Thanks to the state of the human mind, it becomes difficult to understand if something is being purposely terrible or accidentally brilliant, and the horseshoe of it all only further confuses things for people trying to stumble upon treasure or step into trash. People often conflate television shows like South Park or Big Mouth and point to a failing of one compared to the success of the other, and both are valid, while neither are the crux of the matter. Does that confusing? It should, because I was confused by the time I finally put down Edge of Allegoria, a Gameboy-inspired RPG that couldn’t decide where it was landing by the end of my experience. Is it a work of art? Is it pointless crude humor disguised as a game? The answer lies somewhere in between, and, yet, somewhere far away from the heart of it all.

You should know Terry just shoved a stick up his butt. “Allegory.”

As a protagonist who is just trying to live his life as a fisherman, Edge of Allegoria wastes no time in bringing the ideology of the game to the forefront for the player to digest immediately. There’s this entire mythical backstory about the creation and destruction of the world you live in, but that doesn’t matter to you, because you’re nobody. After realizing you suck at fishing (very different from other RPGs this year), you decide to wander outside the village, get in a couple of scuffles, and promptly get your house razed.

With nothing else to do and no way to tell what’ll happen next, you bumble down the road, corralled by your faithful (and enormous) pet and chance folk/obstacles that prevent you from ending up somewhere you shouldn’t. The guardrails are obvious, but helpful: after all, you have no idea what you’re doing.

The design and game mechanics again remind me that I wish people had better tools back during the heyday of the Gameboy era. With titles like Kudzu, Treasure Hunters and the gorgeous demakes of Elden Ring and Disco Elysium, it’s evident that the potential of the system was limited by the resources at the time. Edge of Allegoria uses a lot of asset recycling to get you from point A to point B, but it’s done in a clean, less obvious way. Yes, you’re seeing the same rocks, trees and grass as you did in the last twenty screens, but at least the arrangement is constantly different. You know you’re in a different part of the world and won’t easily think that you’ve gotten turned around in circles. Making the most of what you have is certainly a far cry from my confusion with A Boy and his Blob.

Currently under the Madness affliction, the game truly becomes a work of art.

The graphics are not, however, lacking when it comes to enemies and momentary cutscenes. Even with the avatars of the common foe being relatively low in detail, you can see a stark difference between all the different mythical and common baddies, ranging from simple rabbits to chimeras, cockatrices and manticores. Not to mention the bosses that come from the celestial heavens and the eldritch unknown, all of whom look spectacular and come with their own greenscale expositional scenes that show some amazing pixel art skill on the design team’s side. The animations for the attacks, in that same vein, looked really engaging, with some of my favorites being Blekfest and William’s Shot. Several attacks are nods to other media and IPs (like a clear Reservoir Dogs callout), so keep your eyes open for that. Some other animations were a bit…rude, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Once you get into Edge of Allegoria’s meat, you’ll find a lot of walking around and grinding to fight enemies. Players will equip one weapon and one armor piece, and they’ll gain Mastery as you either successfully hit with them or get hit by a foe. Mastering a piece of armor grants some passive buffs, and mastering a weapon gives you that weapon’s skill to permanently add to your repertoire. This whole system is fascinating, especially as there aren’t MP limitations to using a weapon’s skill. As a result, spending time with weapons sold at each store allows you to create an incredibly versatile arsenal that you can swap out between battles, whether you’re looking for something offensive, defensive, or purely ailment evoking. This is one of my favorite combat setups in recent memory, and the compulsion to learn every skill kept me happily grinding.

The screen shifts colors, the music changes…getting damaged never felt so cool!

Additionally, the soundtrack, as expected, is chiptuned and gorgeous. It evokes a lot of the sensation from things like Final Fantasy Adventure and even Pokemon Red/Blue. You find a different scoring in each area, and the music actually changes in fantastic ways when your character is afflicted by ailments. Sometimes, like when you’re burned, the change is very subtle, and you don’t even realize it’s off until you’re healed. It’s a fantastic aural device to match the visual changes, which can be extreme in the overworld. The opening track is more dynamic than anything else you hear in the game, but don’t let the step down in tunes leave you despondent. If you’re a fan of the blips and boops that make up the early 90s handheld scene, then you’re in good company with Edge of Allegoria. 

The only real issue I had with the game’s core gameplay is that the difficulty seems to be too eager to ramp itself down if a player has a bad time. If you get knocked out by an enemy, you’ll be whisked away by your pet companion to the nearest safe zone, losing your Mastery percent on equipment if it isn’t 100% but otherwise unaffected. Then, when you return to the enemy, their level has decreased. I don’t know why, but this rubbed me the wrong way. It’s a novel way to deal with players suffering under heavy losses, and it should be a toggle you can decide upon, but automatically doing it actually made me ensure I saved before a boss fight and then reloaded if I lost. I don’t need anyone to lower the bar, I need to rise up to meet it.

Oh great, now my grandfather is in the game.

And now we arrive at the crux of Edge of Allegoria, which is the relentless, unrepentant and offensive humor of the entire game. If you’re not a fan of cursing from characters, you won’t be happy with the dialogue. While you do have some expositional moments later on with others who can deliver text straight, every battle is laden with tons of swears and some surprisingly oldschool memes (“fire ze missiles?” Really?). Item descriptions are mostly saved from this fate, though the presence of Big Ass Hat shows it’s not completely gone. But, as long as you plan to play this game, you need to be ready for some serious potty language through and through.

The narrator will just constantly throw in profanity for no reason other than someone told them it was funny once. And, to be fair, it is funny the first time. When you step into battle with a common enemy and are greeted with a sailor-string of blue, it catches you off guard and elicits a chuckle. When you see ridiculous text coming from NPCs who have no problem being verbally abusive to you or each other, it has a bit of edgy humor to it. When you get into a town and realize that one woman is being repeatedly sexually abused by the whole town to make ends meet, the humor dies then and there, and you become aware of just how exhausting the tone can be. You could have the “town prostitute” trope be funny without purposely making it awful. Yes, even with the pithy disclaimer before entering town.

This is the humor I needed more of. Thank you, Pascal.

In that same vein, Edge of Allegoria seems to be unable to fully commit to the bit. When I play something like Stick of Truth, you know that the content will be over-the-top with inappropriate dialogue and offensive moments because that’s what the show is known for, and it’s all well balanced by a really solid story and gameplay. Yet Edge of Allegoria will have long stretches where things appear to be almost…normal. A suspicious town with some kind of murder mystery happening has genuine intrigue and some obvious but enjoyable whodunnit atmosphere, and then it falls apart with some pointless gay jokes. The entire backstory about demons and angels is mostly presented in a deadly serious way, and then you cut in to make a boob joke when the fight finally breaks out. It’s like Beavis and Butt-Head, but the cadence is off so the humor isn’t consistent.

Also, because this has been stuck in my craw for a while, you need to spend a while doing a minigame where you learn to roll a joint. You can’t leave the town until you get the joint perfectly rolled, and the quick time event of getting the buttons right and timing everything sucked. I did this damn moment for almost ten minutes, finally got it right, got a joint and left the town. A joint can refill 50% of your HP, but it makes you drowsy (GEDDIT??) which lowers accuracy and damage. As a result, I mostly stuck to the food that you find everywhere and didn’t bother with the joint. But hey, at least I got to waste my time surrounded by stoners. Glad I could relive my college days in Northampton.

Imagine this for every single fight, but with small variations. It gets exhausting.

The core of what makes Edge of Allegoria unique is what ultimately kills it. The graphics, the sound, the combat are all top notch. I would love to see these bones transplanted into any other story, any other idea, to make it work best. But it’s relentless with constant profanity and some unfunny “dark” humor moments. I was happiest in the dungeon, bashing the brains of enemies in with my Skillet and feasting on the crab legs and pizzas that dropped as a result. I was so mad at how many Mimics there are, but also thrilled to keep fighting them and getting better. But I dreaded moving the story forward, because it meant my character would have more vile stuff thrown at him and then spewed back in return. An RPG where I love the game, hate the story. Never thought it possible, but here we are.

Edge of Allegoria is available now on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of Edge of Allegoria was provided by the publisher.