After I finished 'Night In The Woods' my reaction was "Oh that's it?". I thought maybe I'd played the game wrong somehow, how could this be so widely praised? I didn't get it at all and I still don't. That doesn't mean this game doesn't have its high points though and I would like to highlight them. (Spoilers past this)

Starting with the pros I found the setting of possum springs fascinating. An old rust belt town that has fallen from its former glory with a long history of capitalistic greed and tragedy. The writing is charming as well and I found myself laughing at a lot of the dry humour, paired with a lot of the decently written characters made the interactions something to look forward to (at least most of the time). Finally, the soundtrack is great and fits the unique look and style of the game. Alec Holowka (R.I.P) made a soundtrack that is so vast and memorable that it follows you after the experience. I'll probably go back through and listen to a lot of the songs. I also loved the change in tone in the latter half of the story. Seeing all your friends trying to stay distracted in light of the uncertainty of their friend's condition and what they witnessed really makes the weight of the situation felt.

Sadly through my playthrough, I found the bad outweighed the good in many instances, starting with the main character. Mae is a flawed character and that's part of the story, she suffers heavily from dissociation, is continuously childish despite how she wants to be seen as an adult and lashes out at people a fair few times throughout the story. These characteristics aren't inherently bad and if written into the story correctly can be an interesting character study, but this isn't the case, I chose to hang out with Bae more through my story and I'm her route we see Mae continuously wrong her with once instance at the college party coming to mind. Not only that but after these events Mae faces next to no consequences and is just forgiven a lot of the time for these wrongs. I don't think that forgiving is wrong but for things to pretty much go on as normal after to me is daft, there are no lasting effects to what Mae does. One of the common praises I see is that the characters come off as human yet when these events happen I'm suddenly dragged out of the experience. Not only that but in the end Mae doesn't change, and maybe that's the point, but for me, it was really unsatisfying to see that after all that happened in this game and the hours I sunk in I find myself saying "Well what was the point of that". Adding to this frustration is the gameplay and slow story. I don't mind long games with simple gameplay in fact some of my favourite games are pretty much walking simulators, but the amount of time it takes to walk around Possum Springs, checking every place to see if anyone around different areas was mind-numbing to me, paired with the snails pace of the story made it so it seemed like next to nothing was happening and really impacted my experience with the game.

In conclusion, I don't think I got Night In The Woods. Leaving this game I have a lot of scenes and events I found cool and memorable but after finishing it I felt mostly relief, which is a shame. I'll probably come back to this game after a while and hopefully, then something will click but for now, I'm left mostly confused and disappointed.