Pretty short, but for what you experience it's more than enough to fully explore every character, which are all pretty masterfully written. Even the cop character feels like a good and genuine attempt at writing a character you can understand and empathize with, and not just straight-up copaganda. A lot of these people are flawed, but no one you personally interact with is an entirely bad guy. The only ones you can look at and say are evil are the government that are literally isolating their own population from leaving because it is so bad.

It's a good story, and is meant to be played more than once. It has a lot of things to say about current politics that are all handled well.

I was going through the motions to beat this game. It is leaving Gamepass at the end of the month, so I basically forced myself to finish it. This game is overly political in a way that holds it back. It's hard to tell if any of my decisions were actually making a difference with how it ended. The whole point is to get teenagers across the country and over the border wall. With each teenager you control you meet the same six or seven characters on the road and do little "missions" with/for them. Each "mission" involves a new mini-game and none of them were very interesting. Probably my favorite part of the game is the soundtrack, and I'm not usually one to care about the soundtrack. Hence the score. I did get the "XBOX platinum" fairly easily.

Esse jogo é simplesmente incrível. Comecei imaginando ser apenas mais um game de Aventura narrativa genérico, mas me deparei com uma história profunda que nos faz refletir demais. Com diversos personagens que garantem um lugar em nosso coração, Road 96 nos traz uma questão politica e social que vamos descobrindo e nos aprofundando ao passar pela pele de algumas crianças que buscam fugir de seu país. Durante a gameplay, sentimos diversas emoções e sentimentos, o jogo nos coloca em posições que até mesmo questionamos nossos próprios valores.

This game got two main things going for it: its story and its take on the “adventure” side of games, underexplored by a lot of games that are labelled as such.

The story aspect is mostly based around its strong cast of characters, and one thing i really liked about it was how it portraits stories so personal to each of the people you meet while being cohesive to its whole. This is supported by the devs’ choice of not having a protagonist, per say (this is not even a “silent protagonist” scenario, but multiple random people you control). It is so since, being someone not that relevant to that world, you can dive into the different characters’ tales being almost an observer, a witness of them, which lets the individuality of the characters shine brighter.

Along with that, i notice a very “adventuresque” tone to your various journeys, visible from its setting (the roads) to its gameplay loop. This last one is composed of you trying to manage your money and “health” so you are in good shape through to the end of the journey. This is done through choices you, as the player, gotta make, exploring the game’s systems, in an almost immersive-sim fashion.

This, however, is where there are a couple of misses. I enjoy that feel the game goes for, however, it never opens up in the ways you can interact with it, even though it seems to want to. Such lacking is also noticeable in its story department, which also goes for a similar vibe with choice mechanisms but only, again, superficially. In a similar way to most teltalle games, the choices don’t affect the world around you significantly, which feels like a missed opportunity, since it could be based around its chapters structure, which brings more linearity to its at first seemingly open ended narrative.

Overall, this doesn’t overshadow the game’s strengths, for even though shallow at parts, it felt good to interact with this world during its fairly short length. It delivers on the vibes and the feelsy stuff when it has to, and for that has great aesthetics, soundtrack (omg it is really good), and story, making up for its shortcomes and constituting a pretty intriguing game.

Overall, I had a good time with this game; would recommend to fans of narrative-driven adventure games.

On a technical level, I wish the framerate was more stable in general, and there was one scene (mini-game) that caused significant slow-down for me. I didn't encounter any other bugs.

The music was mostly good, though there were times when they seem out-of-place and in conflict with the tone of the game.

Esse estilo de Walking com narrativa e escolhas não costumam aparecer muito na minha jogatina, mas esse me chamou a atenção desde os primeiros minutos pela premissa da história, com suas escolhas "procedurais" e diversas possibilidades.

A sensação de estar fugindo a qualquer custa, mas enquanto isso ainda influenciar as pessoas que você encontra pelo caminho para mudar o destino de um país autoritário, é algo que me fez refletir muito sobre os pensamentos que tenho em vida. No game a cada capítulo você joga com um protagonista diferente, e dependendo das suas escolhas e do destino ao final, os próximos capítulos do enredo podem ser redirecionados.

Todo personagem que encontrei pelo caminho em cada capítulo me fazia ter vontade de ouvir toda a história dele, cada um possui um carisma incrível, até mesmo os que não são principais. Sem contar situações divertidas e puzzles insituáveis como uma disputa de pênaltis.

Poucas coisas me deixaram chateado com esse game como situações cômodas na narrativa, bugs em decisões importantes me fazendo reiniciar o game e a rasa profundidade na personalidade de cada protagonista. Mas há uma coisa que me incomodou bastante, ainda mais neste estilo de jogo: furo de roteiro. Sem me aprofundar muito, há aquele tipo de situação de vida ou morte e pensando que determinada escolha mudaria completamente o rumo da história (possibilidade comentada pelos personagens mesmos), logo em seguida parece que nada daquilo aconteceu, chegou a ser um pouco frustrante como deixaram de lado.

Mas no final, ainda é um jogo extremamente divertido e carismático para passar uma tarde em casa.

Road 96 is a piturbation that romanticizes third world country problems from a Western perspective. Everything feels like a children's fairy tale when you listen to the worthless stories of caricatured characters who are affected by an order in which people suffer more and more each day, while walking on the roads full of so-called "terrible" country conditions. In order not to stereotype their work even more, an American-like atmosphere was created by avoiding Middle Eastern country aesthetic but it only made it clear that these writers were very foreign to reality. This game is nothing more than a cheaply formulated interactive Netflix project with Hollywood-like action sequences, characters who always act optimistically, an unnecessary traumatized serial killer plot, thieves who were created for comedic relief but emptying the game's entire message and illusions of impactful choice. The intersections of each character's stories feel as disconnected and inappropriate as can be. While there is a revolution down at the gate, an irrelevant family reunion with poorly written dialogue creates a huge disconnect between two situations. It is a really brazen work that fetishizes the suffering of people and hopeless society with many sentences such as "I went through difficult roads but what I went through changed me and this is a good thing.". It's also extra frustrating that game tries to transition into a heart-wrenching experience thanks to the cheap act of revolution in finale, as it reveals that this studio is pontificating in a fantasy world where they thought everything could be solved by riots. I didn't look at who made the game on purpose and when I saw French names in the credits everything fell into place.

Fuck French people

After loving this game due to only the characters, I played this game many times within the span of a month, so I think my opinion is fairly credible.

TLDR: This games heart is in the right place, but it gives you its message in a terrible way.

Road 96 is constantly either shoving its message down your throat, or hiding the message with comedic relief, with no in between (and it is even more jarring when you are playing, since the story is given to you in a random order.) Even if you ignored this, the message it is trying to give you is something most players have probably heard time and time before.

I think if Road 96 decided whether it wanted to be a quirky game with fun characters, or a serious one talking about the issues of this completely made up world, it would be perfect.

This review is really negative, I am hard on the game but I do love it a lot.
(And no, I'm not even going to mention the ending in this review. The ending literally lowered the rating by a full star. It was a mess.)