Is this game a masterpiece? No, but it is a hack and slash game (similar to Raji: An Ancient Epic, for example) with an never before seen story and an unusual graphical style (cel shading like in XIII).

This is how you react to climate change! A typical little tourist town in the Austrian Alps switched from hiking/skiing to monster slaying. This is what happened to Hinterberg - when suddenly monsters and dungeons appeared near the town, they turned into a holiday village for monster slaying tourists. Instead of selling you new mountain equipment or clothing, the shops are now called Premium Weapons or Spellbound Smithy. There is still a run-of-the-mill supermarket, spa, gift shop or apothecary, though. Everything seems to work fine, the village is full of happy tourists and business is good.

We play a young woman from the capital who booked four weeks holiday here to slay some monsters and escape her stessful job in the law firm... working the same job in the same town I can somehow relate to that. So, you do the usual things - check in at your hotel, go outside to drink a cocktail, meet the locals or other tourists, learn how to ski with an instructor... but the skiing/hiking instructor! I mean, they are here to teach young ladies how to ski, but in reality they also teach you something else, at least if you are pretty. What will my instructor - now dungeon trainer - teach me? Well, I will not spoil what good-looking, muscular (former) alpinist Klaus taught me - but he wanted to be nice and slow. Anyway, the first dungeon did not work out as planned. What happened was certainly NOT advertised in the tourist flyers.

The actual gameplay is similar to the usual hack and slash monster slayer - kill creatures with physical attacks (slow/fast), use magic to fry monsters, dodge, watch your stamina, refill your hitpoints and magic points, lock on enemies, collect loot, jump and climb, solve little (but varied) puzzles. You improve your character, learn a few new spells, find some gear, and the aim is to get through a dungeon (alive) and have your dungeon book stamped. That's like the stamps you get on remote huts in the Alps to fill your climbing book. You get this stamp next to every dungeon exit - if you come that far. They are all protected by boss monsters. The difficulty is quite moderate, though - if you die, you are resurrected at the last autosave, which is most of the time a few seconds back. There are 25 dungeons to complete. You have an automap, inventory and quest log, a status page shows your stats. You can save any time - except when inside a dungeon. The game starts on day 1 of your holiday, when you enter a dungeon, hang out with someone in town or sleep during the night the time advances. When you meet with people, your relationship with them might improve if you treated them righ in the multiple choice conversations. Improving relationships earns you perks and might raise your social stats. Small charms you carry around also improve your stats.

Conclusion:
Little isometric single player hack n slay action game with some dungeons and a little village as game hub. Calling it a simplified version of Zelda meets Persona might not be that wrong.

In a year stacked with amazingly excellent releases, this might be one of my favorites.

On the surface, it's an action-adventure game with light combat, Zelda-esque dungeons, and a Persona-lite structure where you get to go hiking and (maybe) dungeonning during the day, then spend the evening shopping and socializing. Each of the different parts feed into the others and create a satisfying overall loop where every action echoes through the rest, and choices are significant and their consequences well telegraphed.

The game itself is about taking a vacation away from relatable concerns of modern active life. The whole game reinforces this chill attitude, encouraging taking time off and using the days to rest, meditate and take stock. Far from a management hell sim, this is a laid back descontruction of productivist tropes, and while the game does require the player to complete all dungeons, there is no strict time limit given and it's perfectly possible to see everything and go everywhere at one's own pace.

This breezy ambiance is magnified through a brilliant comic inspired aesthetic, with bold thick outlines, confident half tones and drop-dead gorgeous colorization (absolutely play on OLED if you can). The game offers a fantasy window over the real world, taking place in a credible Alpine setting coated with magic. The character's heavy, weighty basic moveset is progressively counterbalanced through the unlocked magical abilities, giving us an increasing lighter feel and feeding into the escapist fantasy.

While every individual part can be "light" with fairly simple and non-threatening combat and puzzles, the game is very much more than the sum of them and manages to evoke a unique melancholy ambiance, an escape from the real world that we sadly know we have to bring to an end - it's up to us to make it last just a little longer.

At a glance, the game could be about existentialist musings under late stage capitalism and the environmental impact of commoditizing every aspect of our daily lives, but it's also (and probably moreso than) about taking the time to enjoy our surroundings off the rat race, earnestly engage with people and media, and maybe live slightly more magical lives ourselves by appreciating the uniqueness of the mundane.

Overall, it's a pleasant game that is pretty upfront about what it is. It doesn't have particularly complex mechanics, but it's a pretty nice package of simple but good enough systems that culminate into a good game. It has some minor bugs, and there were occasional performance issues, but these usually happened in non-combat areas.

The combat is a pretty standard attack-dodge system that really shows its flaws once you start encountering large amount of enemies at once, though mana skills and attack skills are a fix to this. There's also a charm that you get right at the start that helps with this, though I haven't been using it. But, the combat system isn't the focus here, and it's good enough. I mostly enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the progression system in this game. You have a couple of different upgrade systems that are distinct and simple. Nothing complex, but it's good enough and doesn't feel annoying to interact with.
However, it's kind of easy to skip portions of the progression since you might do a dungeon of a higher level than the game expects you to do and consequently pick up equipment that is a fair bit stronger than what you originally had and what the shops currently are selling. *I did go out of my way to chase dungeons that were a higher level than me, and the game does have equipment that has soft stat requirements.

The writing feels pretty fine to me. I haven't yet completed the game, so I can't say anything about the ending, but the characters and plot haven't felt particularly oppressive. I generally don't care for writing or characters in games that don't fit a specific niche, so the fact that the story/characters haven't annoyed me so far and has been pleasant is a big plus in my book.
The game is upfront about what benefits you get from spending time with a particular character.

The puzzles so far have been mostly simple and relatively short. (Well, there might be a large puzzle that is composed of relatively simple and short sub-puzzles). Nothing brain-teasing, but it's "good enough" and I enjoyed them as minor obstacles.

The visuals are very good. The graphics and design are up to the eye of the beholder, but I really like the camera-work. In some areas, the camera changes around and freshens the perspective up. It's a bit janky sometimes since your movement inputs won't be in the directions that you expect, but it's minor and hasn't popped up in a combat area so far.

There's also some nice QoL. You can fast travel from anywhere, and the transitions were pretty quick. Conversations and most cutscenes have a fast-forward button.