Lots of great dialogue, gags, surprises and a good combat system, but the actual narrative leaves plenty to be desired.

Important characters are left by the wayside for hours, a whole lot of nothing happens between pivotal plot points and it commits the cardinal sin of sloppily lore dumping not once but twice in the span of less than probably 30 minutes towards the end-game. Basically, Knuckle Sandwich was a good comedian, bad storyteller.

Without spoiling much, what especially perplexed me was the incident behind Gorilla Burger(?) weighing so heavily on the MC. It's brought up two or three other times throughout like the developer wanted it to matter more than it did, but I didn't sense any tension or significance between the incident and the grander story outside it merely being what sets off certain events at the beginning. They try to establish a loose connection at the very very end, however I couldn't bring myself to exude any enthusiasm over it by then.

Great dialogue aside, the game's flavor text is mostly in service of the comedy rather than fleshing out the characters you meet. By the end of my not so super short runtime, I hardly knew Thea or Echo or Dolus. Dolus might be the only character I could see myself connecting with, as what depth was there was expressed mostly, appropriately, without speaking. He's clearly socially awkward, so his abrupt dialogue, quick exits and that one dorky facial expression he makes as if out of nervousness endeared me to him. Unfortunately, he and maybe B-Side were the only characters I got anything out of outside their comedy factor.

On the whole, however, the gameplay and humor remained fresh enough throughout that I felt obliged to finish the journey I started.

What I'll mostly remember are the audio and visuals, which did a considerable amount of heavy lifting. Great mixing of colors, fun special effects, incredibly well-polished combat animations, and the music... OOOOOH it's so good! It's not quite your Undertales or Personas in that respect, but it's fairly close. The makeup of some tracks feels uniquely Knuckle Sandwich, with the others being generally awesome in their own right (my favorite track is probably the "coolroom" dungeon track).

It's a fun ride for about 80% of said ride, but the latter couple chapters really soured my impressions of the story and the gameplay did lax at points due to a lack of evolution in the combat by the 7-8+ hour mark.

I'd likely rate this a 7.5/10, but, like, a passionate 7.5! There's a whole ton of love and polish put to this project and it oozes out of every hole, especially initially. I can confidently say I'll be occasionally thinking of this game as the years wane. Whilst it may not be as good as other indie RPG's, not many of them are nearly as memorable.

If you can gel with an irreverent tone not unlike WarioWare (which, btw, was a direct inspiration and they nailed it 110%) and don't mind mixing loads of giggles with your JRPG's, you could do far worse than this.