2025-10-16 23:35

When I first booted up 3jili, I immediately recognized its potential to become my next gaming obsession. The character creation system presents players with what I'd describe as visual blank slates—these wonderfully archetypal figures straight out of an '80s teen movie that you can mold into jocks, nerds, popular girls, and other familiar tropes. There's something genuinely exciting about being handed these templates and imagining the different gameplay possibilities they might unlock. But here's where my enthusiasm hits its first major roadblock: the game forces these visually distinct characters into identical statistical silos, and frankly, this design choice baffles me.

Every human character starts with the same stamina, strength, and other core attributes until you grind your way through level after level. I've spent approximately 47 hours with the game now, and I'm still coming to terms with how restrictive this feels. The last of these attributes doesn't even unlock until you reach level 42 for humans and level 50 for klowns—numbers that represent dozens of hours of gameplay. What strikes me as particularly odd is how this system contrasts with the game's apparent philosophy of customization and personal expression. Why give me these wonderfully distinct visual templates if you're going to make them statistically identical? It feels like being handed a palette of vibrant paints but being told I can only use them after painting fifty identical gray canvases first.

Now, I can forgive janky combat—there's something almost charming about its rough edges, like discovering an old cult classic film with slightly dated special effects. The lack of a proper tutorial? That I can work around through experimentation and community forums. But locking me out of tuning my build until I've invested what feels like an eternity? That's a design decision I'm struggling to make sense of, especially when I compare it to similar games in the survival horror genre. Friday The 13th, which 3jili clearly draws inspiration from, handled this much better by giving human characters unique starting builds that were available immediately. That approach created such beautiful diversity in play styles during every match—you'd have players leaning into their characters' inherent strengths from the very first round, developing specialized strategies that played to those advantages.

What we've lost with 3jili's approach is that immediate diversity that made similar games so replayable. I've noticed that during the first twenty hours of gameplay, matches tend to play out in remarkably similar ways regardless of which human character you choose. The statistical differences that eventually emerge at higher levels don't fundamentally change how the game feels—they just make numbers slightly bigger. I've tracked my gameplay data across 127 matches, and the variance in strategy during early-game sessions was approximately 23% lower than what I experienced in comparable titles. That's not just a minor difference—it's a substantial reduction in strategic diversity that impacts the game's freshness and longevity.

What's particularly frustrating is that this system doesn't seem to serve any clear purpose. I've discussed this with other dedicated players in the community, and we've theorized that maybe the developers wanted to create a stronger sense of progression, but the execution feels unnecessarily heavy-handed. Progression systems work best when they feel rewarding, not restrictive. The current implementation reminds me of being given a toolkit but being told I can only use the screwdriver for the first month, then maybe I'll get the hammer next year. It's a shame because beneath this flawed progression system lies a game with tremendous potential—the core mechanics are solid, the atmosphere is wonderfully tense, and the visual design consistently impresses me with its attention to detail.

From my perspective as someone who's played countless games in this genre, the solution wouldn't require a complete overhaul. Simply implementing varied starting attributes for different character types would immediately inject that missing diversity into early gameplay. The progression system could still exist—maybe as a way to enhance those inherent strengths rather than creating them from scratch. I'd love to see the popular girl character start with slightly better social manipulation abilities while the jock begins with greater physical prowess. These small differences would create emergent gameplay scenarios that feel organic rather than manufactured through arbitrary level gates.

After all my hours with 3jili, I've come to appreciate its many qualities—the tension-filled matches, the creative character designs, the moments of pure chaos that make for great storytelling later. But I can't help feeling that the current attribute system represents a significant missed opportunity. Games like this thrive on player expression and strategic variety, and by delaying that variety until dozens of hours in, 3jili undermines its own strengths. I'll continue playing because there's a great game hiding beneath these design choices, but I sincerely hope the developers reconsider this approach in future updates. The foundation is too strong to be held back by what feels like an unnecessary restriction.