Off

• Genre: RPG
• Time Played: I was told it was going to be around 5 hours, there is nothing that tracks time in this game and since it has to be launched from an .exe rather than any launcher, there is nothing that tracked my time, but I would estimate closer to 15 hours.
• Too Short/Long: Definitely too long. 5 hours would have been way better.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I didn't really go in with any expectations, so I'm not disappointed, but I wasn't super into it even by the end.
• Why I played: My wife wanted me to.
• Recommend to others: I personally wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless they are friends with my wife, so that she can talk to them about it.

Off has everything going against it, for me. I'm already highly critical of RPG maker games and I expected more from a game that my wife loved so much. Don't get me wrong, it had it's moments. Some cute cutaways, and minigames, and sometimes the writing or presentation was fun or interesting. But the battles were mostly looking away from the screen and pressing a as fast as possible. Because of the style of the game, I though more boss battles would have gimmicks, but they always came down to the same thing. Just like in many... many rpgs, status effects mean nothing(to bosses), and since there are no gimmicks, it's literally always just use the most powerful attack all the time. Elemental advantage even rarely came into play, sometimes doing less than a 5% increase in damage on something their profile specifically calls them out for being weak against, but it doesn't matter, because using the elemental advantage attack is still not as good as just using a regular stronger impact attack.

It just always came down to using hardest attack until running out of points to do so, then using regular attacks. Puzzles aren't too much better... for the most part. There were two or three I thought were neat or clever, but the vast majority are just "remember a thing" or "input the number placed in an annoying location".

That said, engaging combat, nor clever puzzles are the reason to play Off. It's the world/setting, which is basically a Nightvale-esque(predating that, I know) setting where things are just weird for the sake of being weird and things don't have a real explanation for being the way they are, you're just supposed to accept it. That's fine, and if you enjoy that, you'll find something to enjoy in Off.