Buto Demo

New ideas are always nice to experience in video games, even if they are not particularly well-integrated or they lack polish. However, they are not always ideal, regardless of how original they might be, especially if the developers do not get the most out of their concepts. Hence, the experience can actually be more disappointing than if the game copied everything from another project instead.

Buto is an interactive story that puts you in the middle of a colorful world and presents you with an amusing tale featuring weird characters. The game feels a lot like a visual novel at first, especially since most of your time is spent looking at the screen and watching the action as it unfolds by itself, but there are a few very interactive components too, such as the combat system.   Speaking of which, the battles are mighty interesting, since they are a combination of combos, CCG mechanics and turn-based tactics. Hence, you have to fill the opponent’s emotion bars by selecting the right type of skills. You have to choose at least three different abilities every time, and you can score special combos by using a specific combination. However, it’s very difficult to learn these combos, and the system as a whole is poorly explained to begin with.

Although the story should be very important in this type of games, that is not really the case here, since everything appears to be thrown together in a matter of minutes. The dialog lines are short and pointless most of the time, the characters do not have personalities, and the game world is never explained. Thus, it’s difficult to get in the proper mood or understand anything throughout the first few chapters in the demo.   The graphics are not bad, on the other hand, even if they are clearly subpar for this day and age. Unfortunately, the most annoying part is that the environments look the same, so it’s difficult to get in any kind of mood. The animations are very basic and disappointing, not to mention the lack of a proper soundtrack and forgettable sound effects.

In the end, Buto is clearly not a finished product as of right now, so it’s understandable that it has flaws and mistakes. However, it really needs a lot of work in order for the idea to gain traction, because in this state the game is quite boring and annoying.