• Price: $24.99 USD
• Developer: Button Factory Games
• Publisher: CobraTekku Games
• Release Date: August 7, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by PR Hound on behalf of Button Factory Games and CobraTekku Games. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Content warning: rated M. A lot of swearing and sexual humor. Discussion of sex work. Alcohol and drugs.

I was first drawn to The Edge of Allegoria because I love RPGs, and its graphics really reminded me of the earlier Pokémon games. But the graphics style and world design are where the similarities end. Decidedly not a monster tamer game, The Edge of Allegoria has players control a man named Joe in a foulmouthed turn-based RPG set in a fantasy world.

Joe is apparently going through a midlife crisis, and decides that he wants to do something meaningful with his life now. As Joe, you’ll travel across Allegoria with an adorable dog at your side, exploring the land, fighting monsters, and mastering new skills. This isn’t your typical RPG that has new friends join you along the way; Joe is a lone wolf through and through.

Before you send Joe off to battle on his own, you might want to equip him with a weapon and protective gear. You’ll learn new skills and increase your stats by mastering each piece of equipment. Equip a weapon and use its skill until the game says you’ve mastered it; once you’ve mastered that skill you can keep using it even without keeping the weapon equipped.

Similarly, mastering a piece of defensive equipment by taking hits from enemies will permanently increase some of your stats. I think this is somewhat similar to the system in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which also had a skill system I liked. The skills you learn from each weapon are also used by the monsters you fight, so I feel like the system is kind of Blue Mage-adjacent in a way.

The game has close to 100 skills for you to learn, with around 150 pieces of equipment total! There’s a nice variety of skills, with both magical and physical attacks, single-hit and multi-hit, etc. (Because you only fight one enemy at a time, there aren’t any multi-target skills.) The skill animations are really neat, and I loved the skills based on pop culture references (especially the one based on Pulp Fiction).

You get to equip 5 skills to use in battle: one for the weapon you currently have equipped and four others you’ve already mastered. There isn’t a limit to how many times you can use a skill, as you don’t have PP/MP/SP to manage. Personally, I liked that, although some players may feel that it makes battles less challenging.

The status ailment system is pretty interesting – for example, instead of a traditional sleeping spell the game has skills that cause the “drowsiness” ailment, which reduces special attack, special defense, and agility. The “burn” ailment isn’t your usual version either, causing damage each turn but also affecting the victim’s stats.

While I enjoyed the battle mechanics overall, I did have a few complaints. Usually I complain about encounter rates being too high, but for once I actually thought they were too low here. (This mainly came up when I was trying to get a monster with a rare drop to appear, but I counted probably 30-40 steps at minimum before a monster would appear again).

Additionally, I couldn’t figure out if enemies had weaknesses. I kind of just used skills at random and hoped they did a lot of damage. 😅 One NPC mentioned something about being able to “pull off combos by stringing a few skills together,” but I wasn’t entirely sure what was meant by that.

These weren’t huge issues for me though, as I was only defeated a handful of times during my playthrough. (Your precious doggo helpfully drags you back to town. 🥹) When you defeat enemies they’ll drop materials for you to sell (or use for side quests) instead of money.

The inventory for the shop in each town is different, with varied selections of healing items and exclusive equipment available in each shop. You have to sell monster drops to make any money in this game, but you have to be careful not to sell something that you’ll need for a quest later on.

I like that there’s an option to lock items to prevent you from selling them accidentally. There is a bestiary that lists monster locations, but I did wish it also indicated what they dropped. Side quests aren’t overly complicated, but a quest log may have been nice to keep track of them all.

Just as you won’t be forming a party of new friends, you don’t get very personal with any of the NPCs you help. Most character interactions seem to have something to do with sex or drug references as the more serious main plot develops in the background. This could put some players off, but the RPG gameplay is enjoyable enough that those players may be willing to look past the M-rated jokes.

I had a good time exploring the world of Allegoria; in fact, the exploration was one of its greatest strengths besides the battles. You travel across Allegoria in a linear fashion that is reminiscent of the Pokémon games. Instead of a Snorlax blocking your path, your loving pup sprawls out in front of the exits to areas you can’t access yet. Give them a pet for being so good and helpful!

There are also obstacles such as rocks or bushes that will need to be removed once you’ve unlocked the abilities necessary to deal with them. You’ll have to navigate some dungeons with familiar mechanics (i.e. warp panels, sliding across the ice, etc.). Others will have slightly less obvious puzzles involved to make exploration more interesting.

The game also boasts a decent amount of secret areas with bosses that drop new equipment. The secret areas are optional, but I’d say it’s best to visit them anyway for the extra content and equipment. I love secrets in games, so I tried to complete everything I could. There are even some silly mini games such as joint rolling and origami.

It took me about 25 hours to reach the credits after getting through the main quest and most extras. Players who enjoy leveling up their characters will be pleased to learn that they can go beyond level 100 in this game; I finished at level 150. You can tie up any loose ends after the credits, and it seems like there is some equipment that you can only acquire after the credits roll?

I loved what happened in the final battle, and was quite satisfied with the RPG experience. The game design really appealed to me as someone who played who played the (now) retro inspirations as a kid. The battle system and skill learning mechanics, exploration, and graphics are some of the game’s biggest strengths. The pop culture references were a lot of fun as well.

They probably could have cut back on the number of sex jokes and usage of “F***” a bit, but they admittedly didn’t intend The Edge of Allegoria to be a serious game. If you enjoy crude humor – or at least are indifferent about it – you may want to check it out for a fun, fairly lengthy RPG experience.