KUMADA'S PROFILE

Crow Mauler's not as bad as he was in earlier versions, and once you kill him he'll stop showing up while you sleep, but unless you have Hurting, I recommend not facing him with only one party member.

You can probably beat him with just your character, the girl, and some rocks from one of the minecarts, though.

Auriel, there's a couple of other bits in the game you may want to avoid. The thing in the courtyard is not the only bit of sexual horror in Fear And Hunger. Losing combat to a Guard, or losing a coin flip to a Harvestman, or choosing "Show Love" in a ritual circle, or using a spell to create a demon ally is worse.

There's plenty of horror in Fear And Hunger that isn't sexual horror, but you said that stuff bothered you, so I wanted to warn you so you don't stumble into it blind.

MLG, your review is valid no matter what. All reviews are based on the reviewer's subjective experience, and that's not a thing that anyone can be wrong about.

That said, your reviewing standard (i.e. games without exploits) is not one I've encountered before, and it seems weird to me.

Earlier you mentioned that you exploited P5's early dungeon to win the game on Hard Mode with an artificially enforced difficulty of avoiding all optional battles. Is P5 a one-star game for you? Does being able to use this exploit lower your impression of P5?

Or let's take a game like Super Mario Bros. Warp pipes are part of the game's design. Using them significantly changes the time of a speedrun, such that there are records with and without warp pipes. Does the existence of warp pipes change your impression of Super Mario Bros.? Does it lower your impression of the game, knowing that the only thing keeping a player from using warp pipes is the choice not to?

*Looks at 21 hour developer playthrough time*

*Double-checks that game is marked commercial*

Oh thank god. That is a massive amount of work for a thing to be freeware.

I'm still interested in testing. Just let me know when the game is in a state to allow it.

Oof. One star.

I feel somewhat culpable here, since I think I was a contributing factor to there being a Heaven or Hell mode.

I'm also a little curious about this "hardest mode first" approach, since I rarely nudge the difficulty slider out of its recommended setting when going blind into a moderate-time-commitment rpg, and I generally try to play the intended game mode since it's closest to the intended game experience.

Anyway, in the second act you're supposed to be tougher and be able to pick fights sometimes with monsters, but it sounds like Heaven Or Hell punishes that too much with its difficulty spike, and that probably does a weird thing to the gameplay loop where you're being de-incentivized and incentivized to do the same thing at the same time. A possible fix might be to crank the exp gain in Heaven Or Hell, therefor making the extra tough combats worth it, but it sounds like in the meantime the best bet might be to avoid Heaven Or Hell on first time playthroughs.