Tales of the Neon Sea was a game I wanted to play solely because of the visuals: in the months before its release, screenshot-upon-screenshot flooded the interwebs, depicting an industrial landscape ablaze in burning neon.

Alas, the actual experience didn’t quite live up to those aesthetics, but whether or not it's worth playing will be for each person to decide. The premise is you’re a cyborg PI named Rex who gets caught up in a murder mystery tied to his past, and while that may sound enticing, the actual storytelling leaves a lot to be desired. The absence of cinematics and voice acting, for starters, places a lot of impetus on the dialogue, which wouldn’t be inherently bad (see most 90s JRPGs) were it not for the fact that most of these lines are more interested in being exposition-y than conversational. What I mean is the lion’s share of Rex’s interactions and musings are less about living in Starlight City and more about explaining its past and present situations; rarely do you get a scene of standard chattery, with every line seemingly configured towards reminding players about the task at hand or history behind said task.

To be fair, it’s a problem a lot of video games set in unique locales struggle with: the balancing act between world building and characterization, and while I won’t make any objective statements about YiTi Game’s process, part of me assumes they deemed it safer to err on the side of caution. After all, each of us has played plenty of titles that didn’t bother explaining basic aspects of their lore (cough cough A Plague’s Tale), and between the two extremes I’d definitely take Tales’s approach. Just keep in mind that it does, unfortunately, come at the cost of suspenseful thrills: not once did I feel strongly inclined towards resolving the grand case, no matter how gruesome the imagery got.

Rex himself is also rather bland, with much of his personality seeped in typical hardboiled tropes ala crackerjack retorts, world-weary observations, and alcoholism (the latter of which feels incredibly forced). He’s not bad by any means, but minus some humorous encounters with his cat William, I don’t see him lasting in most gamers’ minds post-completion. The rest of the supporting cast, from the aforementioned William to main villain Noa, on the other hand, tend to be better courtesy of their unique demeanors amidst the goings-ons, and it truly is a pity that dedicated voice acting wasn’t available to bring them to life.

The rest of the soundscape isn’t much better, though not for lack of effort. See, YiTi Games made the odd decision to trigger SFX based on proximity, meaning you don’t really hear anything unless you’re right in front of the originating mechanism. This may seem okay in theory given the risk of cacophony within tighter 2D screens, however there were a couple of downsides here that ended up sabotaging the immersive factor: one, not every source, bio or inanimate, was given a coded din, and two, you don’t even get a doppler effect contingent on range -- it’s literally all-or-nothing.

And it’s a shame because there truly are some solid tronces scattered everywhere: phone booths ringing, shop bells dinging, falling water, and the buzzing of signposts amongst others. However, it’s evident the devs wanted their score to be the primary substitute for ambient noise, and on that front your mileage will definitely vary. Unlike most cyberpunk OSTs, which lean heavily into synthwave, composer(?) MZK Studio opted for a mellower tempo for its numerous tracks. With the exception of maybe one or two of them, you’re going to be hearing a lot of soft-toned beats, and though I wouldn’t quite put it in the same category as lo-fi, it definitely elicits similar feelings. As far as their effectiveness, I do think it works fine for the more slice-of-life sections of the game (you know, when you’re just wandering along the streets or shooting the breeze with random joes). The other, more investigative parts though, again YMMV.

Even those visuals I was hoping to enjoy were far more diminished than the advertising let on. See, Tales opts for a pixelated artstyle wrapped in dark hues, the aforementioned screen-caps being the exception not the norm. From the chipped painting and bluescale architecture to the minimalist lighting, Starlight and its adjacent townships ooze dilapidation, with some of the best details I’ve ever caught in a retro throwback scheme: individually-scribed license plates on a mechanic’s walls, specially-chiseled fonts for company logos, the flow of air traffic in the background -- everything is excellent. Objectively, it’s a dang good-looking game, and while I would’ve liked more plazas soaked in neon, I can’t fault YiTi’s artisans for favoring the grungier aspects of the genre.

What I can fault them for are the few negatives strewn throughout the title, beginning with Rex’s avatar: a couple of strange details have been programmed on it wherein he, one, emits an unnatural glow, and two, has his coat constantly bellow ala Spider-Man Noir from Into the Spiderverse. I understand the former was probably done to prevent over-obscurity in dark places, however, it didn’t make sense to have in standardly-lit areas. The latter, au contraire, could almost be immersion-breaking given its presence in enclosed interiors that blatantly lacked any kind of draft. In addition, the gleam of backdrop beacons on Rex was very inconsistent as far as actually materializing, though when it did appear it was beautiful in an enchanting sort of way.

On the performance side of things, Tales features an unduly amount of loading screens between its rooms and levels. If they had been instantaneous, it would’ve been fine; however, not only do you have to contend with elongated black screens, but also the occasional freeze-up wherein you’re forced to wait 1-3 seconds before Rex can resume moving. And while these are technically minor critiques, having to deal with them time-after-time-after-time gets cumulatively aggravating, especially when they interfere with the puzzles that make-up the bulk of the gameplay.

Yes, despite having the appearance of a PnC, Tales is more akin to The Witness in that you spend the majority of your time solving miniature endeavors on tiny monitors spread across the world, their completion resulting in visible changes to your surroundings (i.e., unlocking a door, granting you an item). Now, I love video game puzzles as much as the next guy (perhaps more considering my adamant defense of the Riddler Trophies in the Arkham Games), however, I didn’t have a particularly fun time with Tales’s due to them not really being conventional enigmas. What I mean is they almost always take the form of those customary minigames you can find in the iOS store versus the genuine environmental brainteasers present in Zelda Dungeons or the aforestated Arkham series -- you know: clicking bars in a predesignated order, linking pipes from one end of the screen to the other, playing Simon Says, etc…

Don’t get me wrong, there are the occasional PnC gimmicks ala combining objects for a mega use, but if you’re going in expecting those, you’ll be sorely disappointed given their diminished appearance.

And that’s ultimately the biggest reason for my tempered review. Tales of the Neon Sea does a lot of cool things at the expense of solid gameplay and storytelling, and while cyberpunk enthusiasts may enjoy the imagery, I’m hard-pressed to recommend it to the uninitiated.


NOTES
-Please keep in mind that Tales both ends on a cliffhanger and fails to wrap-up all of its plot elements. This was evidently done for sequel-purposes, though given that it’s been over four years since the original release, I’m going to assume such a product will never come to pass.

-Despite my criticisms regarding the exposition-y nature of the writing, the game does do a good job relegating the deeper aspects of its mythology to optional material you’re welcome to find. Unfortunately, a number of these articles are littered with typos indicative of improper localization (a facet that was reportedly worse in the OG release).

-One thing I forgot to commend was the ridiculous amount of textiles conceived for the many NPCs. There’s not really a sense of uniformity to them as far as conveying socioeconomic status or specific fads the way there was in Dex or Bouncer Story; however I’d easily take them over generic apparel any day of the week.