This Way Madness Lies: A Shakespearean RPG That Earns Its Chaos

Skip the opening cutscene. Not the game's—this review's. Here's what matters: This Way Madness Lies is a compact turn-based RPG wrapped in Elizabethan cosplay and genuine comic timing. It costs roughly what two lattes do, lasts 6-10 hours, and commits to its bit harder than most indie RPGs commit to anything. Buy it if you want something weird and warm. Skip it if you need mechanical depth or modern polish. Wait for a sale only if your backlog already owns you.

What This Game Actually Feels Like After Playing Through

The first assumption to puncture: "Shakespeare + RPG" sounds like a gimmick that collapses after the tutorial. It doesn't. Developer Zeboyd Games (Cosmic Star Heroine, Cthulhu Saves the World) has been refining this specific strain of JRPG homage for over a decade, and Madness represents their most confident narrative voice yet. The writing isn't "funny for an indie"—it's funny, full stop, with a density of puns, metatextual winks, and actual emotional beats that suggest someone on that team read the comedies and the tragedies, not just the CliffsNotes.

You play as Ophelia, pulled from Hamlet into a multiverse of Shakespearean mashups, accompanied by a party that includes a foul-mouthed Ariel and a Lady Macbeth who's done with everybody's nonsense. Combat is turn-based with a "Dramatic" meter that builds toward over-the-top team attacks. The system works. It's not Persona 5. It's not even Cosmic Star Heroine's excellent combo chains. What it is: fast, expressive, and respectful of your time. Random encounters are visible on-map and avoidable. Battles resolve in 2-3 minutes. The game knows you have laundry to do.

The pacing reveals Zeboyd's accumulated wisdom. Where their earlier games front-loaded systems and back-loaded payoff, Madness spaces its mechanical introductions across the first two hours, then lets you play. No forty-minute tutorial dungeon. No "here's fourteen systems, good luck" avalanche. The difficulty curve is gentle verging on optional—there's a story mode toggle that doesn't punish you for using it, and the default "Normal" won't stall anyone who's touched an RPG before.

Performance is where the budget shows. This is a 2D RPG running on what appears to be a modified version of Zeboyd's long-running engine. It works. It won't impress. Load times between areas hit 3-5 seconds on modest hardware, and the pixel art—charming, readable, occasionally inspired—won't convert anyone who needs their indies to look like Eastward or Signalis. The music, original compositions in a pseudo-Elizabethan mode, loops more noticeably than you'd want in a longer game. At 6-8 hours, it's tolerable. At 15, it would be grating.

Here's the hidden variable most reviews miss: the game's emotional register shifts more than its marketing suggests. The comedy lands consistently, but there's a genuine meditation on identity, performance, and self-authorship that emerges in the back half. Ophelia's arc—from passive object in Hamlet's story to active agent in her own—mirrors the player's growing mechanical mastery. It's not subtle. It doesn't need to be. But it gives the game a shape beyond "funny Shakespeare RPG," and that shape is why it lingers where similar gimmick games evaporate.

Who Should Play, Who Should Avoid, and the Exact Caveats

Play now if: You want a palate-cleanser between 80-hour RPGs. You have any affection for Shakespeare, even grudging. You value writing over production values. You need something that respects a single evening's play session.

Wait for a sale if: You're price-sensitive below $10. The game launches at budget-tier pricing already, but deeper discounts hit within 3-6 months on PC storefronts. Historical Zeboyd pricing patterns suggest 30-50% off during seasonal sales.

Skip if: You need contemporary visual polish. You want deep character build variety—this party is fixed, progression is largely linear. You're allergic to puns. You require 60fps in a 2D RPG (this doesn't consistently hit it on all hardware, though it's hardly unplayable).

Revisit after update if: You're on a platform where launch technical issues are reported. As of current writing, the PC build is stable; console ports sometimes lag in patch parity.

The monetization is refreshingly absent. One price, complete game, no DLC announced or needed. This is worth emphasizing in 2024: you're buying a finished thing, not a platform for future spending. The value proposition is straightforward.

Comparative framing: if you liked The Bard's Tale (the parody, not the dungeon crawler) but wanted it to care more about its characters, or if Pentiment's historical setting intrigued you but its pace felt glacial, Madness sits in the workable middle. It's less mechanically rich than Cosmic Star Heroine, Zeboyd's previous best, but more narratively assured. The trade-off is real: you lose the combo system's depth, you gain a story you'll actually remember character names from.

The One Thing to Do Differently

Don't judge this game by its first twenty minutes. The opening is deliberately disorienting—Ophelia's plunge into madness rendered as chaotic tutorial—and the humor takes a scene or two to calibrate to. Push through to the first party expansion, roughly 45 minutes in. That's where the game reveals whether its voice works for you. Most players who bounce, bounce early; most who stay, finish. The decision point is specific and knowable. Use it.