Have you ever wanted to play Paper Mario but you're a bug?
Bug Fables: The Everlasting Saping... and yeah, it really draws from Paper Mario. Played halfway through the first dungeon, but for an early opinion... graphics feel clean (though some things were obviously done for a specific resolution-- the opening narrative cutscene for example), bright, and vibrant, though it makes me very uncomfortable for some reason... I feel like it's on the verge of triggering my migraines.
Combat is very reminiscent of Paper Mario with the active abilities, for better or for worse (if you don't like 'em, stay far, far away... I'm
terrible at them). The starting ones are press-when-in-the-colored-segment and hold-until-full style. There's a hard mode available right off the bat, which is, uh, why this only goes until halfway through the first dungeon. Incidentally, it does
not utilize a friendly death system; it's straight up reload from last save.
The writing comes across as targeted towards a younger audience and kind of cutesy, though in an unobtrusive manner (Octopath Traveller, I'm looking at you. If I wanted that many colloquialisms and accents, I'd be reading Mark Twain.). Which is perfectly fitting given the art style and narrative, so all's well here.
I feel like there's something to be desired with the map layouts though. It's effectively 3D, but there's a lot of invisible walls where there 'shouldn't' be, like the loft of the room you start in; there's really no reason why you wouldn't be able to jump down from up top, other than gaming limitations. Related to this, there's plenty of missed opportunities for secrets/hidden that probably could've been taken advantage of... (though, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if I've encountered anywhere with multiple z-levels at the same x/y coordinates, which may explain a lot).
So at a quick glance... you're basically getting exactly what it looks like.