izigame.me

I don't think it's worth the asking price, even if Nobeta is very cute. Buy it on sale if you can.
(This is a small indie game, and I didn't expect anything more than that.) However, these points below did take away some of my enjoyment from the game:
---The story is meh, and only starts to come together if you read through the dialogue after beating bosses in the Trial Tower and also read all of the item descriptions, that is, if you bother to find them all. The world building through all of this could have been done better. To me, it's very much "anime", but I don't think that it needs to also be generic on top of all of that. The Trial Tower lore information is nice, and shows promise in improving this area of the game.
---The enemies aren't that great. There isn't much enemy variety, and a lot of them are quite lame. Broken doll, broken doll 2, broken doll 3. Ghost. Ghost with hands. Ghost with mouth... And some are even red! Amazing, lol.
---Levels are mostly ugly and drab. It has an anime style to it, but it's nothing special. Dungeon walls, cave walls, dungeon walls with lava lighting, dark dungeon walls, dungeon walls with some grass... Areas will start to feel very samey, and even more so when you go through them again at the end of the game to close out the story.
---Boss cutscenes repeat every time you start the fight. You will soon learn why this is annoying if you don't already. You have to confirm you're skipping and then once the screen gets back to you, the boss is already beaming you in the face with an attack sometimes. (Matters less if you're a gaming god.)
---Some mechanics of the magic aren't explained well. You can cheese through the areas that are supposed to stop you until you use the mechanic correctly, so you'll never actually understand what you were supposed to learn. I personally got past one such roadblock without using the intended mechanic to pass through, so I had no idea about it until much later.
---The game is quite short. For the current asking price of $24.99, there are better games to buy.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GOOD???? I got you:
---Fun combat mechanics. You get to snipe fools with magic and beat them up with melee attacks to fill your mana bar. You can "absorb" attacks to basically parry it and get more mana without taking damage. It's fun to try and land these. Makes me wish there were more enemies to fight!!
---Satisfying magic types. I think thunder is the best, but they're all pretty cool. The charged modes actually doing something other than "bigger damage" is very nice. I think this could be improved and fleshed out more, but I appreciate what's there.
---Cute protagonist. Cute outfits. This will heal your heart as you get beaten down by the bosses.
---Quite a few bosses. Without these, this game would be a joke, even on Advanced Mode. These guys don't show you any mercy, and will force many gamers to grind for more levels to stand a chance against them. Honestly, these things kicked my face in. I had to grind levels like I isekai'd as the "hero" with some OP skills. And even then, I tasted defeat more than I'd like to admit. (I only played on Advanced Mode, so I don't know how less of a threat they are on the lower difficulty.)
---Level layout is serviceable. Looping shortcuts, a few ambushes, and hidden treasures will be a constant. Basically, what you'd expect from a souls-like.
---Cool boss rush mode. Introduces a new twist on the old bosses, and adds more lore. I'm glad to see this included.
All in all, I hope to see a sequel to this game.