izigame.me

The thing you have to understand about this is that its not a CRPG. Instead its a point and click adventure mixed with visual novel. I say this because there doesn't seem to be much in the way of choice and consequence. Sure, there are minor deviations into alternate routes based on using different skills. For example, pick a lock, smash it, find the key, or talk your way past a guard. But they're very minimal and mostly just for flavor. Still, I appreciated that and its one of the strong points of the game.
This game also has an interesting story, though at times its a bit too convoluted and verbose. You could also say there are some pacing issues as the first half is very slow. A lot of the early stuff as well as side quests don't seem to matter much to the overall plot, and you can still get a pretty good ending while ignoring several side quests. In fact it seemed kind of weird at one point. I barely looked into the murder mystery that the story revolves around and skipped several leads, only to very easily solve the entire case in a couple of scenes that pretty much give it all away. Because of this, I thought about quitting multiple times early on, but it did eventually end up picking up the pace. In the end I suppose it was worth the effort. I'm sort of mixed on the ending I got, which makes me feel like this game was more of a prequel to set up a future story than anything else, but there is a decent payoff in the climax.
The weak point is in the rest of everything to do with the RPG mechanics. In normal conversations, they really don't do much except change the flavor a bit. Often times, multiple dialogue options are just different ways of phrasing literally the same statement. So what you end up doing is choosing answers based on what skill you want to grind up (as using certain flavored choices levels up the skills associated with them) and not what you actually want to say, so that you can pass story relevant skill checks later and get the outcome you want.
Maybe that would be ok if the flavor was good, but its not very flavorable at all as it were. It mostly seems arbitrary how the skills are used. They're different for every character too, so they're hard to conceptualize and keep track of. This is not like the stats in most RPGs like D&D or Fallout. These are more esoteric. For example, one character's stats are intellect (blue), intuition (yellow), grace (red), and tact (green). Another's characters yellow stat might be spryness. What does spryness have to do with intuition? Beats me. And then you have problems like intellect and intuition sounding very similar, so its hard to get a grasp on what exactly they mean. Its a little too abstract and experimental. Having clearer lines drawn between the stats would make more sense and why some stats are certain colors. Additionally, they should be the same for every character. Especially when there are times that you get an option that sounds *witty* but the game calls it *tactful*.
Then there is the hope mechanic. It does matter at times, but not much. You might need a certain level (or lack) of hope to make a certain choice. But you aren't punished for having low hope or rewarded for having high hope outside of this. Hope should be something you actively want to keep up if its going to be a game mechanic. And its also very trivial to get your hope maxed out at 100 on every character. Overall, I like the idea, and it could be interesting if it A) had impact other than flavor and B) it was actually hard to maintain hope.
Then there's the tarot cards. You get one of these when you pick your starting stats, but you can also earn them during gameplay. I'm not too sure what triggered them to be honest, as they seemed to pop up during random conversations when I didn't do anything impressive or notable. And certain tarot cards are WAY more impactful than others. It seems like they give you alternate routes on rare occasions that bypass skill checks, but its hard to tell.
When you put all this together, the RPG mechanics--while very creative and I want to them work well--really just get in the way of the story. It would make more sense to leave most of this stuff up to the player's discretion and just remove them. Let people roleplay however they wish and choose whatever flavor without having to manage a stat system that's muddled and really doesn't matter. Of course, I like the idea of a stat system and if it DID matter more, that would be ideal. Perhaps the developer can find a way to implement them better in their next game.
Another thing I didn't like was having to switch characters constantly. Its difficult to keep track of and interest in 3 separate POV story lines at once. Maybe it would have been fine if you stuck with one character till the end of their story, then played through another character's entirely, and so on. Especially when you walk around the exact same locations and see the exact same things and talk to the same exact people the other characters did while doing tedious chores and fetch quests. It gets state very fast.
TL;DR: A slow burn narrative that requires a lot of patience and has some half-baked RPG mechanics, but provides an interesting experience for the price if you can tough it out.