This 'souls-like platonic dating simulator' is (not so) secretly an Undertale-adjacent RPG with zero restraint, and I need a lie down after trying it
Sometimes, when I sit down to spend some time with a new game for a quick and simple 'hey, this thing exists' news story, I do so with the understanding that I'll be playing a game—or a demo, as is the case here—and evaluating its strengths, its weaknesses, and its promises. Taking a critical and analytical eye, figuring out whether to recommend the thing I'm trying.
I have not been critical or analytical while trying out Athenian Rhapsody. Instead, I have taken a volume of mental damage that has left me certain I won't be able to stand the full game—like how you might get motion sickness in VR. You, however, might have an utter blast.
Athenian Rhapsody's Steam page advertises it as a «a souls-like platonic dating simulator with cooking-mama and WarioWare style battle mechanics», though clarifies: «and by that I mean it's a choose-your-own-adventure action RPG with the ability to trade ENTIRE PLAYTHROUGHS between friends!»
The way I would describe Athenian Rhapsody is that it's Undertale, just in a concentrated form and slammed down your throat raw. Undertale, for all its strangeness, has a general patience to it. It permits you a moment of quietness at times. This is not a thing Athenian Rhapsody is interested in.
When I tell you that I was plagued with irritable bowel syndrome for not eating a digestive biscuit pre-emptively, and that I befriended a fly who added «Blessed be thy health and the health of thy family!» onto every social interaction—when I tell you that I was offered $100 to touch some poop and took that offer, because I am not a coward that caves to social pressure—you might think back to the days of lolrandom humour from the early 2000s. A simpler time where we held up sporks, and «xD» was still an emoticon you could use. A time before the word «cringe» was common parlance.
As my new mortal enemy Thunder Goober would say, this assumption is «FOOLISH!» Athenian Rhapsody's humour has a throughline to it. There were plenty of gags that got genuine
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