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.