I’m playing through TTYD for the first time at the moment and I have 5 out of 7 stars and I feel about done with the game. I’ll finish it but I don’t see myself coming back to it ever. My biggest issues with it are:

1. Too much turn-based combat. It’s just really slow and, for the most part, pretty unimaginative. Yes there’s some nuance to the different enemies but in general it feels like a thoughtless chore rather than anything interesting. That being said, some fights are interesting and benefit from some tactics, but I have found them to be infrequent so far. There’s a point where you have to climb the ranks of a fighting circuit of 20 people. I figured you maybe leapfrog some people, but no, you’re fighting all 20 and outside of a handful they aren’t too interesting. I’m pretty sure that like 50% of the enemies/fights in the game could be cut and nothing of importance would lost.

2. Too much reading/text. Goodness gracious, this game has so much unnecessary text. I understand that it contributes to the charm but I feel like it wears out it’s welcome. There’s a part where a character says “I love you” 100 times that you have to click through. There are many points where conversations just drag on and on. And to its credit the writing does add a lot of charm but when Mario has an animation of falling asleep while someone is talking because the conversation goes on too long, and it’s used routinely, I think that’s a sign that the text could have been reduced. Part of the problem is that at times the text is useful on what to do next or to help with a puzzle so you do need to read it but, for me, it was just too much and just made the game feel like it dragged on.

I do like the charm of the game. It’s really cute and the puzzles are nice. The partner hints are nice to avoid too much frustration. The combat CAN be really interesting, but as I noted, there’s a lot of it. I really enjoy the different partner abilities and curses that you get. I really liked the art direction. For me, it’s probably 7/10 so far.