imp job always begins the battle with Sweet Whispers, which lowers the enemies' defense, letting the rest of the team deal more damage. It also has a similar ability to the Flower's emotion control (where the Flower makes party members Angry, The Imp makes them Hyper, but for the sake of simplicity they are treated as the same status affect), the only difference being that the Imp will ONLY use it on Jobs that have a strong basic attack to begin with, rather than the Flower trying to make the entire party Angry. The Princess job is arguably even better, since it too has a defense lowering spell that it almost always opens up with, but also possesses the ability to make opponents waste their turn. On top of this, if a party members MP runs low, the Princess will automatically restore it by giving them tea. Oh, and I'm not sure if the Princess in my playthrough just got RNG-blessed (I have heard that the stats of Miis are randomized, but I'm not too sure about that), but she wounded up becoming my best magic-damage dealer in the game, and the moment she spotted an opening between the debuffing and turn-stalling, she took it to cast some spells that dealt anywhere between 300-600 damage a hit. This got taken up to eleven with the final boss battle, where the strategy basically boiled down to "Keep the Princess alive so she can repeatedly nuke the final boss".

Now, just about every other reviewer docked some points simply because the player can only control one Mii, but personally, my problem is that there is no way to adjust the A.I. of the other party members. Imagine if you go into options and toggle which spells a character can and cannot use. Heck, I'd just take something basic like three simple options that adjust the frequency certain abilities are used, like telling a healer to cast supportive spells more often, or telling a damage dealer to focus entirely on damage output and nothing else. But other than that, I don't mind.

On a more positive note, the combat itself is surprisingly fun. It isn't reinventing the wheel here, but it at least takes notes of how to make a good Turn-Based RPG. And frankly, the sheer absurdity of some of the Jobs makes it greatly amusing. As much as I dislike the Flower (at least when the A.I. is controlling it), I will admit that having a Mii dressed up as a FLOWER of all things is chuckle-worthy. And so is beating goblins, griffins, and the like over the head with a Fire-Magic enhanced frying pan, courtesy of the Chef. Or even the Scientist's ability to hack into The Fourth Wall and cause enemies to glitch out so hard they take damage from the glitches. There are more serious jobs in case you would rather take the game seriously (for some reason), so if you dislike the idea of most of the classes being wacky joke characters, fret not, the more serious jobs, such as the Knight, Wizard, and Thief have you covered.

My favorite job in the game would have to be the Pop Star. It is, in all but name, a bard. And bards are the most underrated archetype in all of role-playing games. Seriously, why can't the Holy Trinity be Paladin-Mage-Bard instead of Paladin-Mage-Thief? For those of you not familiar with the Bard archetype, the bard is a support-based character with a slew of offensive abilities. The bard's main role is to buff the rest of the party up with the power of song and dance. Usually their music is hand-waved as having magical properties. The Pop Star fits this role to a T, using Encore to give party members an extra turn, Love Song to boost MP, and Out of Tune, which as the image above clearly says, is an area-of-effect that deals damage to allies. Unlike the Tank's Wild Shot and Human Cannonball, Out of Tune not only deals only a mere 1-5 damage (depending on how many Miis partake in the song), but it also doesn't damage the relationship between the Pop Star and the rest of the party (while the Tank's abilities do). Oh, and speaking of which...

Oh hey, it's Midna from Legend of Zelda.

As you use specific Miis, the relationships between them will deepen. Upon reaching a certain threshold, the Miis will gain several passive abilities that have a set chance to activate under certain circumstances. The frequency these passives activate increase as the bond between specific Miis improves. However, there are some abilities that will harm relationships between Miis, such as the Tank's Wild Shot/Human Cannonball, or the Chef's Spicy Dish (in addition to random events that sometimes worsens relationships). If the grudge between two Miis gets out of hand, they will, and I kid you not, start bickering and fighting each other, even in the middle of battle. While the grudges can be healed overtime, while they are active, it can make combat encounters trickier to deal with, since you're not only fighting the monsters, but also trying to keep your Knight from tearing your Chef limb from limb. 

Oh, and another thing to consider. When you create a Mii, you have to select a personality for it. These Personalities alter the Mii's dialogue and flavor text (Cautious Miis have a slight stutter when they speak, Stubborn Miis are blunt and to-the-point, etc.). They also grant a set of passives that activate randomly. For example, the Cool Mii has a passive that lets them auto-dodge attacks, Stubborn Miis can attack twice in a row, Energetic Miis can sometimes revive themselves upon being KO'd, Cautious Miis can do warm-up exercises to boost the power of their next attack, and the list goes on. Not all of the passives are positive, however. Stubborn Miis will sometimes refuse to receive healing from a support character, or Kind Miis might give the enemy a chance to surrender, ending the battle early but robbing you of any potential rewards.  Frankly, I feel like if they were to incorporate personality quirks as a game mechanic, they should have balanced the personalities better, because some Personalities are comically underpowered compared to others For example, while the Laid-Back personality isn't terrible per se, it's pretty much inferior to the Cool personality in almost every aspect (their passives have almost the same effect, but Laid-Back comes with several caveats such as making an ally take a hit for them when they auto-dodge, or using up double MP when they deal bonus damage). Some Miis' negative quirks can actually be worked around by giving them certain jobs (Stubborn-Cleric, Kind-Pop Star, etc.), but I would rather give Miis Jobs that synergize well their positive quirks (Cool-Tank, Energetic-Knight, Cautious-Princess, etc.) instead of baby-proofing their negatives.

The main appeal of the game is without a doubt the Miis themselves. There are so many ways you can play this game just by using different Miis. You could use Miis based on yourself and your real life friends and family for a self-insert adventure, create a bunch of original Miis just for the story (doing this basically turns the game into a Dungeons & Dragons campaign), or do what I did, and have every Mii be based off of various film, cartoon, video game, and anime characters for a crazy crossover, fanfiction-esque romp through a delightfully trippy world. Seriously, name one other video game where Naruto Uzumaki, Princess Bubblegum, Tony Stark, The Great Papyrus, and Gandalf the Grey all team up to rescue a Minecraft Creeper from the evil clutches of Dark Lord Squidward Tentacles, all while receiving mail from Stan Lee (rest in peace, Stan) and chowing down on exotic cuisine with Soldier 76. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Does it sound like something out of a bad fanfic? Yes. Is it a glorious sight anyway? YES.

Obligatory UNDERTALE reference is obligatory.

There are also minigames you can play between dungeons. The first is a roulette wheel that gives you certain prizes, such as a new weapon, some healing items, or a vacation ticket that can be used to raise the bond between any two Miis of your choice. The other is a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors against a robotic hand that could be done to farm money. Now, back when the game first released, there was a persistent rumor that you could cheese the Rock-Paper-Scissors minigame by paying attention to the gesture the robot made before every match (waving with open hand equaled Paper, clenching fist meant Rock, and using two fingers to make a "Bring It!" gesture meant Scissors). However, that rumor has since been disproven, since a quick look through the source code shows that whatever the robot picked was always random, and the animations are just there for flavor. But personally, I eventually stopped using the Rock-Paper-Scissors minigame to make money, as it was simply easier to sell unwanted armor or weapons to make money.

 

Another thing I should warn you about. Seeing as this is technically a sequel to Tomodachi Life, game mechanics from that game were reused here. Namely, you cannot buy better armor or weapons whenever you want (like literally every RPG ever), and instead you have to wait for the Mii you want new gear for to go to town and do some shopping. All you do is provide them enough money to buy whatever it is they want, rather than manually picking and choosing what to buy yourself. As far as I'm aware what Miis want to buy is slightly random. I say "slightly" because if the party is running low on items such as Healing Bananas, they will more frequently request money to buy those items. If they have an overabundance of items, they will more frequently request money to buy armor and weaponry, and they will always buy something with better stats than what they have currently. However, in the case of armor and weapon shopping, there is a small chance (I believe 25%, but don't quote me on that) that they will get swindled while in town and will return with nothing but a single Banana. They give any leftover money back to you either way, so it isn't a complete waste if they get swindled. And while the fact that Miis can get swindled while shopping is goofy and comedic on paper, in practice it gets really annoying really fast, especially when it happens several times in a row.

My biggest criticism of Miitopia comes in the form of the Sickness Mechanic. It only becomes prevalent once you have access to all ten party members at once (for story reasons, the additional party members get separated from your main Mii no less than three times, but after the third time you can swap them all out at your leisure). Randomly, once per-ingame day, one of your Miis has a chance to catch an illness, and will need to sit out the next couple of dungeons (it takes 3-5 ingame days for a Mii to recover from Sickness). Now the intent of the mechanic is to make sure the player has a back up team ready and don't just breeze through the game with a single overpowered team. However, I feel that the Sickness mechanic, while a good idea on paper, has more than a few balancing issues. Chief among them being that given which Mii catches Sickness is random, it's entirely possible for a Mii to get Sick, recover, and then get Sick again the next day. As such, I had a Mii grossly underleveled compared to everyone else because he kept getting Sick. And what's worse is after the main story is completed and you start doing post-game content (there is a surprisingly large amount of stuff to do after the credits roll) the invisible source-code flag that made your main Mii immune to Sickness gets removed, meaning it now becomes possible for the only Mii you can control to be forced to sit out the next couple of dungeons, at which point battles become completely automatic with no player input.

As for the presentation, the graphics and art style are decent. I understand there's only so much a 3DS can handle (I played it on 2DS, by the way), but for what it does, it's nice to look at. The environments and designs of the generic monsters are probably the weakest aspect of the game, at least for me. Neither are bad, just really forgettable compared to the rest of the game. The bosses are better, if only because bosses in this game are identified by having a Mii's face attached to it, and depending on who's face it is, it can make some bosses look hilarious (such as a UFO with the adorably derpy face of Ugandan Knuckles, a Painting depicting the infamous ugly mug of the Troll Face, and a giant frog with Eevee's features affixed to its stomach). The battle and cutscene animations are easily the highlight of the game's visuals, being hilariously over-the-top even if you DON'T base your Miis off of fictional characters from other franchises. And some of the animations fit really well, should you choose to do what I did. Because there's a certain joy to knowing that my Great Papyrus Mii's favorite food is spaghetti, loving it so much that he flies into the air in a state of pure bliss every time he eats a dish.

The game's soundtrack is surprisingly well-made. While the generic battle theme does get old fast, literally every other song is nearly perfect. The King's theme is regal and bombastic, which fits well with the character (or at least how he's supposed to be played). The Elf Sisters' theme is mystical and enchanting, and then gets remixed into a weirdly catchy musical number. The final boss theme is energetic and fast-paced, which gets your blood pumping. But the greatest song in the game is the song that plays when you encounter Rare Snurps, an enemy that gives extremely powerful rewards if defeated, such as 500,000 EXP or a food item that raises all stats. The theme music here is a mind-blowing techno beat that wouldn't be out of place at a rave.

This game's meme potential is arguably the main selling point.

Overall, Miitopia is a great, but flawed RPG that's brought down by some design choices that seemed good on paper but aren't well balanced in practice. But the whole game has a charm to it that makes it a worthwhile experience, if you are willing to put up with the randomness and the haphazard teammate AI. If we are to get another Mii-focused game in this style, I hope that Nintendo takes what Miitopia did right, make it even better, and iron out this game's flaws.With that being said, I give Miitopia 6 customizable, bobble-headed avatars out of 10. Actually, no, let's make 6.5 out of 10, the extra decimal points are just for the sheer audacity of letting me have a party consisting of all my favorite video game, film, cartoon, and anime characters.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a thing, apparently!

Everyone knows that Star Wars is a giant amongst multimedia franchises, And everyone knows that Star Wars fans are biologically incapable of agreeing on anything (myself included). But the one thing that Star Wars fans can agree on is that the series lends itself well to some pretty awesome video games. Seriously, we got Star Wars: Republic Commando, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and the highlight of the bunch, the Knights of the Old Republic trilogy. But unfortunately, EA made some very controversial design choices with Star Wars Battlefront II (namely, locking three-quarters of the game's content behind a loot box paywall). Seriously, EA's loot boxes sparked a massive debate on the moral ethics of including microtransactions in games that not only come with a full price tag, but are intentionally marketed to kids, who (usually) have very poor impulse control when it comes to handling currency. Now, personally speaking, I don't mind DLC or things being sold post-launch. But I find loot boxes to be scummy, for not only do they cost real money, but given their random nature, you might not get what you wanted to begin with, or worse, get more of what you already have. I'm not sure about you, but I like to know what I'm getting before I place down any cash. But EA seems to be doing deliberate course correction for their excessively greedy business practices with the newest Star Wars game, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.

But why am I blogging about a game that isn't coming out until November? Because this game has the potential to be really good. I say potential because EA is publishing, which means they are going to find a way to force Respawn (the dev team for this game) to include some way of making additional profit beyond the initial purchase. But, assuming that the hypothetical microtransactions are ethical or even generous, it might be possible that this game can be really good. And frankly it's looking better than Pokemon Sword & Shield, and the fact that they share the exact same release date (November 15) means that a EA game might be more worthwhile than a Game Freak game, which is weird because usually it's the other way around.

Unlike Battlefront II, which was a multiplayer shooter, Jedi: Fallen Order is a story-driven action-RPG, similar to Knights of the Old Republic. Ironically, EA admitted to cancelling a similar action-RPG starring Boba Fett a few years ago (the reason it was cancelled was because, at the time, EA believed that single-player games are simply not profitable), and I have a sneaking suspicion that the cancelled game's assets were recycled for this game. The basic premise follows Cal Kestis, a Jedi Padawan that (somehow) survived Order 66, and is doing his best to not die a horrific death at the hands of the Sith Empire. Before I continue, I have to ask. What is with spin-off material fixating on all of the survivors of Order 66? Force Unleashed did it. Rebels did it. The Star Wars comics did it. Seriously, wasn't the whole point of Order 66 that almost every Jedi ever was executed? The spin-offs are starting to make it look like Order 66 wasn't effective in killing off the Jedi. At least the Knights of the Old Republic trilogy had the novelty of taking place in a never before seen time period. So I will automatically dock a point for an overused premise, at least amongst the spin-offs.

Anyway, the gameplay seems to be similar to Uncharted, with Cal linearly moving from area to area, using a combination of Lightsaber swordsmanship and Force powers to defeat enemies along the way. Although Respawn has claimed that the final game will be a straight-up Metroidvania and will allow for a whole lot more freedom. Of course, I'm taking that with a grain of salt, because all of the footage publicly available seems to draw more inspiration from Uncharted than anything else (not that there's anything wrong with that, as I personally adore the Uncharted series). But who knows? Maybe it will be a Metroidvania. 

But anyways, the combat itself is by no means a hack-and-slash like literally every Star Wars game ever, and Respawn openly admitted to drawing inspiration from, of all things, Dark Souls. We've now reached a new pinnacle of the "All difficult video games are just like Dark Souls" meme. Now, even the developers are using the comparison. Granted, the comparison was made because of the grounded, methodical gameplay requiring the player to pay close attention to enemy attack patterns (basically the opposite of Force Unleashed, which was an over-the-top action game that surprisingly WASN'T co-developed by Platinum Games). But still, there's no way a video game company in 2019 ISN'T aware of the meme (unless the devs live under a rock), so to make the comparison unironically is hilarious to me.

The game itself looks decent so far. Not amazing, mind you, but decent. I really want the game to be good. I really do. But the fact that EA is publishing makes me more than a little skeptical. So let's list off all the ways this game can be really bad, because why not!

1. The protagonist, Cal Kestis, looks like a shameless rip-off of Starkiller from Force Unleashed. Seriously, his design is really forgettable, at least in my opinion. Like, I know that the story is supposed to be character driven and that this is Cal's story, but it's really telling that as an aficionado for storytelling, I am not interested in his story at all. I just have a morbid fascination with this game to see if a dev team working for EA can make a solid single-player with no immediate monetization schemes. Speaking of...
2. EA is publishing Jedi: Fallen Order. EA, the same company who thought that having Bioware, a dev team that's most well known for making single-player RPGs, make a co-op shooter with a game engine intended for sports games was a good idea. EA, the same company that killed off MySims ON THE 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE SERIES, and never offered an explanation as to why. EA, the same company that started the trend of Western AAA game companies releasing broken, barely functioning video games, patching out the issues post-launch, and praying that the gaming community will give the game in question a second chance. I do not like EA, in case it wasn't obvious. Now, I understand that companies need to make a profit from their works, the word "company" literally means "a group of people working together for a monetary gain". But EA is without a doubt one of the sleaziest game companies out there. Frankly the fact they have any involvement with a Star Wars game's development at all is the biggest turn-off.
3. This game is competing with both Force Unleashed and Knights of the Old Republic for best gameplay and best story in a Star Wars game, respectively. While those games are not perfect, Force Unleashed has by far the most awe-inspiring combat out of all the games, with flashy lightsaber combos and the most insane Force Powers imaginable. Knights of the Old Republic has by far the best story, partly because of the choice of having the trilogy take place in a radically different time period, and partly because it was made back when Bioware were in their prime.

That's not to say that I expect the game to be terrible. It has the potential to be terrible, purely based on who's in charge of development. However, the entire selling point of Fallen Order is basically EA trying to course correct and salvage their reputation in the gaming industry. Between the loot box debacle in Battlefront II and the fact that Anthem, which was planned to be a long-lasting co-op shooter to entertain gamers for years to come, was dead-on-arrival and was declared the biggest gaming disaster of the decade just a mere four months after releasing, EA has become a total joke in the gaming community. But the Star Wars fan in me keeps telling me that Jedi: Fallen Order has a chance to be a masterpiece. But I don't know, the fact that most of the hype comes from things Respawn (and EA) said about the game, rather than shown reminds me a bit too much of the deceptive marketing for No Man's Sky. They said it will have Metroidvania style exploration, but the gameplay footage is way too linear to be anything remotely similar to any decent Metroidvania game. They admitted to using Dark Souls as an inspiration and unironically compared the game to Dark Souls either out of ignorance of the "comparing things to Dark Souls" meme or simply not caring about the meme. And I will admit, the idea of a Soulsian, story-driven, Metroidvania Star Wars game sounds positively awesome. But I can't shake the feeling that EA and Respawn are only making the comparison to garner positive hype about the game. I'm optimistic for it, but cautiously so.

But the ultimate question remains. How good will the game be? We have no way of until November 15, but based off of pre-release footage, the game has potential to be amazing. But I can't shake the feeling that potential will be wasted because of my instinctual distrust of EA as a company. But the more I talk about the game, the more I want there to be a new Knights of the Old Republic game, or at least a new game using a similar style to that series. But hey, if Jedi: Fallen Order turns out to be a broken mess, we still have LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga coming out next Spring!

But those are just my thoughts. Are you excited for this game? Or are you in the same boat as me, being morbidly curious to see if EA can actually publish a decent single player video game with no strings attached? Or are you like "NOPE" and have declared this game a lost cause before it even releases? Let me know with a comment.

P.S. I apologize if I seem more negative in this post. I want to be excited for the game, I really do, but EA's reputation has set my expectations rather low.

Ashes to Ashes... Dust: An Elysian Tail Review!

Back in 2012, young Spencer went shopping for various indie games. Because even back then I enjoyed the level of creativity within the indie game industry. While shopping, I found a game titled Dust: An Elysian Tail. I didn't pick it up back then because at the time, it was an Xbox exclusive and I didn't want to buy a whole new console just for one game. But several years later, it got ported to PS4 and Switch, and then I figured, "hey, why not check it out?"

For context, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a 2D beat-em-up platformer that has some mild Metroidvania elements, though personally I feel it gravitates more towards traditional beat-em-ups rather than being a true Metroidvania in its own right. Anyway, it was released all the way back in 2012, was developed by indie team Humble Hearts (which at the time consisted of one man, Dean Dodrill, and about five or six voice actors). This game released to high critical acclaim, thanks to a charming story, vibrant artstyle, lovable characters, and an awe-inspiring soundtrack. In other words, it was UNDERTALE before UNDERTALE was UNDERTALE. Both games were even developed almost entirely by one person (the only thing Dean Dodrill had help on was voice acting and marketing).

Our story begins when Dust, an anthropomorphic samurai fox wakes up in the middle of a forest. He has no memory of who he is, where he came from, or what he is supposed to be doing. Early on a sentient sword known as the Blade of Ahrah, who tells Dust he is destined for greatness, comes into Dust's possession. Joined by the sword's caretaker, a cat-dragon hybrid named Fidget, Dust heads off on a quest to rediscover his identity and help people in need. The story is, on paper, rather cliche, but considering that Dust is supposed to be a walking homage to classic fairy tales, its actually intentionally using tropes and cliches associated with the genre. Not that there's anything wrong with that, because the execution of the story is so well done that you don't realize that the story Dust is trying to tell has been done before dozens of times. And really, the whole point of storytelling is not to be unique, for true originality is impossible, but to be entertaining, and that comes down to the execution of the story. 

First, let's talk about the characters. Dust could have easily been just a brooding, edgy anti-hero, and given his design he looks the part of an edgy anti-hero, but no. The edgiest he gets is some sarcastic banter with Fidget. I mean, yeah, he gets upset when he (SPOILERS FOR A SEVEN-YEAR OLD GAME) fails to save the life of a elderly frog person, but it's less that he's angsting about a failure and more about he's being hard on himself for not being better. It's also the only time we see Dust openly lose his temper, and for the rest of the game he's a calm and even sociable person. Heck, the main villain of the game doesn't make him lose his cool nearly as much as his failure to save the elderly frog (while Dust is angry at the villain for his misdeeds, Dust puts a lid on his temper and embraces a kind of tranquil fury during the final showdown). Anyway, I really like his dynamic with Fidget. They start off bickering with each other, but over the course of the story their bond grows so much that the two of them become true life partners ready to sacrifice themself to save the other.

Frankly, the bond between Dust and Fidget is arguably the best thing about the game, storywise. And part of the reason for that is thanks to the strong writing and equally strong voice acting. Like Fidget's voice is a significantly sweeter sounding version of Navi's voice from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Dust sounds like a perfect blend of sassy and heroic. Just to be clear, I do NOT 'ship them romantically, nor do I interpret their relationship as anything other than platonic. If anything they have a older-brother, younger-sister dynamic. 

But anyway, the story itself is your typical Hero's Journey, though like I said, it's a Hero's Journey done right. And don't think that there are moments of darkness just because the game wears its love of fairy tales on its sleeve. It can get pretty dark. The aforementioned scene where Dust and Fidget fail to save the elderly frog's life is the biggest example of this. Before that moment I was expecting everything to go smoothly, since that's how stories of this nature tend to be. But the moment Dust (and by extension, myself) found out what happened to him, it served as a kind of wake-up call that yes, the game with cute anime rabbit people, fourth-wall meta humor, and impossibly cool samurai foxes can, and will, kill off its colorful cast to remind you that should Dust screw up in his adventure, everyone will die horrible deaths. Now, Dust is by no means a violent game, nor is an overtly bleak game, but it still sets up the stakes so that you are really invested in whether or not Dust can save everyone.

Dust: An Elysian Tail is a beat-em-up, and as such, the gameplay consists of Dust (and Fidget) moving from area to area, fighting various enemies along the way. And the best part of the whole game, in my honest opinion, is the combat. Dust's combos and abilities feel great to use, and consistently make Dust look and feel like a shonen anime protagonist in the best possible way. You'll be launching foes into the air, slamming them back down, and then dancing between monsters as they get sliced to ribbons with the Blade of Ahrah, or blasted to smithereens by Fidget's magic. Fidget can help Dust out by casting magic spells, by the way. She unlocks more spells as the game carries on, though I have noticed that the damage output and range of her later spells far outclasses the damage output of her basic energy blast spell, which kind of makes her earlier spells redundant. But anyway, Dust can enhance Fidget's spells by using his signature attack, the Dust Storm. By holding down Triangle (I played the PS4 version of the game, the input changes based on version) Dust can twirl the Blade of Ahrah around at supersonic speed, which not only looks awesome, but if Fidget fires a spell into the Dust Storm, it transforms into a much stronger spell. The basic energy blast fires off only one sphere of energy normally, but add the Dust Storm into the equation and that one sphere turns into a barrage of magical homing arrows. A simple fireball becomes a screen-covering pillar of flames, and a mere spark of electricity transforms into a chain reaction of raw lightning.

There are also platforming and puzzle segments, but outside of the ones where you guide a floating explosive by using the Dust Storm, none of them really stand out. They're not bad, per se, but they are by far the weakest aspect of the game. But each level contains a set of treasure chests that contain, amongst other things, money and crafting materials. Because Dust: An Elysian Tail was an indie game released in a post-Minecraft world, and indie games with crafting systems has somewhat become the norm. That said, I like the way it was handled. If you find a new material and sell it to the merchant that pops up from time to time, he will actually stock up on that specific material more frequently. Because of this, some side-quests that normally would be very annoying to do, like grinding for 10 Trolk Fingers (a rare item that drops from a rare and rather annoying miniboss), can be trivialized by getting one just Trolk Finger, selling it to the merchant, waiting five-six minutes for him to restock, and then just buy his entire stock of Trolk Fingers. I make it sound overpowered, and in some cases it is, but does save time and reduce repetition. Because let's be real, who really wants to spend five-six hours grinding minibosses just for a side-quest, when there's an alternative method that can be done in five-six minutes?  

As for the presentation, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a game that is simply gorgeous to look at. The art style reminds me somewhat of Hollow Knight, due to using different color palettes to display different emotions in the environment, but Dust is more vibrant and, well, anime-inspired than Hollow Knight. Seriously, on more than one occasion, I thought to myself, "Man, this game is in desperate need of an anime spin-off". But the main difference in art between Dust and Hollow Knight is that Hollow Knight is far more melancholic in its atmosphere, while Dust is more whimsical. The character designs are also really good. Every character in the game is an anthropomorphic animal, but their designs are, like previously stated, inspired by Japanese animation, complete with large, expressive eyes, and the environments look as though they came straight out of a Renaissance painting. 

 

The music in this game is decent. The main theme is comprised of nothing more than a somber piano playing a tune that is equal parts soothing and sad, and at first glance it doesn't really seem to fit with the whimsical tone of the game itself, but upon learning what (or rather, who) Dust is and how he was born, not only does the choice of music make more sense, but also why the box art depicts Dust cradling someone's body. But other than the main theme and the music from the final battle, there's no really memorable songs on the soundtrack. But you wanna what is memorable? The voice acting. Dust: An Elysian Tail has what I feel to be the best voice acting in a video game. Period. Every actor (of which there are only five) brings their absolute A-game to their characters. Portraying a perfect amount of joy, wit, sorrow, anger, and everything in between. Even the side-characters with one or two lines of dialogue sound absolutely perfect. Frankly, it's worth playing the game just for the voice acting alone. 

If I was to make a criticism against Dust: An Elysian Tail, it would be that the game is way too short. There's only five chapters, each barely an hour long, and particularly skilled players can probably clear each chapter even sooner than that if they try hard enough. It is to my understanding that Dean Dodrill had plans for a sixth chapter, presumably where Dust confronts the unnamed King that Gaius (the main antagonist of the story) serves, but the sixth chapter was scrapped to save time, so as to meet Microsoft's deadline for the Xbox Game Awards. But aside from a painfully short length, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a fantastic game in every sense of the word, and is definitely worth $20. I give Dust 9 impossibly cool samurai foxes out of 10.

Oh, and Dean Dodrill has stated he plans on making a sequel, planned to be bigger and more ambitious than this game ever would be. And considering it's been seven years since, I found it appropriate to leave this little gag.