Terrible UX and insanely long intro – VARIOUS DAYLIFE Review

I got so excited when I saw this game on Apple Arcade. A one handed, well made, vertical rpg was exactly what I was looking for. But sadly this game has so many flaws it’s hard to get into. The vertical UI is clearly not what this game was designed for and the transformation was lazy at best. The screen is about 2/3 white space with the environments (which seem rich and well animated) are contained to a mini screen that’s so small you can’t appreciate any of the details. Also the text is thin and small and hard to read which seems like a rookie mistake that I wouldn’t expect from a dev like square enix. Also. After downloading and starting the game it took me exactly 24 minutes of playtime to even get to the first instance of combat. And that’s while skipping all of the COPIOUS amounts dialogue as fast as humanly possible. If I’d have read it it would have been closer to 40 minutes until the first combat. I want to like this game because I truly truly would love an amazing mobile-first designed rpg from square enix on Apple Arcade. I just hope that they realize when people don’t play this one that it’s not because nobody wants one, we just want something better than THIS one.
Review by One of the Chili Beans on VARIOUS DAYLIFE.