wait..is the game actually good or are you guys joking around?
Barkley's gameplay is definitely good; it's somewhere between Final Fantasy VI and Paper Mario. Nothing more to say about that.
The way that I understand is that the game is a parody of RPG Maker games. So, you can imagine that this game is authored by a very particular kind of nerd. He appreciates good writing to the point of being a little pretentious, he's still stuck in the '90s, he's lazy, and he's oblivious to how other people might see him.
So what you end up with is a game that's well-written at any given moment, although with basketball in the style of Final Fantasy VI as the primary subject matter and no acknowledgement that this is incredibly silly. While the main plot makes sense, the game is constantly introducing new game features or side stories which don't lead anywhere, as if the creator of the game lost interest partway through.
Of course, you don't have to look at it from such a meta perspective. The relationship between the characters and the world have the same effect. The world and the events are all very silly, but the characters participating in them are totally serious about it and have no outside awareness. The characters tend to act the exact same way in both the comedic and dramatic moments because there isn't a difference to them.
