They happen, but you don’t know why they happen, and they’re so rare that you don’t care much about looking into it. Combat is limited, and Final Fantasy-style random battles are few and far between. In the opening few acts, it feels like Kargast knows the problem. Variety doesn’t even come into it, but it’s so, so easy to imagine how it could. If you’re hit by a pack of dogs, it’s the same as being hit by a meat lollipop. The components of that minigame don’t even change: the bar doesn’t really get bigger or faster per enemy, and the enemies attacks don’t affect you differently. It’s Undertale on pause, as a single minigame gets reused over the entirety of the game. While it may seem superficially like Undertale, it doesn’t have anywhere near the capacity for ideas or reinvention. It’s fine the first few times, but after the hundredth the combat becomes a real slog. So, there’s a neat risk-reward game here, as you decide whether to hold back a skill until you have a bigger MP bar. Each skill uses up all of your MP, but the amount it heals or damages is largely dependent on the amount of MP it swallowed up. That MP is then spent on the skills (most notably the heal), so you have a resource to manage. Nail it, and the enemy is damaged and your MP increases. Like a golf power swing, you have to tap the A button when a moving slider hits a target. Choose an attack, and more Undertale comes into view, as a little minigame plays out. In an Undertale fashion, the enemies natter away while you attack, but rather than pithy one-liners, it’s ‘kiiiilll meeeee’ and ‘I’m going to swallow you whole’ pleasantries. There’s a twisted mind designing these creatures, and once we realised that we didn’t have to fear them in any way, we enjoyed them. Meat robots, skinned pigs and walking fish are among the disreputable cast, and they never failed to surprise us. These constructs were our favourite parts of Kargast. They squat on the road, all limbs and tentacles, giving it a bit of Gandalf’s ‘none shall pass’. As you move through them, you encounter twisted, disgusting beasts that have crawled out of John Carpenter movies. Each ring of Purgatory is a 2D path to explore, albeit mostly linear. It’s the gathering of children that forms the game’s structure. It’s a shame that the personalities of these children ebb away a little once they join the team. These connected Purgatories make for neat worldbuilding, and reflect the kid who created them. Another child hides in their sewers as a rat king. One nature-loving child has built a forest realm with them as the deer god at its centre. There’s a touch of Dante to Kargast, as each ‘circle’ of Purgatory is a different mental construction of the child within it. And so begins a reluctant adventure to shepherd lost souls. They suggest that the two of them head further and further into purgatory, finding similarly lost children so that they can all make a break for it. After dodging the demon, the main character finds a little Navi-like companion who offers to help.
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