I am a product of what I consider to be the golden age of gaming when every couple of years the advancement in gaming technology was just blowing us away. I am referring to NES to Genesis to Playstation years and one of the standout games for me during that time was a Genesis (Megadrive) game I mastered called Shinobi.
If you ever played the original game you will understand that The Messenger is intentionally modeled after that game
The game is quite basic and maybe is intentionally pixelated to look like old school gaming. The controls are tight and simple and there are some annoying aspects of the game that they likely threw in there on purpose such as enemies that are off screen will automatically respawn if you join that part of the screen again.
They creators are almost certainly able to not have this be part of the gameplay but I think they put it in there on purpose just to have us all go "awwww, I remember when all games were like this!" It was annoying then and it is super annoying now.
The game also constantly makes fun of itself and you, often breaking the 4th wall and speaking directly to the player and mocking you for dying so often.
one of the best characters is the shopkeeper who kind of serves as a sort of metroidvania aspect of the game since you can spend your flame points or whatever the hell they are called on upgrades that make the game significantly easier once you have died enough times and have accumulated a lot of them. That's a pretty fantastic way to ensure that the game doesn't become "too hard" in my mind. If you are dying a lot, it isn't a "git gud" type of situation, but one of upgrading your dude and the only way you can do that is by repeating the levels over and over again.
Combat never really gets dull but to modern gamers it might be a bit too basic bitch for them since almost all the enemies have very predictable attack patters just like enemies were kind of forced to back in the late 80's and early 90's. Attack patterns of enemies in games has certainly come a long ways since then
The bosses have this sort of nostalgic appeal to them as well because back in the early days of gaming, we couldn't just have all the movement and realistic looking enemies. The Emerald Golem is this hulking creature who only moves his gigantic hands while the rest of him remains static. If you were around when all games were some adaptation of this, you will appreciate this probably as much as I do.
This game is fun for me, but I think that a lot of its appeal will be lost on younger gamers who never had to go through the hell of platforming that was just the norm back in the day.
I have dumped about 3 hours into this game and am still enjoying it but I would imagine that it isn't going to have much more content seeing as how I already have most of the upgrades unlocked.
The music is really catchy too and once again, I don't think it was necessary for them to make it as basic as they did but they were intentionally trying to recreate what music had to be like back when we didn't have a lot of power in our consoles.
If you are older than 30 I think you will enjoy this a lot more than if you are not.
This game is not going to quench my thirst for a replacement RPG for Octopath but it is a nice little diversion to occupy my time in the meantime.
At the moment this game retails for $20 on Nintendo Switch and honestly, that is about all it is worth. I wouldn't pay that much for it though, maybe wait for a sale if there is one.