Say No! More ★★☆☆☆

Surprising that this had an option for your shout of “no!” to be in Irish, and not just because it’s a minority language in a small country. There isn’t actually a direct word for no in Irish, so they went with «ní dhéanfaidh mé é», “I will not do it”. This does highlight how the word no is used in a bunch of different contexts in the game. It is often used to refuse a task, which this translation makes sense for, but it is also used to answer questions and other contexts where «ní dhéanfaidh mé é» doesn’t really make sense, and I wonder do any of the nos offered for other language don’t always make sense in context in the game.

Though honestly even shouting “no” in English sometimes felt like it didn’t really fit as a response. I was often waiting for dialogue to get to a point where shouting no fit in naturally, but it quickly becomes apparent that there is no point in doing this. Really this is just a game with a button to advance dialogue that also plays a sound effect and it does shockingly little with the idea.

Every once in a while you will be stopped to do a tutorial on how to do a different style of no, which sets up the expectation that these matter in some way but they do not; they are purely for a little bit of extra self-expression. That might have been a cute little bit of player controlled flair but the fact that they keep stopping everything to give me tutorials on something utterly pointless soured me on them. The control scheme for them also seems needless complicated. Why have them as different modes you have to toggle between with the d-pad? Why not just have them on the four different face buttons? None of the other face buttons do anything anyway so you could have just let them free for that. There is a shocking amount of tutorials to sit through in this game that has absolutely no mechanical depth. Maybe that was intended to be a joke in and of itself? Well it falls about as flat as most of the humour in the game, then.

The one little bit of mechanical choice is the decision to not shout no sometimes, which lets you progress some little mini scenes. These are cute but also they then run out of ideas for what to do with them and repeat the same staring contest joke five times.

Okay I’ve been enough of a grump. This is a short game with a cute idea and I do really like the Mega Man Legends-esque aesthetic and really liked the character creator. It’s okay.