Romeo, yes, that Romeo, has been caught in the thorny arms of a giant nightmare plant monster. The only thing that can save him is the Stratford-upon-Avon High School Drama Society, a small group of interdimensional schoolgirls who love to perform Shakespearean plays and have secret magical powers.

How did this happen, and will the beginnings of this JRPG-like problem be properly explained later, the answers to these questions are "whatever" and "not really." This Way Madness Lies, the latest RPG from the creators of Cosmic Star Heroine and Cthulhu Saves the World, is not interested in bothering with backstory or lengthy explanations.

This prioritization of having fun begins with the difficulty selection screen. The default setting is Easy, which is uncritically described as "for people who like the story. The game makes it clear that one can always adjust the difficulty without penalty to suit one's mood. Not only does this feel incredibly welcome, but it instantly evaporates many of the usual problems RPG players face at one time or another: if smashing everything that crosses your path feels tasteless and boring, just increase the challenge to make things more interesting. For the purposes of this review, I spent most of my time "moderating," and I felt that description was accurate enough. The game would put up enough of a fight to catch me off guard, but as long as I paid attention and used my party's skills well, I was probably going to win.

These skills are used in a combat system that takes traditional turn-based JRPG combat as its basic foundation and adds its own twist on it. The emphasis is on carefully managing limited (but infinitely replenishable) resources and setting up complementary moves and powerful status effects to maximize damage. Each party member has a growing number of unique abilities that can be assigned to one of the seven battle slots. And because everything is explained in concise descriptions and clear menus, it is easy to make informed decisions and create strategic synergies. These features give tactical depth and texture to the combat without feeling like you are doing math homework decorated with monsters, and I enjoyed having to think my way through each battle rather than blindly pressing the (non-existent) attack button.

The visual inspiration for these battles came from the in-battle cutscenes used in Sega's classic tactical RPG "Shining Force" series. Needless to say, this style is great and should be referenced by more games, but it's kind of a relief to see a modern pixel art game referencing something other than the Nintendo and Squaresoft classics. Outside of these scenes (and I say this as a compliment), the game doesn't feel retro or nostalgic in any way, but "just" a good-looking RPG made with a certain style in mind.

That style serves the game in an unexpected way: the most demanding special effects for a 2D game are only beautifully animated stage curtains and transparent spells during combat, nothing that would strain a modern machine.

Of course, nothing is more old-fashioned than the Shakespearean theme that plays throughout the game, even in a dot-picture game starring magical girls. The stories, which are not only broad, but steady in detail, clearly show a true understanding of the source material that cannot be found from a cursory reading of someone else's online notes. Some of Shakespeare's works are not at their bardic best, and some stories frankly should have stayed in the 17th century; "This Way Madness Lies" understands this well, and its cast of bard-loving Without pretending otherwise, it regularly cites specific examples of harmful attitudes, misogynistic plot twists, and bad plot twists in lesser works.

To understand the archaic dialogue scattered throughout the text, "translations" into Zeboid English are always easily accessible. There is nothing wrong with trying to bring the "bard" up to date, and much of what is said in his plays is ludicrous by design, but when a second opinion is needed on a particularly esoteric phrase, instead of the game actually making a sincere attempt to modernize the tone and meaning of the original text, the complete It was frustrating to discover that the game decided to go into full sarcastic comedy mode instead of actually making a sincere attempt to modernize the tone and meaning of the original text.

The game's humor was mostly on target, as the warm and likable cast made me laugh out loud in several places. Even when they were doing less adventurous things, I was happy to spend time with them, and because the episodes of their adventures were small and snappy, it was easy to commit to "just one more" for hours at a time, especially since the game allows players to save as much as they want.

The time it took me to reach the ending may have been around eight hours at a leisurely pace, but I honestly enjoyed every minute of it; Zeboyd knows in his bones how to make an interesting RPG, even if many, supposedly untouchable genre standards are thrown out the window Zeboyd knows in his bones how to make an interesting RPG, even if he is busy throwing a lot of supposedly untouchable genre standards out the window and inventing something new and completely different to replace them.