Mind Shackles

You know how a lot of reviews glaze new games for potential? This isn't one of them. The crux of the issue is that the gameplay is tedious and terribly balanced. The gameplay loop goes like this: You have to deplete the main HP bar in the middle to get to the next phase. But to do that, you need to damage the opponent's 3 sub HP bars to at least 50 points, and then reduce one of them to 0 before any damage is done to the main HP bar. Sounds kinda simple, right? Here's how they fuck it up: If any of the 3 sub HP bars are 51 or more, you can't lower any past 50. If the enemy uses their heal, it adds points to all of the sub HP bars, requiring you to waste at least 2 turns hitting the ones at 50 again. You'll more or less need to "Tactical Retreat" every 4 turns or earlier to avoid having your "energy" hit 0. If it does hit 0, one of the sub HP bars will fully heal. Replenishing your own energy also replenishes a little bit of all the HP bars, including the main one. That means hitting each of them at least once every time you leave, which is bullshit when you have to leave every 4 attacks. There's also a 10% base chance to deal a crit or "jackpot", which slightly increases with each attack until you crit or crit fail but it doesn't ignore the 50 point requirement. There's also a 10% chance that your attack crit fails, which heals the opponent instead, adding HP back to one of the sub HP bars. There's otherwise a 40% chance to deal 25 points and 40% chance to do 5%. That means on average, you'll do 30 damage every 10 turns unless a crit goes off when an HP bar is topped off. Remember, you need to drop the sub HP from 100 to 50, and there's 3 bars. You can only defend against attacks every 3 turns, and you only benefit from it if you pass the literal 2 second QTE to hit 4 WASD keys, and lose additional points for failing. Your opponent, however, can spam moves as many times as she wants. You can successfully defend against one Heavy Strike just to eat 2 more while your defend is on cooldown. Upgrades start at 50, 100, and 150 points respectively. It takes about 5 minutes of grind to get 100 points and the benefits from a single upgrade to each is negligible. I don't know if the dev tested out their own mechanics, but statistically speaking, you have a better chance of winning one of those shitty strip blackjack flash games than successfully depleting the sub HP bar. I have no idea why this game is tagged with [Point and Click], [Sandbox], and [Management]. There's none of these elements involved currently and unless I'm wrong, Point and Click is a genre, not a literal indicator of the use of a mouse. P.S. And I have no idea why, but the sub HP bars will randomly gain extra. I started out at 100 each and somehow got 120 after 10 minutes. Still on the first phase, mind you.