The game starts with a flashback with you, Abraham, and your friend Penn in an old facility. Your bed is just a hospital bed and your room has nothing other than a book and a camera. Penn calls you to check the roof cause he stole the keys. You can explore the building and you see a few other students (?) in what apepars to be a school with it's own library and admin office. but if you go to floor 1 a guy with a rifle tells you it's dangerous. At the roof we go outside and we are surprised to see the sun.
On the other side of the river we see a demolished city in ruins and we wonder why they kept it a secret for us and why we can't go there, what waste. Penn promises to go there one day with me. Then it transitions to modern day (fairly seamless) and it's night and our building is destroyed and abraham is alone and a werewof.
We move again through the whole building in silence (kinda of a lot of wasted space and time tbh) until we see a guny running telling something to eat us. He's running from a wolf. We beat the wolf with our single offensive spell and the guy, named Jagan, smiles smugly saying he expected us to be weak but we're not. We're green so he'll go with us and "split the reward" hmmm.
Jagan is the terry hintz (LISA) of the game and he's garbage. He has a single shitty psychic spell that can maybe proc a weakness but he's weak to stab himself so he ends up being an active hindrance. We can literally eat Jagan right now if we want, i did to see what happens then reloaded. You get exp and one of his spells, with the best one being a powerful psy spell named handshake at 25 mp, giving Abe elemental coverage.
Abraham is a simple MC if he doesn't eat. He has a simple stab skill, later a slash skill and then a strike skill, all more expensive and stronger. He has a spell that regenerates hp and mp so he's self suficient at least. When Jagan joins he triggers "lone wolf" and loses 15% hp for not being alone, which ok but doesn't make sense cause that goes away when he eats someone even without being alone later.
As we fumble our way through the building we eventually go to a room with a giant headed scientist on it. It does a baby laughter sound.
(welp thats creepy).
In this fight the boss is weak to spy so Jagan can down him but at the same time jagan will die very fast and you next. If you die on this fast you get an option "Do you want to eat the fat man?", which is a cute attempt of tutorial, but i think the average modern rpggamer knows undertale and expects a bad ending from this so i didn't and died.
You see there is a problem with this boss, it's the fact that it can and will exploit Jagan's weakness and if it does it enter the Zeal enhanced state that is kinda like Smirk from SMT 4. During this state enemies get OP as fuck moves and this boss gets one that drains a ton of mp on top of a lot of damage.
This means this fight ends up being pure luck as you must pray the boss doesnt hit jagan then stomps you. The game is a lot easier if you eat him cause you unlock a strong spell from him and lose a weakness.
But looking at the dev replies on the itcho page, that is apparently intentional. Jagai s garbage by design and you're meant to eat him to teach you that it's ok to be evil. The dev REALLY wants you to eat Jagan and see that "this isn't a game about mercy".
Anyway the boss drops a note about a cientist saying he's working on the cure for lycantrophy and he will be at the suburbs. If Jagan is alive he says they should bring that note back for the money but Abe says he'll look into it himself.
So a good premise so far right? We go down and exit the building and get a bike. You use the bike in the inventory to acess the world map and go to the suburbs. There we have 3 paths, one of these i didn't register before. You're in the middle of the road, so you can go right (warehouse + shop), left (river) or middle path (forest/park).
Ok so this is a little too much at once and the game's balance goes to shit as you will meet overleveled OP enemies now. On the river you see level 7 fishmen, the warehouse is a GIANT maze with enemies that spawn after you pick stuff and middle path (that i didnt realize at first) is the easiest one as it's a few wolves.
On the middle path you see a KOed guy who you can help with healing items (obviously a party member), and some enemies on the path. My best bet was going there kill some wolves enough to level and get money, then go to the river where there is a sofa and you can rest for free. You can find some "wolf meat" near them too. Eventually i get enough money to visit the shopkepper and buy wolf meat and hire Amy. Amy is a tarot reader near the shop and she is hired with 20 bucks.
(Her gimmick is that she gives very strong varied buffs but her spells cost 100 mp and she can shuffle to recharge 500 but become silenced for one turn.)
(the shopkeeper is the only real npc you can talk and get some info. He says he heard people are drowning in the river).
We go back to the park and feed the guy named Boyle. He's a guitarrist support who can give the team regeneration and defense buff. Later he gets an AoE fire spell that is weak but aplies burn+crying.
(He resist fire too with no weakness? That will be very good for the final boss of the demo).
Now we have a full team so we can actually kinda survive stuff, but as Abe is the only one doing real damage. If he can down enemies then the all out attack is strong enough. I go back tothe park and beat some enemies around. There is one living energy enemy that has a fire AOE spell that burns and it's reaaally cancer so you should save every step and go back to rest if low. Note that eventually the sofa will get taken by a wolf who asks 5 dollars to let you use it, which made mad at first but it's a fair trade off as by the point you rested thrice you should be at least surviving.
In that park we can find a guy chained to a metal bar. You can find the key to the lock right beside him and unlock him. If you ask why he is like this he seems kinda delirious and begging to be released so he can go follow the voice in the water. I didn't get it at first but this guy is hypnotized by the boss of this area, as implied by the shopkeeper with people drowning. I did not release him but returned too later and he was gone. You're supposed to unlock him after defeating the first boss and he becomes playable.
(this is from my second run where i recruited him. He is a simple character who does single target slash attack with debuff like bleed or atk or defende down. Kinda bland but his hp is high).
At the park we can find a few healing items like "wolf meat" and a collectable fish (this will be important) and a tunnel to the factory. Lets go back to the factory, i REALLY hated that place. It's all gray/dark blue and after you get in it becomes a maze where going to the previous room takes you to a different room so it's easy to get lost in circles, which i did. You can find a few healing items then you hear a roar that spawns cube enemies that move in fixed directions. In my first run i managed to find the "treasure" at end that is a fish and the key that opens the main gate to outside but not back inside. In my second i only found another fish and left cause the fish is what matters here.
There is a very fun encounter in this factory tho where you move to the right and there is an upper and lower corridor with blind spots. As you move Abe will appear up to change from up and down and it's a little weird but then it stops an you move some more until another game jumps at you. It's a doppelganger! But it's only level 3 so fairly weak at this point. Still a creepy encounter.
(why is this factory so early it's annoying)
But here is the thing that made my first run so hard, this game actually has a weakness exploit system like modern persona games but adds a buff like Smirk from shin megami 4. This means exploiting weakness or criting will DOWN the enemy (lose a turn, if all downed you get all out oattack) AND will give a "ZEAL" buff. This buff gives you speed and 100% hit chance + drops mana cost to zero, but enemies can get it too and they get acess to an ULTIMATE MOVE that is always a strong as fuck AoE attack.
This leads to fucked up out nowhere game overs because an enemy critted you and next turn they get an unavoidable move that can wipe your team. At one point i had 2 cubes crit and it was unavoiable death. YOu can block but still get crited through it. The dev would patch the game a day later to change that on weaker enemies but some still have it and i don't like it. A shitty mob shouldn't turn bad luck into sheer wipeout potential.
Anyways, now we can finally go to the river. Unlike lisa you can actually SWIM in this game, which is a nice change of pace. You can even find "wolf fishes" that represent enemies in the water, in this case being fish men with machetes or guns. The gun fish can do an AoE stab attack and Jagan is weak to stab, so he's a HUGE hindrance here, even if the fishes are weak to his psy spell.
We find another collectable fish here, and with 3 we can collect norman. Norman is a fisherman samurai (?) who stays near the sofa so he's hard to miss. Near him we find an acessory that increases fire resistance but lowers hp. Oh yeah, there are a few acessories but toehr than elemental resist they're minor hp/sp increases at the cost of the other stat. This is stupid and was later changed with a patch so only the resist ones lower hp.
Either way we can recruit Norman with3 fishes and he's very good forthe demo as he resists ice and has an ice that fishes use .
(He does not start with pyrophobia, he gets it later after the fire boss randomly gives him)
Ok so he befriended "wolves" but his wolves are fishes. So the way it works in this game but is never explained directly at all is that ALL MONSTERS are "wolves" who were seemingly humans once until they got lycantropy. This means the word is more symbolic but not all wolves are equal.
Abe for example is a normal looking guy until he transforms in battle so for all purposes he is a human with a form. The wolves we fight seem to have gone mindless over time or after eating humans, becoming no different from animals or videogame monsters. The item being called "wolf meat" implies that people eat wolves or even harvest them.
Norman can summon fishes to healor a shark in a suit to attack for him and i don't know if that's gag shit or an actual real thing that he is doing and that shark with legs is an intelligent being working with him. But i'll clarify now that Abe is not the only wolf that transforms, there are other playable ones that i missed completely. One is Mothman, a winged skeletonthat is hard to recruit.
I saw the dev explain he requires 3 triggers
-Appear at random during a random fight to buff you once
-Appear at random after the shopkeeper to attack you (you can see him from the window, its creepy)
-Appear at random on the streets to challenge you at rock paper scissors
I got him on my second run and he's an AoE attacker with poison element spells.
His name is Travis and looks human here because he is human until he transforms.
(This is what the all out attack looks like, travis is on the left, there is a little animation and looks a lil confusing cause i didn't show any of those characters yet. The werewolf is Abe)
Either way travis is weak to stab so he's not good here either. As we explore the river we kill stuff and find a spot on the left with another fish and the option to free a fishman (i did). this was thethird fish to recruit norman. it's only really 2 rooms so barely a dungeon but every exp counts as we eventually fight a boss named Hydra Mother. This boss is fairly tanky and has an aoe ice spell with a chance to freeze that is really cancer (the game was updated tomake it not freeze).
So you should definitely bring Norman and boyle (regeneration spell) here. If you ate Jagan and took his fourth spell, a powerful psy magic attack, Abe can down the boss and this is a lot easier. But curiously, after a boss is downed they get an elemental shield for they weakness similar to digital devil saga. But you can still crit physical attacks and down them again, making luck a huge factor. I got a 1500 dropkick crit on it with Abe and another crit with Norman and both downs into all out were big.
(from the trailer)
After the boss dies the water levels drop and new paths open up and we can recruit herbert if you havent unlocked yet. You can go to a cave connected to whatlook like sewers. The cave has a prty member and the sewers fork into a condominium (is this the right word?) with a recruit and another further into sewers.
(you can find an anime pillow in a table here and idk what the joke is. Are the fishmen weeabos?)
(You find this room too with some lore. I wonder what "the massacre" means... There is cameras all over the caves and the park too btw)
At the cave we can fight Bunny buddy or somethin
This boss is deceptively hard as it's 3 enemies spamming strong spells. The left is an afterimage and the middle one is bombs (???) but you need ot kill all 3.After the fight the bunny stops and joins you.
Buddy is a very strong partner and a must use for the next bosses. He has an AoE slash, a fire grenade, ice grenade and poison grenade, making essentially a powerful wizard with the best elemental coverage in the game. The downside is that his hp is pathetically low and he has a weakness.
But most of all buddy has a spell that lets you SCAN enemies for their attacks, resistances and LORE. This is because he's an in universe wolf expert or something. I do not understand why this is much lore is locked behind this.
There is one item you can buy with the same effect but it's consumable and money is very scarce. Anyways, back at the fork we can go to a new place to the left. I didnt go there in my first run and missed it completely meaning i lost another party member.
uuuh what the hell is that guy doing oh what it's an enemy??
what
Why is that house frozen. What is that dude looking at.
what the fuck.
If you bring bunny or use an item it only says something like "This wolf appears at night and does mundane things at urban spots, acting like a human. It will do disappear at day without being seen". I don't know if it's a reference to something but it's Creeeeeepy. Oh yeah the frozen house.
At first it seems like a normal house that had a normal family, but family photo has a hole in the baby's face and the parents are frozens.
Sounds like a boss fight is coming boys. At least we can heal using the shower, how nice. We reach the final room and...
(its just some pink haired girl?)
Years? Then how long were your parents frozen? Are there any living people out there or...
oh nonono
Oh no she is a gross weeb, thats way more scary. She keeps rambling until she jumps at Abe like a freaking animal.
Welp, that was easy. Anyways we got Laura now, the last party member that i missed in my first run and got in the second. She is a wolf like abe but she is weird.
Laura is a "stuffed animal" with "robot body". Her battle form is a blue cat doll that flies around like a ghost, probably referencing something i dont know. It's a bit confusing how wolves can be pratically anything, from winged skeletons to robo cat dolls.
Either way Laura is an ice healer, she can heal everyone at once + def buff or one person + regen. She gets a revive spell that makes you frozen too but it's worth it. She is better than boyle but boyle has no weakness and learn a fire attack spell later that makes downing fishes easily.
So we reach the final stretch of the demo. A water height valve puzzle.
(the water wolves with lifesaver buoy are really cute tho)
This one is easy as it's just one room that you go back and forth and fight some enemies. There is an acessory that gives fire resistance too (hmmm). You navigate it enough to get a USB that lets you acess a computer in the upper room.
Clearly someone was living here...
After this we lower tothe last level and fight the two last bosses of the demo. But before that i remember there is another optional boss we can fight and it's kinda of a cringe one. There is a path in the river that opens to it, and itsj ust a serial killer wolf giving a speech.
He's actually shocked that we are not cops so where the fuck are the cops? The man wants to get a "fandom" but no one cared?
UH OH, SOCIAL COMMENTARY?! IN MY QUIRKY INDIE JRPG?! This is an obvious jab on the whole Luigi Mangione thing and it hits me like a surfboard to the face of whiplash. Abe says almost NOTHING the entire demo and this is the one time he makes q funny quip.
WE LIVE IN A SOCIETY BATMAN!
The quirk of this boss is that it's actually two bosses, the head and the body and will keep fighting after one is dead. The body does physical attacks and the head magical. Not a hard boss if you're unlucky they can focus one person and kill it fast.
Anyways now we reaching the true end of the demo and the big revelaiatons. One last shop and resting spot before it.
A camera with speaker recognizes us.
It's the second to last boss of the demo, Dagon. This boss has 4 parts and each of them is weak to one physical attack type and fire, making it easy to down. Bunny slashes everything, abe pierces the eyes and boyle can smack the beak. Eventually it gets fire shield but not physical so you can keep attacking it. So this boss is fairly easy.
It does have a gimmikc where it summons a normal fish with a TON of hp and i think it's supposed to eat the fish to heal, but the real thing is how the fish has no weakness so it actually locks you out of easy all out attacks as you can't down it easily. But if you're fast you will kill everything but the beak in a few turns.
I cant get it here but all out attacks are different, can be a bunch of claw slashes or normal slashes etc.
The entire motivation of the villain of this area is locked behind this one enemy scan. I guess this scientist simply wanted to flood the world and create fishtopia. Anyway, we pwn this noob and reach the final room of the demo.
(He was looking at everything through cameras and he's gotta a gun. He looks to be a fish perosn himself.)
There is a loud bang and Abe is bleeding. You have to keep moving foward and hearing bangs, because Abe has turned into the fucking terminator now.
Aaaah so we can get the idea of what's happened here. At the start of the game that wasn't a school but a "clinic"! And it's likely that Abe was turned into a werewolf there by the doctors, so this one probably knew how to make fish people.... But then the coolest mccool arrives.
Oh god, look at this edgelord, i am 300% sure he's going to be a boss and 500% sure he will be a rival.
And he's swinging a crucifix around wow what an asshole.
(DONT YOU YAOI BAIT ME GAME!)
asudhasudhsa this nigga is literally named MOLOTOV NINETAILS! What an edgelord!
Wait AGIDYNE? This motherfucker is a weeabo or the dev is not even pretending, just copy shin megami tensei.
(Well i guess it's okay to let a magic werewolf man when you got super powers)
Molotov (pffft) will spam fire moves during this fight so boyle is really good here and you better keep that fire resistance acessory on bunny to spam ice grenades. After some damage he will taunt Abe and you can reply, leading to different buffs to him or you. If you say abraham he says you're not living tothe bible. If you taunt him there is more yaoi.
(Guys i'm starting to feel like Molotov is a hypocrite or something...)
The fight is cut short and Molotov attacks the doctor with the power of cutscene cheating.
Before the doctor can explain who michael is, he is burned to a crisp and molotov leaves. At least we have a clue and the next area unlocks.
(was the doctor a wolf then? or turned wolf? They certainly didnt look too human)
Demo is oveeeeer. We can go to a blank room and talk to the dev now, it's a bit self indulgent but i like that.
Dev shares his socials and etc.
Ah yes, the lack of music... It's really bad. I forgot how bad it is.
"Drum hype for the Kickstarter" huh? That's uh, a rather optimistic take there dev. Not saying the demo was bad but your youtube video has like, 50 views. Im gonna be honest, i wouln't be surprised less than 10 people played this demo, much less twice like me.
(We live in a society where indie deving is hard)
Dev says the full game will have 4 areas, 5 endings and 12~ hours which is probably a tame plan. He wants to make an rpg that is "like, about combat" and he loves smt and fire emblem. But the interesting part there is five endings.
So let me clarify 2 things i din't mention until this point;
FIRST: There is not a standard game over, instead of dying you go to a doctor who asks for money or one of your partners to save you. You have the option to refuse and take a normal game over but this option apparently was NOT there at released, it was patched on the same day because a guy on itch.o called it retarded. You had to actually type ABRAHAM as a name to sacrifice to get a game over, making it unberable. I am glad i remembered that F12 resets the game in rpg maker so i could skip that.
He even added an option to skip explanation aw.
Needless to say this system IS retarded because: It's retarded.
This is a game where you can save anywhere from the menu, there is no scenario where using this is more worth than reloading, and even then it's too punishing. if you sacrifice someone you don't eat them so you'd have an easier time reloading and eating someone. I get the idea but it's not implemented well.
And going back to eating, LETS TALK ABOUT THAT. When you someone you get their final words and a creepy fade to black into bloody screen.
(no trauma baby)
Curiously most skills you can learn are not avaiable on the character you eat so i assume they learn those later. Funny bunny is just SMT concentrate. You can only learn one but giving Abe more coverage sounds really nice. He also gets a level up and removes his downside trait (-15% hp).
But here is the cool part, you can keep eating your team. And stuff happens.
After 3 kills Abe sprite changes. He is shirtless and his hair is longer. And if you eat a forth one...
He becomes a furry! Or in this case a full werewolf all the time and no human anymore. Because it means he literally turned into a wolf... A symbolic way of representing that he lost his humanity and- you get what i mean.
But here is the FUNNIER part. Abe is not the only one who can devour. Anyone in the team who is a wolf can do it. Including travis the mothman and laura. Wolves cannot devour wolves but they can any of the human recruits.
Their appearance also changes. On one hand i'm a bit sad it's not an Abe morality thing but on the other this is really complex and interesting because you can technically have a team with ONLY wolves and eat all humans, which in turn HAS to affect the ending. There is sadly no dialogue change in the demo for furry Abe but it has to be later because he does look human after eating 4 people.
I can see a lot of potential for branching paths and endings here. The good ending would obviously not eat anybody, and the bad one would have multiple devours and wolves.
BONUS TRIVIA: If you return to Laura's house it was burned down. If you have laura in your party she will stare at it silently which is good vibe. If you don't there is no one, so i guess she is burned to death if you dont recruit her.
