"One thing, Peter. Where's this plane heading, anyway?"

Following D2 up with this was an insane choice that really paid off. Sad to see all the characters from The Silver Case and The 25th Ward go, but happy for the memories and messages they imparted on me. This series is really something special, something so universally applicable and strange that it instantly burrowed its way into my brain and heart. Sometimes the minute interactions we have with people we only see once or twice keep us going, the reminder that we are all humans, living in a vast pool of confusion and mystery, and nobody really knows what is going on until we finally confront death and life head on. What a perfect piece of media, that will surely age well as time goes on.

"It's set to touch down in the real world."

Ignoring the abnoxious puzzles that detract a bit from the story, this is one of My favourite Suda games just below Killer7.
It has a lot of personality and the story is a bit weird but charming and a bit melancholic as well.
But i think the best thing that this game offers is the atmosphere, the soundtrack is a freaking banger and the old low poly ds feeling makes me want to travel to Losspas island irl.
Also, Mondo is literally the best protagonist ever created, he is such a silly depressed goober ^⁠_⁠^

You know this game at first seems gimmick driven, but it flows better than I expected.
I love the math problems in the main story, lost and found is torture figuring out by yourself.
the walking is looooooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOng but idk the OST was so good at times, I kinda like it.
The story idk if it was deep or some plain stuff, but I really liked the themes it was going for. This game likes to troll around in all senses.
I really enjoy this game, it might be one of my favorites games just by how unique it and the experience I got from it. I really do hope Suda remasters and ports this one. By far the best version to play it is the DS because of the compressed OST and 2 screens flows so much better with the manual.

Staring at the Abyss, in Paradise

What a way to start my vacations! Decided this would be a good game to acompany me during this travel, just for the setting alone. As I'm travelling here and there, it means internet connection is minimal, slow and sparse throughout the area, very bad. It was just me, and this game for the most part, also decided deprive myself of any guides or any type of FAQS mostly the ones centered around puzzles. So I went straight ahead into the unknow, waiting to see what this game could add to the Kill the Past series.

Flower, Sun, and Rain is a puzzle adventure game with a big focus on narrative. Specially making nods here and there to The Silver Case since it's secretly a sequel. Here in the west we never got to recieve neither The Silver Case nor Flower, Sun and Rain at the time of it's release in any type, way, shape or form. But 7 years later we got the blessing in form of an english localization. A little too late for the party, but we got it anyways. This was launched during Suda's ascent in the west with hits such as No More Heroes and Killer7, so it made sense that at least one of his beloved works left in japan would cross the sea in style.

We take control of Sumio Mondo, a so-called searcher. Search for objects, he finds them and make people's live easier or at least I think so. Main task, disarm a terrorist bomb set in a airplane...in 2001. Mind you this was released before 9/11, it was never created with only to shock with bad taste in mind. This "simple" task while strange to be delegated to someone like Mondo turns up to be more complicated than needed once "Days" pass away. Or not? It's a mystery within a mystery within a mystery. The deeper we get the darker it gets, as any hard truth might be. But in reality Flower, Sun and Rain tone isn't dark. In fact it actually leans towards something more like a surreal comedy.

It's an easygoing but slow adventure were danger is totally eliminated. So no "Game Overs" or any "Try Again" screen if you take the wrong decision or happen to go against the rules just because. While "Skill" as we know it, pressing the buttons at the right time or what not isn't necessary here; patience will be our best friend. I certanly have patience towards the things I like and I like Suda51 so I eat it all the way through without complaining. It's enjoyable if you can take silly jokes, harmless fun and math. Don't rush it, this ain't a race. Enjoy the funny DS graphics, the compressed ass songs, pink cocodrile. It's the moment, you know. Don't try to see the logical side of it if you can't make sense of it, that can hurt a cell or two at the long run with this game.

Flower, Sun and Rain as I said before is a direct sequel to The Silver Case. But I wouldn't consider that way exactly, take it more as a spin-off that will answer some very specific questions about one or two members of the The Silver Case cast. Doesn't make things go further in the Kill the Past series but gives us a very interesing insightful analysis of Sumio as a character. From this text now on this will be nothing but spoilers but I'll try to be as vague as possible in case you still reading this, I just want to make this go through. So, you ever asked what hapenned to Kodai in The Silver Case? Look it up if you don't remember. Thing is, he regrets it and the fantasy world of his would become reality. In Paradise. The Fantasy World he talked so much about, clashed with twisted reality and a bit of..let's say an impostor syndrome. The Time Loop means something incredible, an eternal trap.

Dreams are but mere reflections of past events twisted or arrange for personal purposes. This game really did happen? It doesn't matter, but it was necessary for awakening. His awakening. Flower, the flower it's you. Sun are the possitive emotions you carry, too much of it and you will burn. Rain, the rain represents struggle, too much of it and you will end up crushed. These factors makes the Flower growth healthy and strong. The Sun can represent the humour, the good vibes, the music. The Rain can represent the events that need to occur to advance the story; the puzzles or the endless walking. This is the Flower, Sumio. Kill the Past has always play with this concept, it's in the very name. Face the reality, face the consequences, to move forward. And this game is not exception. In fact, it might be it's most clear example of what Kill the Past is, altrough hidden under layers and layers of cryptic writting and events that don't seem to correlate to the main story.

My recomendation, play The Silver Case first, that goes without saying at this point. This game is not that important to the Kill the Past series in general if we take the conservative side of it being a sequel. Take it as a christmas special. Short, familiar and sweet or a halloween special. Long, weird and scary.

This game is so mean to you but it sort of works in a weird way? It will joke about making you run back and forth across the island and then actually make you do it. Most of the puzzles are not that complicated once you figure out the Lospass Guide Book, but the final set of puzzles in the Airport really pushed it into frustrating and tedious.

The story goes into a million different directions, back and forth between delightfully weird and completely incomprehensible. There are some great moments but overall a bit too much all over the place for my tastes. I am interested to play The Silver Case now, which I know you're supposed to play before this one.

This game is a game of almosts.

The opening to this game and the impression you get of it before you play it are entirely separated from your thoughts on it when you finish it. You effectively go into this game expecting a large island murder mystery game where you encounter strange folks and solve puzzles. Each of those things is correct, but they are individual. There is a large island you traverse. There is a murder. There are mysteries. There are strange folk. And there are puzzles.

This game at times feels like one of those bull riding machines you see at the fair. The kind where the the entire goal is to stay on as long as you can. Whenever you get into the groove with this game, you get tossed right off.

You beat this game and 'almost' say it was fun. You witness the story and 'almost' get it. You wake up and this time you 'almost' get to the hotel lobby.

I've seen people explain this game not being fun as 'intended' as some sort of parody of classic adventure games. I've not read every single Suda interview, but as far as I could parse this wasn't the case. But I also understand why some people would say this. At times, it feels like this game is trying to suck on purpose. For some sort of ulterior reason like story or thematically. But then other times, it just feels like a bad game.

My favorite part of this game was running along the beach listening to 'Rhapsody In Blue'. Not the puzzles, not the jokes, not the story. Just running.

Edit: I like this game now. No idea why.

pretty much everyone who already played this game summed up my thoughts and articulated them better but still i'll try to give my two cents too.

playing this game while having a fever is honestly such a wild experience and it doesn't help that the game itself is pretty surreal and unhinged. not to sound like a suda51 dickrider (i am) but his games are really something special and something crafted with a lot of love and care. i've been debating a long time whether or not to play it because of the fsr remake rumors and i was kinda avoiding playing it because of the tedious gameplay (hence a half star less) otherwise the narrative is something so unique and well written that it doesn't deserve less than five stars.

flower, sun and rain is a bright, summery experience, where we follow sumio mondo in his searcher adventures. i like how the game didn't shy away from giving every character a personality and story to tell, one of my favourite parts were exactly those where sumio's kindness and sometimes naivety were highlighted. maybe the tedious gameplay is giving an impact to the whole narrative. i saw many opinions and comments how this is the true the silver case sequel and i can somewhat agree, it does fill a decent number of plot holes that were left after finishing the silver case and seeing some of the tsc characters brought a smile to my face. :)
the music paired with various suda's interests scattered around the dialogue and guidebook is something so special and endearing to me and i love how suda pushes his interests in the game he makes unapologetically and i totally respect him for that.

all in all, not to ramble, even though i understand divided opinions about this game i recommend at least watching a let's play compilation because it really is a shame to miss out such a great narrative, especially if you already played any suda51 game👍

The game is absolutely fucking terrible.
The puzzles range from bad to tedious.
The graphics are lackluster.
You spend the biggest chunk of the game walking up and down the same 3 roads.
The story is nonexistent for 70% of the game.
When the last 30% of the story does pick up it makes no sense.

Soundtrack is good though.

But the game still, in spite of all of this, manages to weave an engaging experience. You might not understand the narrative, but you will be engrossed by it regardless. You might hate the walking, but you still want to see what happens next. You might not want to do another tedious puzzle, but you still want to read the witty dialogue after.

If you play this you'll come to see all these glaring issues aren't really issues at all. Everything about the game feels deliberately crafted to deliver a certain experience. And regardless of the merit you get out of this game, it definitely conveys what it wants to convey. How you interpret that is up to you. And you have to respect games like those.

After a week I already miss waking up in the morning and playing this on my 3ds.

Another comfort game. Much like all of Suda51’s games, I feel inspired whenever I play Flower, Sun, and Rain. Makes for a great summertime romp, at least for me. Its willingness to intentionally annoy the player will probably frustrate most people but I love it. It’s part of what makes it so interesting. I can’t think of many other examples where the gameplay and writing are this effective at putting the player on the same page as the player character. When you have to repeatedly walk through several large, empty areas, you understand why the protagonist is so grumpy all the time. One of the funniest games I’ve played too. The protagonist punches a child at one point. That alone is worth a perfect score.

Goodbye, Losspass. Goodbye, Paradise. A fever dream and a half, one that I oddly didn't wish to wake up from.

Story and dialogue-wise I would probably give it a 5, gameplay-wise... well. It depends on how much you love math and walking (and the movement system on the DS can be a doozy sometimes with the camera angle switching). Not gonna lie, I did end up loving some of the guidebook puzzles though. But it can definitely be a chore, funnily enough, just like it intended. Or maybe I've developed some weird stockholm syndrome for this game.

Its absurdist and 4th wall-breaking humor is definitely right up my alley, and the contrast between the bleak mystery and the casual, at most times even cheerful soundtrack and landscapes creates an interesting disconnect. It's both hilarious and unsettling. Its at (most) times incomprehensible dialogue and narrative really keeps you guessing and asking, and barely any answers are given to you outright which works to its advantage, in my opinion.

I haven't played Silver Case but this game definitely made me want to check it out immediately. Even though I still have a lot of questions and a lot of the plot probably went over my head (I'm still processing it as I'm typing this), I can recommend this game based off vibes alone.

Sumio Mondo is my spirit animal. Please play this game.

Flower, sun and rain it's amazing. being my first Suda game I started it with big expectations based on all the praises Grasshopper studio gets BUT at the same time not knowing at all what this game would deliver, and DAMN. It does deliver.

I think this is the weirdest game I gave 5 starts not because of the tone of the game itself, (even tho it is weird) but because the scope of it is pretty simple and narrow, but it's such a perfectly encapsulated experience, so unique that I couldn't give this one less.

The look of Lospass island pierces your eyes immediately, full of vibrant colors everywhere. Green, blue, red, yellow, pink, all distributed in these paradisiacal scenarios where you somehow feel that it should be buzzling with life, but it is not, it is completely empty, just the sound of the waves, wind and birds as you run. This made me feel like I was walking around in a weird fever dream, all seems unreal but at the same time it is as you would imagine a paradise. It makes all the walking worth it; I didn't get bored when running all sweaty around Lospass dreamy aesthetics at all. I love how Sumio's outfit doesn't match with the vibe at all, these contrasts make him stand out like in a good way.
I find funny that this game being the sequel to TSC, game which is all grim and obscure in its aesthetic, just twists this fact and goes all the way to a flashy paradise look, love it!

As I said before, it is a fever dream, and this doesn't stop just at the view, but it leaks into the people, every encounter is surreal, we limit ourselves when talking to strangers, we have lot of mental rules that ties together to a complex system that runs at every interaction. Here there is not, well, at least to everyone but Sumio. Honestly, I can't wrap my thoughts to describe the dialogue, but it's filled with this wittiness that makes it so engaging, sometimes ironic, sometimes poetic, sometimes ridiculous, sometimes hilarious.

I didn't play TSC nor 25th Ward so ik I'm missing a lot of context to enjoy the plot and world-building EVEN more but i like it just as it is, a mysterious plot that gives you little hints throughout the whole game to keep you engaged and then it just fucks your brain in the best way possible at the very end.

I'm not lying when I say that after beating this game, I've been listening to the OST nonstop throughout the weeks, they accomplished fleshing out the paradise Lospass essence greatly, mixing this classical/famous melodies and making it their own, like, you sometimes compare the original and they barely sound like the same song, because they use the main melody and build over them to give it their own personality, their own touch, music achieves to fusion with the ambience unscathed .
It reminds me of drakengard and how it does this for its own chaotical purpose.

GAMEPLAY...the gimmick is really fun, the idea of searching through the whole guidebook and how you become paranoid of every number you read and how to tie them to an answer is cool. some were oddly specific, and I broke my brain too much but the feeling after seeing 'HIT' is worthwhile.

AND

I'm so Sumio coded... fr 🚬...

It’s hard to exactly describe if I liked Flower Sun & Rain. By all means one of if not the weirdest game I’ve ever played, it’s one of a few titles that could fall under the auteur label, alongside games like Deadly Premonition, NieR, and Death Stranding, where I’m being delivered some insane person’s brain in the form of a neat little program that fits into a video game console. The hangups are ultimately created by the fact that auteur-driven games could be expected to go largely unchecked, there’s less (if not no) audience-orientated focus-testing, no one in place to institute checks and balances to make FSR a fun game. FSR is art driven by some lunatic to create an experience and that experience is their own.

That means, while playing through FSR, every weird little design quirk feels deliberate. While the slightly odd at times English translation may seem stilted, it almost feels like its purposely disorientating. The agonizingly slow ‘I spent most of the game walking between NPCs that spouted nonsense at me and told me to go somewhere else’ also feels purposely disorientating, as if to lull you into a sense of delirium – to accept the insane shit you’re being dripfed by weirdos.

The puzzles follow that same mindset. Request 15’s Lost and Found report features 3 puzzles, one is to add up 4 numbers, one is a kind of nonsense interpretation of the game’s in-world guidebook (this is a frequent issue), and the other was a number puzzle that was as far as I could figure out, completely impossible to figure out on paper. I ended up having to calc it in Excel. I checked Gamefaqs and they recommended trial and error. That’s a pretty typical case, and so the puzzles also end up feeling disorientating, though maybe less in a purposeful way. Maybe they’re just bad puzzles. I think they’re just bad puzzles.

As a result, in some capacity, FSR feels like a dream. It does not feel real. The main character (Sumio Mondo)’s sole purpose is to get to the airport to confront a terrorist situation but continues to accidentally inject himself into the problems of random NPCs that ultimately do fuck all. As the plot develops, it gets more and more abstract but Mondo ends up being the one semblance of grounded-ness you’re offered. Mondo effectively rejects his situation. He’s going to that airport no fucking matter what. In a conversation with another character they warn of the pending situation and Mondo just says ‘I genuinely do not give a shit anymore’. You could make a point about that being pretty emblematic of a typical player’s experience. FSR wastes your time, but on purpose for some inane, inexplainable reason. By the end, Mondo ultimately seems to accept everything going around him at face value, presumably like the player he’s been conditioned to accept everything because of these fucking agonizing walks from one side of a Micronesian island to the other side of a Micronesian island. It’s a big island!

Now, is it any good? Jury’s still out on it. I’d say not really. Much more fun to think about.