Recent reviews by T3hSource

**Cthulu Saves Christmas**

Well, another game by this developer. Never played Cosmic Star Heroine, which is Zeboyd's serious JRPG as I've heard. But a prequel to Cthulu Saves the World with a Xmas theme is fine by me and I instantly bought it with the coupon.

Zeboyd's formula hasn't changed much: funny intro sequence -> dungeon layout with few branches to loot -> counted random encounters -> boss with funny moments -> rinse and repeat 5-7 times.

Really, that core formula isn't touched here either. You still have the same 4th wall breaking jokes, which I now think will date these games more than the classics it's inspired from. The biggest change is that you get a threat bar for random encounters, the number of REs you can run into and you can *cancel* the RE if you click confirm fast enough, meaning that if you mash A/X as you explore the map, you don't even get REs stumping your exploration towards the loot and figuring the pathways. I also feel that the branches aren't as long as they used to be, i.e. minimal backtracking rather than winding around the floor for the chest you saw through the wall and then going back on the main path.

With counted REs, you also get the option to *just battle on the spot from the menu*. This game truly respects you time with such options. It allows saving anywhere but battle and cutscenes which are brisk, as well as allowing a difficulty change without withholding any content whatsoever.

The dialogues are as amusing as ever, I guess it can work as a party show if you can speed up battles with Cheat Engine or something, but they tend to rely a lot on lampshading folklore tales, industry cynicism, or just plain old boasting. Those are fun in the moment, but they are one time gags. I do like that there's the Persona-like aspect of selecting which cutscenes you want to watch in-between dungeons to build R’lyehtionships (this should give you insight as to the game's type of humor) with various amusing effects. You will always get something useful, unless the dungeon packs something even more useful.

As for the battles, still the same: easy if you pay attention. But now, every single resource is bound to the battle instance rather than being a limited global resource. In turn you get Insanity Slots, i.e. every character has 4 slots of abilities you can equip them from a limited pool, then they have 1 Recharge skill because most abilities are single use only, and the last 3 of the 8 abilities are randomly selected for each battle and cycle through use and recharge in battle. The Insanity mechanic of flipping weaknesses and boosting damage dealt and received is back, and as expected, damage ramps up as the turns go by so it outpaces not just your healing but your HP pool in total with time, it's a bruteforce clock, but it works out rather intuitively.

Each enemy has their weaknesses to elemental attacks and debuffs, but the game just gives you a single rundown of the UI pictures in the 1st dungeon rather than having them in the Tutorial Menu, that sucks. Never found out what the Chicken mechanic was with one of the companions since the abilities worked regardless of that meter. So yeah, have those *explained in an understandable language in the tutorial menu please!*

There really isn't much else to Zeboyd games, they are the classic JRPG formula distilled to its most basic elements at your convenience: dungeon branching, random battles, neat cutscenes for 8h. They are like a short, bittersweet lolipop in between the big JRPG meals of 80+h adventures and quest grinding. If you like one, you'll like all of them