Path to Nowhere

I was very much drawn to this game for artistic elements. The music can’t be matched, the character art is terrific, and the character concepts are terrific. The writing I did not find to be competitive with legitimate visual novels, as in events and the main quest it often felt like a strange set of excuses to lead you into another battle. This is why I say the character concepts are good rather than the writing, because if you get a good sprite, with good VAs, and roughly approximate the beats of a stellar story writing-wise, it will still be pretty easy to appreciate a character. I say the game isn’t for me because a lot of gameplay elements weren’t appealing… having to put time into progression every day felt like a chore. A major game design I disagree beyond incompatibility is the the fact that you get boxed into playing the same 6-7 characters (6 deployable in a normal game) throughout what appears to all of early-mid game. Leveling up any more characters than this is considered a strategic misplay. Sticking with the same loadout every game significantly decreases the impact of strategic planning and turns the whole thing into a level grind. I personally feel like some re-balance is needed to encourage use of more units. All in all, I still quite love it. The soundtrack I will keep, but have burnt out of playing in 3 weeks.

I’m going to go ahead and give this game a 5 star review. I’m liking the graphics so far, that’s what does it for me, good graphics for me always make a game more enjoyable, then probably the storyline or any other side activity would. A+ for that, the game design is Interesting as well, not sure if I’ve come across a game like this before in the past, if I have it hadn’t been like Path to Nowhere. Storyline is okay, could be better. Dialogue is okay, sometimes there isn’t a VoiceOver for the characters, and the player must read the dialogue manually, not sure if it’s a problem with pre - recorded voice lines, or they just weren’t added in. Combat is okay as well could be better. Right, what i mainly wanted to ask about in my review is this. Will there be a plan to add a way to revert sinners levels back to zero? I don’t like that there isn’t a way to get those resources “ ONE” has spent on a sinner, or multiple sinners and not end up using much or at all. That’s what has happened to me, wasted tons of resources on random sinners with no way to get them back. Please add a way to revert sinners back to level one, and get back all spent resources.

This game is very similar to Arknights in a lot of ways and is inevitably going to draw comparisons. The tower defense gameplay is similar, you rank up characters and skills, dupes are important, the gacha rates are awful and you aren’t guaranteed to get the banner character if you pull an s rank. But I think it does enough to differentiate itself that it’s worth a shot. Instead of starting with no one on the field, you start with all your characters deployed. Instead of having to remove characters from the field and wait for a long cooldown to be able to reposition them, you can move them around at will. I find this to be a more enjoyable experience as you can adjust what is happening on the fly, rather than having to quit out of the stage and restart because your vital character died. The same thing might happen here as once characters die they are gone, or you might start the stage with the wrong characters making it pretty much impossible, but the fluidity and speed of being able to move my characters around makes this more fun to play for me. Also, I like being able to understand what characters are saying so I very much appreciate English voice acting. The voice acting is nothing to write home about but it’s not bad either.