Three Fairies' Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey!

While the reviews for Three Fairies' Hoppin' Flappin' Great Journey! were less than good, I saw something unique in this game. At first glance, it looks just like a retro turn-based RPG. Pixel art graphics, units take turns choosing actions, choosing targets... The usual. But it's not quite turn-based. There is a timer running for each character at all times, and you can only select your action once the timer has finished. Of course, just because you're selecting your action, doesn't mean the enemies will wait for you. You'll quickly fall behind, as the enemy just manages to think instantaneously and keep attacking, while you're fidgeting around in the menus.
But that's where the automated tactics system comes in. You can use building blocks to make a decision tree on which action each character should take as their turn comes. This puts you on equal footing with enemies, who evidently do the same. Not only that, it also dramatically speeds up combat and eliminates the tedious repetition.

Honestly, this sounds great on paper, and I would probably love to play a well-made game with such a system. Sadly, this game is not well-made. It has a lot of spirit in it. A lot of innovation and rarely seen mechanics. And I love all that. But it's not well-made.
The most obvious issue is the translation. While you're not forced to read too much story, it is unskippable, and the translation is far worse than any current automated tools can manage. Half the things said are gibberish, and you can read as much from what they're saying as from their facial expressions. So following along in the story is quite arduous.
Secondly, the menu navigation. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just the menus, but the automation system also has to be built on a grid, and doing so with only arrow keys and a select and back button is an absolute nightmare. This is aggravated by not being able to just save as many tactics as you want (some options for that do come, but it's not enough and quality-of-life shouldn't be an in-game unlock, no matter how novel the idea is).
And thirdly, the automation system isn't deep enough. I know making it be straight up programming would be too daunting, but it at least needs input fields instead of 7 different options duplicated for self, enemy, and friendly HP, to name one example. Conditionals also don't offer enough freedom to optimally use your characters. Sure, this makes it a puzzle to design a good system within the working limits, but the game clearly expects you to change your tactics around regularly, and doing so with the aforementioned painful menu system is not fun.
There's other small issues as well, like missing drop tables, but they weren't integral to me dropping the game.

Overall, I had some really fun moments discovering new systems and watching my dumb team of fairies turn a losing fight around without any input from me. I would again say that I love the idea of the game, and would play something like it, but just... not it itself. So, I wouldn't recommend it myself, but if you have the patience to deal with the three problems I listed, then you have yourself a 50+ hour RPG with very unique mechanics. I certainly haven't played anything like it, so I couldn't recommend any alternatives. I hope more games like this get made.

Vagrus - The Riven Realms

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is a narrative-heavy RPG about trading and surviving in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. You lead a caravan of people from city to city, encountering events along the way and managing your supplies, morale, and other indicators. There are a lot and lot of stats and knobs to turn for both your entire caravan as well as individual, more important members of it, yourself included. Death and disaster are ever-present, and there will be a lot of setbacks.

The game is focused significantly more on making decisions than fighting battles. In fact, the combat system is rather small and boring. While I definitely wouldn't call the decision-making side of the game small, I would still call it boring. Behind the large complexity of things to do, there doesn't seem to be a lot depth to it all. And this ties back to the game being heavily focused on the narrative, not the gameplay. From a story point of view, there are definitely a lot of different options to choose from, especially when it comes to the frequent and lengthy dialogue.

While reading everything is not necessary, I'm afraid it's the main virtue this game has. The worldbuilding is good, and I personally don't dislike the writing, but I can't say that at least the beginning of the overall story gripped me. Definitely not enough to keep me from leaving, but less picky people might enjoy it, especially on easy mode. But this is still a game, not a choose-your-own-adventure book, so much of the time is not spent on reading, but making these choices, which I found quite menial.

In the end, I don't like this kind of game. I'm pretty sure I could find many books in a similar setting with better writing and less forced interruptions to have to make decisions I don't care for. If you take out all the story, all the decisions you might make for roleplaying purposes, and just leave cold hard strategy, there isn't much to this game. A lot of boring decisions, leading to boring events. I think that even among games that try to blend worldbuilding, storytelling, and RPG / management elements, there are better options out there, so I can not recommend playing Vagrus.

ElecHead

ElecHead is a nice little puzzle platformer with one core game mechanic, and a lot of creativity around that core mechanic to build many interesting puzzles.
The rule is simple - anything connected to your head is supplied with electricity. This includes conditional platforms, elevators, traps, and even yourself, as you can throw your head to power things otherwise out of reach, or make sure you can cross certain areas without activating them.

There isn't really much to say. The game uses its one mechanic very well and manages to create new scenarios over and over again, letting you use old knowledge as well as figure out new ways to solve the puzzles given to you. The caveat is that it's short, at maybe only 3 hours, depending on how many collectibles you want to get. It's rather linear, but not entirely so, so missing a map is a bit of a bummer. Other than that, I have nothing bad to say about the game. It does what it set out to do incredibly well, even if what it set out to do isn't very ambitious. It reminds me a bit of VVVVVV, but not quite as good or long.

Overall, I think it's a worthwhile game for any puzzle platformer fans, even if it's a bit short. I'm not one of those people, so I can't personally recommend it, but I have to acknowledge that objectively speaking, it's pretty good.

Druidstone

Druidstone is another game that probably wouldn't live up to my wishlist standards today, but it did in 2019, and so here I am suffering for my past decisions.

I joke. It's not that bad. It advertises itself as a turn-based RPG or strategy game. It's not entirely wrong but I'm quite sure that most RPG or strategy enjoyers would not enjoy this game for those aspects. You control a small party and go through a series of missions, each requiring you to fulfill some objective and probably kill some enemies in the process.
The best part is that the levels are very handcrafted, and designed less like one would design an RPG, and more like one would design a puzzle game. You are expected to spend a lot time contemplating how to make your move, how the enemies are going to move, and how to beat the turn limit that most missions are on while also fulfilling as many bonus objectives as possible. There is a bit of power scaling through upgrading your abilities and passives, but at the core of it, none of your characters really change. This is important to keep the challenge of the puzzles, but this would also put off any RPG enjoyers.

While I was kind of expecting an RPG, I wouldn't even mind if this was a well-crafted strategy puzzle game, but it falls short. I find a lot of the character abilities bland, but even worse, I can't predict what enemies are doing. For an RPG, this would be fine, but for a puzzle game, I need to know ahead of time what the enemy can do against me, so I could plan for it. As it stands now, I have to complete each mission at least twice. Once to know what all the enemies do and what all the timed events and spawns are, and the other time to actually plan around them (if I still remember them accurately). This really does not fulfill the fantasy of being a brilliant strategist.

Overall, between low production values, boring combat options, and somehow managing to disappoint both RPG and puzzle game fans with their combat design, I don't really see any reason to recommend this. Whether you're looking for a turn-based tactics game or an RPG, there are many better options out there.

Dark Devotion

I'm gonna be brutal, it's been a while since I've played something as bad as Dark Devotion. The "Mostly Positive" reviews should have been a giveaway, but I decided to give it a try regardless.
I'm gonna be honest, I got less than 15 minutes into the game. And you may ask how I dare review the game based on such a short time, but I can confidently say that this is enough, based on how bad just about every aspect I experienced was.

So what are the problems I experienced during those 15 minutes? I can't rebind my controls, and the default ones are questionable at times. (R to pick things up? Why?) You can't really move backwards most of the time, just from one room to the next, which makes it a terribly linear experience. Might be fine, but not what I expected. Apparently there are platforming elements in the game, but there is no jump button? Even if there wasn't any focus on platforming, not letting me jump is a sin in a 2D sidescroller. The animations I encountered were kind of basic. I didn't even understand two of the times that an enemy had attacked me, but I had lost life. I had to crouch every time I wanted to pick something up. My bow could not be aimed. Stepping on/off a platform caused my character to rapidly jerk up and down.
It's just... everything gave off vibes that this was like a student project with cut corners and thoroughly amateur design and implementations.

I've already spent more time writing this than playing the game, so it's time to stop. There are so many more Souls-likes (if this qualifies for that title), and even 2D sidescrolling Souls-likes, that are available and better than this, that there is no reason to experience this. "Mostly Positive" isn't a high rating, but honestly, I feel even that might be generous given the review count and how bad it is.