It has been a while since I’ve played a game that has been styled on the classic look of games from the Game Boy era, and one that captures some of that experience too. The most obvious and repeated comparison is to the classic Pokémon games, but The Edge of Allegoria is not a game for kids and doesn’t have you capturing creatures to fight for you.
The Edge of Allegoria is crude, full of sexual references, and a load of swearing. Your character is a bit of loser who ends up wandering Allegoria completing quests for not always appreciative people, learning of the plight of Allegoria that is living under the shadow of an evil god and his generals, though most of these enemies seem to keep to themselves in their bases.
Before facing off against them though, your character will face off against all sorts. If you can think of it, it is probably in the game as an enemy or closely resembled. Want to fight a crow? Sure, you can fight a crow. How about deer? Yep. Nymphs? So many. Witches, vampires, ninjas, samurai, djinn, tengu, demons, zombies, succubus? Yep, yep, yep. They are just some of the approximately 150 enemies to fight against.
Combat in The Edge of Allegoria looks an awful lot like the classic Game Boy Pokémon, but instead of creatures, you’re the one doing the fighting and your success is all dependent on the weapons and equipment you buy and find. As you use weapons and equipment, you will gain mastery of them. This mastery boosts your character’s base stats while unlocking also different attacks.
You can have a maximum of five moves to use and it is advisable to regularly change weapons and moves to figure out the best tactics for you. Some moves inflict status effects including poison, burn, bleed, drowsiness, stiffness, and mad. Poison and burn deal damage over time, while bleed, drowsiness, and stiffness can impact defence, attack, and agility. Mad boosts all your stats, except accuracy which drops significantly. There are also moves that allow you to counter attacks and guard against them too.
The overall combat is decent enough, but you will need to stock up on items as you will experience so many status ailments in fights. If you are not prepared, some fights that should be easy will become a challenge to pass.
There is a fairly basic story in The Edge of Allegoria, which centres around a falling out between gods, and one group making you a champion as you are an Anomaly. The quests of the game tackle all sorts of adult themes, including murder, suicide, drug use, and sex fetishes. There are a ton of quests just on the main route, plus a number of smaller side quests to complete with many being fetch quests. Most of these rely on enemies dropping the right item, so prepare for some fighting!
The world design is fine, though there were quite a few times where it was not clear what needed to be done next, leading to some aimless wandering until stumbling across a progression point. There is one dungeon near the end that has you teleporting around rooms, but there is no map to use so you have to make note yourself of where the portals are taking you, eventually finding the boss room. Another dungeon had a lot of doors to open, and the game even comments on this with the main character getting frustrated at it. It is frustrating.