The story developing is simple yet effective. We have our main trio Vi, Kabbu, Lief who are tasked with helping the Queen retreive artifacts to gain the Everlasting Sapling. The general premise is simple enough three adventureres go off on a quest to find something behind all that the introduction of the main villian is done quite well. The Wasp Kingdom slowly being developed the overarching villian is done smoothly that feels satisfying to watch develop. Now the Wasp King himself is alright, he is the generic tryant doesn't care about his people type but it works with how they write him in. Every chapter of the game feels like it used effectively and at no point was I questioning why we we're doing certain tasks in the story. Queen Elizbeth II development through the story from our trio questioning her ruling ability to her diplomatically repairing relationships was also great. Overall the story worked really well for the game. Nothing too crazy but it was good.
The characters I think is where this game really shines. The main trio has an amazing dynamic across the game. Vi being the hard headed no filter type, Lief being the more relaxed snarky charcter, and Kabbu being the more level headed respectful, made it so amazing. Their is so much dialouge that gave me many mental laughs and even some out loud ones.
Vi always bringing up money never gets when they do sidequests or main quests for the Queen. Lief always trolling. Kabbu always trying to be level headed but sometimes breaking his normal character was always funny. I mean it was so fun the whole way through.
On top of that the side characters are funny too. I mean one characters are brimming with personality and I think the two other side characters I could talk about are Mothiva and Zasp. Their dynamic of Zasp being loyal to Mothiva but still being a good person was fun. Vi always beefing with Mothiva was also funny. I mean they were great as well. I mean I could imagine their delivery of the dialouge as if it was actually voice acted. I think thats the best praise I can give.
I gameplay is very fun. I think the active rpg combat is fun. I'm not just clicking buttons but having to time it right for good damage. It was satisfying getting used to it and alndig the best hits. The abilities were also fun but by the end I would just use the same strongest abilities. I think the funnest part was collecting badges to have different battle strategies like combining all offensive badges on one character to try to mow down the enemy. I mean it was super fun. Traveling around was also good though sometimes I couldn't tell the angles since it was in paper mario style. I also like the side card game. I didn't do al; the side quests but I did do the champion tournament for the card game. Really fun little side game. The arcade that the termites bring to town is also very fun. I only played them once but they were both enjoyable. Overall fun gameplay.
The music in game was fairly good. I mean I list my favorite tracks. The first spider boss theme was by far my favorite. I feel the music in this game fits the locations but generally I don't think its anything too amazing. I like the music in the bee hive. That was some nice chill music. Other than that the battle themes were good and the overworld themes worked well enough. So yea pretty good.
First of all the art style is amazing. I have some more paper mario artsyle games in my steam wishlist but as this is the first one it was a nice suprise. It visually looks amazing and uses the artstyle very effectively. I also find the character desgins very good. I mean each character gives a whole deal of personality. The main trio is good example. Vi shows off her scrappy no filter personality well. Her big eyes show her lack of thinking before speaking, Kabbu's heavy shell shows his loyalty and gaurding personality, and Liefs monotone face shows off his very relaxed brazen personality.