Mewgenics Reddit Verdict: Deep Tactics, Brutal Pacing

It's extremely well balanced if we look at it from the angle 'what is possible' and 'what is required'. Plenty of game-breaking builds, some classes are better and some are worse, but nothing too egregious. I think it's surprisingly well balanced.

Put about 20 hours into the game. At first I wasn't sure how much I liked it, then I got to grips with the mechanics and had a string of good runs and I really enjoyed myself, then I had some bad runs and fell into a death spiral and dropped the game. Ultimately, I don't think I like it very much, but there's a lot of good stuff in there and I think if just a few things were a little different I'd really like it.

Honestly there are so many great things in it (core gameplay, content, music, style) but I abandonned ship after 70 hours. It is an absolute grind, and an unfair one. The worse part is that by engaging with the game, you can lose progress. It's OK that it's a hard game. I'm OK with failing a lot. But because of the ressource management metagame, failing is so, so punishing that it made me afraid to engage with the game.

I wish the steam deck controls were better. But it seems fine so far.

The massive time sink nature of the game is something that I find unappealing too. It felt acceptable for a fast-paced action roguelike, but a tactical turn-based roguelite where you can spend ages puzzling out moves and can stand to lose all the meta progression you could've gotten for that run because of RNG... It just feels like such a slog.

I like the art/music and gameplay in runs. But the runs are too long, the breeding is too chaotic and annoying, and npc levels are way too grindy. I ended up just burning out on it. Definitely didn't have that 'one more run' feeling for me because the breeding part was meh, each run was too much and I felt like there wasn't much progression run to run.

I really like this game, let me get that out of the way before criticizing it. The breeding side is the weak side because of UI and because it comes online too late, and then too sudden. You really need 3 rooms, because that makes one room larger, which means you can stack bonuses.

I had no idea the game's OST would go this hard. As much as I'm fond of the gameplay, this is the true highlight of the game for me. Guillotina is the track that has haunted me the most so far. Them Kitty Bones is beyond swell, and Lonesome Road is fantastic. Flush and Chumbucket Kitty are both just pure, undiluted fun.

I've unlocked 4 different zones now. Game is super unique. The music is so damn good. I find myself stopping the game so I can listen to whatever hilarious song is playing a lot of the time. It feels like there are going to be infinite strategies and item combos. It definitely just throws you into the deep end on a lot of stuff.

This is going to be one of those 'Played for more than a hundred hours and do not recommend it' things. My first impressions weren't good. I didn't liked micromanaging cats, I didn't liked sorting items after every adventure, I didn't liked brutal and frankly unfun rng in events. Then I played it a bit more. Yeah, the core adventure gameplay is fun. I could live with it.

I have fallen deep into this game and I can't play anything else. I am already at 100 hours and I still have a fair bit to go. Edmund is great at creating tight, difficult mechanical games that keep you coming back. I like that this game has more whimsy and fun that his previous games. The songs are incredible and hilarious.

I really like the game and can get over almost every other issue, but the setup before each run is the one that actually can't be overstated to me, and is mostly due to a pretty piss poor interface design. I am regularly having a blast playing the game during the run, then it gets back to my house and I remember I have to waste time clicking around on the cats.

It feels less like buying a new $30 game and more like buying a classic $15 game and its three $5 DLCs. It feels 'complete' and feature-rich in a world of early access, broken launches, game passes, and road maps. There's so many classes, zones to adventure to, enemies, bosses, abilities, items, mutations, random events, and so on that you're always seeing something you've never seen before.

I have only watched on streams but I find the art style utterly unbearable. It doesn't look nice at all. It looks confusing, chaotic and a complete eyesore whenever I watched it.

I have no idea what I'm doing. But I don't feel the tension like in Hades or Dead Cells. Maybe still too early. And I haven't found a synergy yet. Probably cause I don't know what I'm doing.

I think it's mostly okay, it's hard but manageable once you figure it out but with some bullshit sprinkled in, especially the events. The art style — I get that it's purposefully going for the newgrounds flash game aesthetic, which I also liked when I was 12, but as I'm not 12 anymore, it's not really for me anymore.

I really really wish that the game had a very different sense of humour/aesthetics. It's just so gross and childish, I'm not into the endless amount of enemies that are fetuses. Such a weird consistent obsession.

The first like 20 hours are a bit of a slog. Some of the cat requirements for the different NPCs are too high at the start for what they unlock. I also find the sewers to be really underwhelming compared to the Junkyard. Otherwise it's pretty fun, but each run is just too long for it to be something I can play for hours.

I just played two runs before I went to bed and so far I really enjoy it. I love the breeding system and the humour is absolutely great. But I think I'll have to adjust the Steam Deck controls a bit, there is a lot of room for improvement.

I'm a HUGE isaac fan and I'm left mildly disappointed with just how much of a SLOG mewgenics is. I barely have time for one full run after work and I usually just die to absolute random bullshit anyway. I think if the game gets a ton of patches related to balancing and speeding up, I may jump back in.

It's pretty fantastic, surpassed my expectations despite them being pretty high. Class variety and the various way items/skills/passives/other bonuses can combine is insane, no run truly felt the same. The game is also massive in terms of content. Breeding is also pretty in depth.

Tried it based on hype, not usually a fan of tactics games but I love turn-based roguelikes. Hasn't hooked me yet, maybe not for me. This seems like a game for people who love metaprogression and randomly generated loot. And tactics games, of course. It's very polished and has that unique Edmund/Tyler flair.

The NPC unlock requirements seriously seem like they were designed for a different game. Needing 50 retired cats for the third room is ludicrous when you get a max of four retired cats per run, some of them should be donated to Butch instead, and you still need to keep a decent amount of them around for breeding and house bosses.

I wanted to like it so much, the roguelike team building and RPG tactics seemed up my alley and the music seems great, but after trying it for 2h I couldn't. It made me sad every time the cats got mutilated or injured even if it is cartoony, and the art style is just not for me.

Mechanically, I love it. The gameplay is just about exactly what I was looking for, and I've had a blast learning how to play. I could do without the forced edgy jokes that are all sexual double entendres or poop jokes, since it feels incredibly adolescent, but I knew what to expect when I got it.

I am genuinely surprised at some of these comments, I am finishing up after about 250 hours and think it is one of the best games I have ever played, despite the breeding UI.

Randomness and punishment isn't bad necessarily, but the manner in which this game does it — zero opt-in, completely unpredictable, no way to prepare or hedge — along with runs taking a long time make it painful. If all random punishments were the 'do you take the risk for a possible reward or not' kind I'd be a lot happier with it. As it stands now, hard to fire up a run with limited time because it could just randomly end with rabies.

The menus are snappy and clearly the game is well made. I don't think I like the grossness of it, or the humor. Isaac was good and fine, but something about the cats and the voices are more unnerving than baby fetus.

So far I am not really vibing with it. I thought this might be my Slay The Spire for tactical combat, where I've never liked other deck-builders but love StS, but not sure it will be. The actual game though is really well put together, love the theme, the art, the animation, the music and overall vibe. Steam-deck controls are also frankly awful for me.

I was just starting Act 3, but after playing 70 hours in the first three weeks, I completely burned out and haven't touched it since. While it's a great game with fantastic synergies and music, the meta-work became exhausting. Spending 20 minutes managing cats after a two-hour run, plus another 10 minutes theorycrafting mutations and item builds, started feeling like a second job.

Seems pretty underwhelming tbh. I put 10 hours into it, and I can't say those 10 hours were fun, but they weren't terrible. This game just feels very mid. The pacing is just horrible really. No story, and everything that gives a better gameplay loop is unlocked after doing multiple runs of the same segment.

The game is excellent, I haven't played a game so mechanically deep in years and the amount of content on display is completely overwhelming. It's a game for people who love metaprogression and creative buildmaking and adjusting on the fly to chaos. It plays closer to a dungeons and dragons campaign. It is a game design marvel in my opinion.

It's bonkers to me that Edmund talked repeatedly about targeting the Steam Deck as a platform and then released a game with controller support that is this bad.

Refunded. I HATE the art style and the juvenile gross-out humor. It feels intended for teenage boys, and not in a clever way. I've played a lot of tactics games over the years. Got through act one, then into the sewer and this didn't bring anything new to me.

Interesting mechanics. The humour isn't for me. Maybe some people enjoy that, but it's pretty childish and it was hard to enjoy the good parts of the game due to the ever-present butt jokes.

I actually don't think the game is very difficult. Most runs feel winnable going all the way without much effort. However, it is extraordinarily unfair. When the run is a loss, it is often a guaranteed loss with no possible response from the player. Being forcibly ambushed and rolling instant-kill monsters who wipe your team before round 1. Unavoidable parasite and madness events that cause your best cat to become worthless.

Tactics is my favorite genre and I honestly think Mewgenics might be the best ever gameplay and mechanics-wise.

It seems lovingly crafted, and I like the throwback art style, the amount of items seems like it would be great, the music is amazing, fun vibes, etc... I just wish it was actually fun to play.

I'm with the general consensus here. I loved it until I didn't. It consumed my entire free time for a week or two, then at 50 hours of playing time, I just felt burnt out and haven't had a desire to boot it up since then. I got my money's worth out of it. The UI is a mess, and some of that is by intentional design. Cat breeding is tedious, in part due to the crappy UI. The randomness is too punishing too often.

After about 100 hours it's one of my all time favorite games in recent years. Once I started slowing down and reading everything, looking at how things interact and how enemies work, and recognizing how the game wants you to consider the cost of everything, it became a much better time and I now only lose a run one out of every ten or so attempts.

The best roguelike I have ever played, 150 hours in and the game keeps blowing my mind with how things interact. Yes I could come with improvements ideas or quality of life enhancements but that is negligible compared to how insane the gameplay is.

I'm currently obsessed with the game. It does start out kind of slow but depth builds over runs and unlocks. The possibilities are staggering; the game really feels like a massive sandbox.