Radiant Historia starts extremely strong, with a puzzle-box-esque structure to the time travel that sets itself apart from Chrono Trigger despite all the noise to the contrary, and a combat system that has so much going on it made me feel like a genius once I learned to capitalize on all of the mechanics. However, by about the halfway point the cracks began to show. The story refuses to reveal many of its biggest mysterious until it's foreshadowed them on such a large variety of occasions there is no impact when they land. Likewise, the combat system lost its charm for me as things didn't develop into interesting directions, particularly highlighted by having a really bad XP curve and questionable skillsets that makes using anything other than a couple of party members kind of pointless. The added narrative content of the Perfect Chronology version also undermines what did work about the story the base game was trying to tell, particularly the ending of the base game which is so bold that undercutting it feels like it should be a crime. I still liked this game quite a bit, but the problem areas grated me enough that I couldn't love it wholeheartedly the way I wanted to from the opening hours.

Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 is a life affirming work of art. I went into this one well aware of its structure, that it took place across the month of August, and during that time you could relax and enjoy the small town you were placed into in whatever way you wanted. Due to this structure and my on-going journey of practicing mindfulness with respect to video games, I only allowed myself to play a maximum of 3 in game days per 1 actual day, and with the extra stipulation that I had to concentrate solely on the game. This may sound a bit silly, though as someone who pretty much always watches YouTube on a second monitor, or listens to podcasts while playing video games, this represented a very intentional exercise for me in order to appreciate what I was engaging with, and maybe fix my fucked up attention span in some way. From everything I knew, this was a game particularly well suited to this task as well, because I really wanted to soak up every little drop of the atmosphere and dialog that I could.

In the end I think this approach to playing Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 was extremely successful for me. I hung out on each screen, taking it all in. I turned over the character interactions, both slight and large, in my head during the forced gap between play sessions, allowing myself to develop a real sense of knowing these people on an intimate level. What would Uncle Genta be doing tomorrow? Would he still be struggling with the loss of his old profession, or did he have a revelation that lead him down a different path? Due to the nature of my play sessions and the nature of the ongoing lives of the cast, I sometimes wouldn't see someone in game for several real life days at a time, causing myself to legitimately miss them and wonder what they're getting up to. These small somber moments of longing to see them again couldn't have prepared me for the great sadness and emptiness brought about by the sudden ending, which drilled home just how much I cared each and every one of them, and the fact that I'd likely never see them again.

That is to say, at least not without spinning up another save file, which just feels wrong to me. No one should ever get to know every facet of every person in their lives, there's a certain beauty in knowing that you can't possibly know everyone's experience holistically. People fade in and out of our lives, only appearing briefly to give an update on themselves from their own perception. This game represents a series of those brief encounters, wrapped up in an experience that is brief in and of itself, even when I intentionally stretch it out over a longer period of time, as though trying to get the most out of my own similarly brief windows in time. There is no going back to summer vacation, there is no going back to 1975, there is no going back to Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 for me, and I've made my peace with that.