Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

[Rikzilla]

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is an absolutely delightful RPG inspired by Paper Mario.

 

It's an indie title developed by Moonsprout Games (who I have never heard of) and has been on Steam since November last year, and has just come to Switch, PS4, and Xbone.

 

I've put around 5 and a half hours into and am really enjoying myself. I'll write more later, but I'm struggling to type right now. 

 

 

[Rikzilla]

I've put around 12 hours into this now and approaching the half way point (on chapter 4 of 7) and I'm still loving it.

 

The game is gorgeous, the characters are genuinely loveable, and the music and writing is really good.

 

Combat and levels work differently to

pretty anything I've played. When attacking each character has extra character specific actions they can do to increase damage (a variation of press the correct button at the correct time), and pressing A just before an enemy attack hits a character will block the attack reducing or canceling damage.

 

The characters all have special assists on their attacks: one can hit flying enemies and knock them onto the ground, another can flip shelled enemies over exposing their weak spot, and one can pull burrowing enemies out of the ground.

 

Each character gets one turn, but a character turn can be sacrificed to give one that's already had a turn another turn, adding some nice strategy.

 

Special attacks are offensive or defensive and use TP which is shared between the party, and status attacks are real important.

 

Characters don't level up individually, they go up as a team. At first it's a 100 XP points yo level up, then 101, 102, etc.

 

Wheh you level up you get to choose either 1+ HP, 3+ TP or 3 Medal Points. Nothing else levels up. No attack, defense, speed, any of that, so around 12 hours in I'm still hitting as hard as I was when I started the game. There is an attack and defense stat, but I haven't found a way to increased them yet.

 

All other buffs are done with Medals. Medals cost points to equip, and the buffs are either for whichever bug has the medal equipped, or it's for the entire team. Medals include things like HP+, poison resist, etc etc, so they're essentially a mix of armour and perks.

 

Each character had an out of combat action they can do, and there is a tonne of environmental puzzles to solve using them.

 

A couple of the puzzles have had me scratching my head for a while, but I always had that 'eureka' moment and figured it out.

 

The challenge is absolutely spot on. It isn't particularly easy, but some of the bosses have been tricky and I've had more than a couple of close calls.

 

And before anyone asks no I have never played a Paper Mario game.

 

[Rikzilla]

This took longer to get out than I wanted it too, but I finally pulled my finger out and got it done

 

 

 

[mfnick]

Just watched it mate after seeing you put it as one of your games of the year in the Hot Topic thread. Never even heard of it but It looks great. Getting  some big Paper Mario vibes from it. I’ll definitely be checking it out in future. 
 

Just one question, can you turn the text/voice sound effect off? That’d wind me up no end from what I saw.

[Rikzilla]

19 minutes ago, mfnick said:

 

Just one question, can you turn the text/voice sound effect off? That’d wind me up no end from what I saw.

 

I just checked for you and yes, you can turn the voices right down ?

 

 

[mfnick]

Sweet, cheers.