Lyssa Greywood's Reviews
There’s a lot to love about Copycat, especially when it comes to the art and voice acting. The dreamscape scenes are a really nice touch, showing us plenty of Shelter-Dawn’s inner thoughts and how she feels throughout the journey. The narration from different voices adds to that feeling, weaving everything together beautifully. And while the Quick Time Events can be a bit tense, they keep you engaged at the right moments.
Visions of Mana is a heartfelt return to a classic series, combining nostalgia with fresh ideas to create an experience that feels familiar and new. The story is its strongest asset, pulling you into a world full of magic, sacrifice, and unexpected twists. While the game isn’t without its flaws — especially in terms of accessibility and combat pacing — there’s enough here to keep new and old fans entertained.
This is the perfect kind of game to replay. It's impossible to get every achievement in your first playthrough because the drinks you serve in response to quests change the outcome of each quest. Serve someone a drink that boosts their charisma, and they might succeed in talking down a beast that's terrorizing a nearby town. On the other hand, a drink that boosts their strength may result in a character getting injured or failing to address the root cause of the problem.
It's such an innovative RPG design, compared to what we see a lot of in the genre now. A fully grayscale game like this is already intriguing, but I felt entranced by the white glow of the torches, unnerving floating and talking skulls, and the CRYPTMASTER themselves... I also found the rats strangely off-putting. I don't know if it was all the time I spent wandering around in Chapters 1 and 2, but... Gods, it's the eyes. So many beings in CRYPTMASTER have those weird, swirling eyes. They're difficult to look at.
I didn't want this game to be another Stray... Stray has much more dystopian themes. It's very realistic, both in art and in the possibilities of human life that it imagines the future to hold. Little Kitty, Big City doesn't have any of that darkness hanging overhead. The freedom that a modern and funny cat game gave its own artists really shows in the weird and wonderful things that the game includes. For example, you'll see humans that are so much taller than little kitty and have no clear faces, yet they can express joy and anger easily; other animals look more detailed than their surroundings, as if little kitty sees potential friends clearer than anything else.