I finished playing Hat World: New Testament last month. The drain of finishing a recorded 131 hours of RPG finally hit after the credits rolled, so I decided to wait a bit before making a big old post about it.
...But now that some time has passed I don't even know what to really say. I'm a bit overloaded on feelings for this game. I'd forgotten just what it was like to go through something so isolated from modern expectations of quality or popularity, just a good-ass story with hilarious characters and gameplay that I hesitate to call traditionally "engaging" so much as it was just... a lot of fun.
But that's why I'm not sure I can give it a sterling review on a standard Game Reviewer scale, because I think my enjoyment of it isn't measurable by those qualities. And it wasn't even that it was the deepest, most raw mindboggling experience either. I just found myself in love with the solid aesthetic and attitude it had toward being itself through to the end. But even then I feel like I'm overembellishing, because I would also understand if someone would handwave it as a middle-of-the-road RPG experience if it didn't click in just the same way.
So this isn't a review. This is a stream of consciousness oversharing post from someone with no outlet.
Fair warning: this post is naturally going to be full of spoilers through 100% completion of the game! If you haven't played it, go download the fan-translation for free yourself!!