itch.io

Ok, I have a lot to say about this game. I think it's really promising and has a lot of effort put into it, but there are some issues that kind of need to be addressed. However, I will get the positives out of the way first.

It's obvious this game is a love letter to LSD Dream emulator. The graphics and animations are close by proxy. There are also plenty of other references such as Hylics, Yume Nikki, ENA, Lain, and a pinch of Greek Mythology. I am pretty much a sucker for those types of games anyways, so I mean this in a positive way if anything.

The dialogue is also surprisingly snappy. There is a lot of philosophy going on in the interactions, which is honestly fine. Melpomene, or Mel as I prefer to call here, is a standout character, she is told to be the gloomy, depressing goddess of Disillusion's world, yet her interactions with Golem make her surprisingly more nuanced than expected from your typical RPG sidekick. The other interactions in the game are also lifted with the strong dialogue.

It's also impressive that you managed to get all of this done in RPG Maker. There are already a lot of games that push the engine to it's limits, but this is one of the more impressive ones. I never really imagined someone would make a 3D game of this caliber.

Sadly, this is where the positives end, cuz there are a lot of issues that I must go over.

For one, we must talk about the combat system. The original Disillusion Game seemed to have inherited Hylic's combat system. Here, it was scrapped for a more 3D like combat system. It’s cool in theory, right? Well… it’s also broken. The RNG seems to really hate hard attacks because I feel like they never land. Accuracy is usually indicated via textboxes, yet it seems like I end up with blanks whenever I press G. What's even worse is that it's easy to get ganged up by so many enemies. Even worse, dying really no stakes whatsoever. Yume Nikki has this issue too, but there there are actual consequences when you ‘die’. Here, you just get teleported to yet another random room. You also can’t really get level-ups either, so there is no real incentive to win battles aside from just exploring whatever room you are currently in.

The card system is also worth talking about. It sadly suffers from the similar issue of being ambitious in concept but broken in practice. The person who goes second has an immeasurable advantage, making winning ultimately RNG dependent. The other mechanic I would like to talk about is the Cherub system, which basically gives you a pet that you can feed and take care of. It doesn’t seem fully fleshed out though, since you can’t really interact with it that much aside from animations of races.

The biggest issue, however, is the game’s progression. I get that surrealist games tend to have a pretty awkward relationship with game progression. Yume Nikki and LSD Dream Emulator prioritize exploration over game progression anyways, while Hylics is linear despite the surrealist presentation. Disillusion tries to combine both aspects, but the execution really suffers as a result. Everything is randomized in this game. The only way to go from Point A to B is through interacting doors, but the locations you arrive are randomized for every door you go in. It doesn’t take long until you realize that the game basically becomes variance hell, especially in Combat mode The game is aware of this though, but it just doesn’t make for a satisfying experience.

Lastly, the environments are kind of a mixed bag. I will have to applaud the creator for making good use of animations throughout this game, but the interactive aspect is largely a mixed bag. There are some cool zones, namely the bright and colorful LSD-inspired, church and city environments, but also a bunch of dead grey zone with no life to them. This was likely intentional since it fits the story, but it doesn’t take long to notice that some of the rooms are just recycled with slightly modified textures.

Overall, I really want to like this game. There is no denying that there are a ton of cool ideas. And while some of those ideas this game has delivered, the overall product feels more like an interactive art project than a game. There isn’t anything wrong with that, but I just wish the mechanics of the game were as good as the presentation.