LiEat: Japan's Brand Of Nostalgia Baiting

Let’s start with a short story. I found this game out back in 2016 on Steam. I was given the chance to publish two series of reviews in a one shot of the school newspaper under the name “Death By Gameplay” and “Death By Gameplay: Movie Edition” and since all I cared about was “Smite” and “L4D2” at the time and I already wrote short reviews on them and the two movies of my choice for the movie edition (I think it was The Jungle Book remake and Valentine’s Day) but I had to do a G-rated game so I went on Steam and after some browsing, I stumbled across LiEat. Despite going against my better judgement of knowing this is just a very bad RPGmaker game, I bought it and played it and it left such a lasting impact on me that I gave it a 95% but knocked it for being nostalgia bait. Two years on and I’m going to go full circle and review this out of nostalgia and while I was just hitting my stride back in 2016, I feel like the experience of the past two years should be enough to hopefully deliver a more accurate review if I don’t get blinded by nostalgia.

“LiEat” is an indie JRPG which was made on the “Wolf RPG Editor” engine which as far as I can tell, is a Japanese exclusive RPG maker since I can only find Japanese versions of the engine online. The plot follows the liar known as Teo and his “daughter” Elle who is a dragon who can make lies manifest and continue to eat them, hence the name “LiEat” and also, Elle looks like a little human girl throughout the whole game because moe and lolis sell copies these days. The game consists of three different adventures where we see Teo (or whatever name he decided to take up) and Elle solve mysteries because reasons. Each adventure lasts around an hour and has multiple endings for repeat playthroughs and yeah, this is rather boring. I don’t know what was wrong with me two years ago but to think that with a plot this simple across three very short games was one of the contributing factors to give it a 95%, I was either incredibly stupid or I was very easy to impress. To be honest, I do like the dynamic between Teo and Elle throughout the games since they are pretty much they are a father and daughter team but Teo never really acts like a father and uses her to get info and payment but he does warm up eventually but apart from that, all the characters serve to fill a single role of advancing the plot and offer not much character development since there is only four recurring characters throughout the three games, including our main duo. On top of that, each plot has a very simple idea underneath it so it just seems like he went and stuck on the two characters onto a simple idea and hoped that it would work. There is no real fun or interesting things to happen in these plots and it’s just point to point. I would say more about the plot but it’s so null of anything interesting that I’m bored of writing this paragraph so let’s move on.

Gameplay wise, it’s standard and if you were reading last week’s review of “Thor: Ragnarok” in that massive rant of a review, you would remember that I threw the word standard around a lot and if you were smart enough, you would know that “Standard = Bad” and it is bad. It is a bare as bones RPG system through and through and all it does is serve to be a something to break up the story which is the main focus of the game so the combat is kept to a minimum which is nice of the creator since I hate the combat. The combat is definitely the weakest point of the series since it’s just the basic RPG combat system at work. You find item, you equip item and now you do slightly more damage. There is no unique properties for going out of your way to find new items and the same could be said about the level up system which also serves no purpose except little stat boosts which will make no real difference in the combat since you can’t really grind in the game. The combat is simply something that got tacked on by the engine it was made on and is ultimately just some unnecessary baggage that is stuck to the game like excess fat but I do give credit to the creator for at least making it tie into the plot since most enemies are lies that are manifested by Elle and you have to battle and eat them to determine either disgusting truths or delicious lies which is a great way to tie it into the plot of the game. What’s also great is how the maps are designed since they are open ended and offer a chance to explore and find stuff like other RPGs but that’s a double edged sword. The maps feel way too small and therefore, you can only explore for like five minutes before you have checked the whole map and checked everywhere for any consumables or weaponry to collect for the combat sections and we already talked about how pointless the combat is so the point of exploring is now minimise to just seeing where characters are so you know where to go when you need to go talk to them. In the end, all the gameplay feels like it doesn’t belong to the game and is simply there to support the very slim idea of this game actually being a game and not an excuse to make a visual novel (which the creator went and did as a light novel which acts as a prequel to this trilogy of the games) but there must be more to this that I can credit so let’s move onto visuals.

This is 64-bit RPG so of course it’s going to look nice. I don’t know why as a culture, we love this retro kind of style, especially for someone of my age since we grew up on early polygramical graphics and with LiEat, I still don’t understand. It’s just 64 bit graphics and although I agree they look nice, it’s also just standard for these sort of indie RPGs, especially ones who use basic engines like Wolf and RPGMaker. If there was anything I was going to credit about this game, it would be the soundtrack and not the graphics because that’s actually nice to listen to. I’m not a big instrumental person but LiEat’s soundtrack isn’t that bad and the fact it comes free with the game when you buy it on steam, you don’t really have an excuse to not download it and listen to it outside of the game. It’s very orchestral which is weird considering the fact this is a indie game so they wouldn’t have the budget for an orchestra so the guy who did the music is either talented with many instruments and then used editing software to overlap his recordings to make the music or they just stole the music from somewhere else. I’ll let you stew that thought in your mind for a bit while I move on with some more criticism because it’s time for that section where I get a little more bias and personal.

I’m going to come clean, I was blinded by nostalgia when I wrote the first paragraph at school before I even started replaying the game. I was so blinded, the original title for this review was “LiEat: The Wonder Of Indie JRPGs” and if that doesn’t show how blindsided I was by my own nostalgia, what about the fact that I continued to write the next paragraph going off by my own memory and your own memories can be a tricky thing. It wasn’t until I played the game and took a more subjective view is when I realised I was blinded by nostalgia. This game isn’t spectacular as I remembered it but it also isn’t the trashcan I describe it as. It’s serviceable for what it goes out and achieves with what little it has. I believe this game has a cult following of sorts since this game has an incredible amount of fan art for what I thought was a relatively unknown release but I’m a member of the “Gardevoir Appreciation Club” (self founded) so who I am to judge but for what I thought was a small group of fans seems quite big instead. I could just ramble on about random stuff but to be direct, I feel like LiEat doesn’t stand to that feeling I had back in 2016 and isn’t exactly groundbreaking or interesting enough for the claims I made in my old reviews.

I’m giving LiEat a 5/10 which is 4.5 less than my original but bugger the old review, I was quite clearly more stupid back then. The game is not interesting enough but it’s but by all means, it’s not bad. It’s a serviceable JRPG and considering the fact it’s only five bucks on Steam, maybe you could consider LiEat the next time you have some spare change on your account and you don’t want to get Poker Night At The Inventory. I also haven’t tried any of the other games made by this guy which has made it on Steam so I can’t say if this is his worst or best game in his collection at this point but if later down the line I do end up reviewing another one of his games, I will make sure to make the comparison then. Next week might be an movie retrospective but if not, my Berserk review may be released so prepare for more anime reviews because my budget for reviews is exactly zero and reading manga happens to cost me 0 dollars so hooray for jobless teens.