Harold Halibut is a strange, unique, and also heart-warming experience that unfortunately isn't going to be everyone's flavor. "Game" might even be a strong word for Harold Halibut -- there's very little in the way of mechanical friction for the player; no real puzzles, challenges, or other elements you might expect from an "adventure game". Instead, Harold Halibut presents a quirky cast of characters living aboard a crashed, underwater spaceship-city and invites you to intimately get to know their lives, their routines, their thoughts, fears, and everything in between. If you give this one a shot and aren't intrigued by the world within the first hour, I'll be honest: bounce off it. You're not likely to find much to love here.

That IS Harold Halibut, though. The game revolves entirely around running here and there, helping neighbors and friends by doing jobs or delivering messages, and getting to learn more and more about a quirky cast of characters. Sometimes, that's enjoyable enough. The art direction of the game frankly incredible, the soundtrack is great, the animations and acting are solid and feels like you're watching a real claymation film -- most of the time I was fully engaged. Sometimes it drags, though. The titular Harold, being a quite plain guy, often does plain, boring things; understandable that the player will too, to better understand him and the grievances he comes to express in the story. However, when you're nearing double-digits in play time and still running back-and-forth, back-and-forth to initiate a chat with a character 3 loading screens away, it starts getting old. Not to mention there are multiple instances where the game forcibly takes away your ability to run, or even in one scene towards the end, makes you move in slow motion, which only compounds how slow things feel sometimes.

All-in-all I liked Harold Halibut quite a bit, and even had a melancholy feeling when it ended, having to say goodbye to a cast of characters I felt like I had grown to know personally. It's hard to shake the feeling, however, that there could have been more use of the video game medium here, and a bit less of the running around the game has you do most of the time.

I’m conflicted about this one. There are moments of Final Fantasy XVI that are my favorites of the entire franchise. The sheer scale and spectacle of some of the battles and cinematics in this game are phenomenal and awe-inspiring. The more-mature, higher fantasy plot is pretty good. The combat is also pretty fun and offers enough variation in play to stay fresh more-or-less throughout the game. The soundtrack hits in all the ways it needs to, too.

But man, there are moments in this game where it is an absolute slog. Multiple points you’ll go from a high-octane fight with a massive, deity-like Eikon, to immediately doing simple fetch quests for your sleepy home base. The game’s narrative at one point even goes as far as acknowledging the main character is just running around doing boring chores; like was that not a clue that maybe some of this stuff should have been reconsidered?

The pacing whiplash this creates unfortunately detracted from the overall experience quite a bit, and was by far my biggest gripe with the whole thing. On top of that, I was disappointed by the kind of complete lack of a true party in this game — I honestly can forgive the lack of “RPG elements” (something this game, in fairness, does lack) in a Final Fantasy game, but to me these games have always been about a party of heroes going in an epic quest. This game is first and foremost the Clive show, with a couple key secondary characters who play their parts at certain points.

Ultimately it’s just kind of a bummer. I wanted to love this game, and there are moments where I did, but the moments where I didn’t almost made me drop the game entirely. But hey, I think I liked it more than XV, so it’s the little wins, right?

A fascinating, short, narrative-game that deals with the topic of creative expression and a creator and their audience (or in the case of video games, the player). I feel like I’m still chewing on “the message”, having just completed this one a few moments ago, but the closing question of “what does it mean to create not for external validation” really resonated with me currently as I feel similarly stuck in a place where my own work doesn’t feel like it is for me a lot of the times. Highly recommended for anyone involved in any sort of creative endeavor, especially video game development.