I have no idea what I just played.

Equal parts oddly relaxing, confusing, and frustrating, Flower Sun and Rain really tries to confuse the player above all else. Most of the time, it's a funny confusion, but sometimes it flies way over my head.

I have to let this game sink in for a bit before I really understand what it's about. (Time for a music metaphor) It's kind of like atonal music - where they are throwing dissonant, unresolved chords at you all the time, without a real center or tonic, but still you have a sense of things progressing. It is literally maybe one of the only plots I can think of from a videogame that only works because it's confusing, because it's nonsensical. It works exactly because there is no stability - or just enough to make the nonsense appealing. Interesting too that this game references a lot of composers, mostly for the pleasant (but odd) familiarity of some of the remixed classical tunes. Still I see some parallels of the tone of this game and the works of Debussy, Ravel and the like. Using odd, yet dreamy and majestic harmonies. I would describe the tone of FSR as precisely an odd daydream.

Of course, the game itself is like if you melded Professor Layton with an odd (vaguely) Polynesian and Sinatra-age America vibe. The biggest comparison might be to a show like Hawaii 5-O, only much more postmodern and tongue in cheek. Now the puzzles can be bad. In particular, there are some puzzles that assume that you just take something for granted - in the latter of the game in particular, there is a series of puzzles about a radio. You have to look for a "memory radio station". So the guidebook (where you will look to solve most of the puzzles in this game) has a listing of a station where callers request the songs they want to be played - songs they have memories of. It didn't say anything of memories in the description of the station, so (my probably dumb) self couldn't make that leap of logic.

Yeah, the game also has a lot of walking back and forth, lots and lots of it.

Flower, Sun and Rain can be confusing and sometimes poorly designed. It operates purely on a seeming lack of ground, and is held up only by shocking the player at every turn.

Yet, I'll be damned if I didn't like my time with it. I love the DS version in particular, something so interesting about the grainy, DS-rendered graphics that complements the style of this game. While I think the game was a bit too tongue-in-cheek at points, I also was supremely relaxed by it, and found myself laughing a lot. Mondo is a very witty guy.

I loved this game for the time I spent with it, and I'm looking forward to replaying it! There is a loooot of walking though. It brings me to a good point: the way this game flaunts its faults. I've heard the Grasshopper crew wasn't exactly operating on a million dollar budget during this game. Still, bringing attention to the games faults with Fourth Wall breaks didn't exactly make them less obvious - for example "I can guess you have a lot of walking to do this chapter", or "why don't our 3D character models look like our 2D illustrations?". The game easily could have done without these fourth wall breaks, and it really kind of broke the immersion.

Still, I'm impressed at what the developers were able to do with what they had - I feel like this game could've been an interesting art film (in the best way possible). While it was silly most of the time, I had a hint of some serious themes of derealization, the ways people take advantage of each other, and questioning of ones self and identity. SPOILERS: (see the movie "The Truman Show" or "Synecdoche, New York")

Very lovely, and I usually don't play much of Suda 51's projects because the hyperviolence isn't my thing. I loved this one though. Give it a shot if you want something equally mind-destroying and relaxing.