I've been thinking of the LIS games more in terms of the locations than the characters. Obviously the characters are the focus and are almost universally compelling but the towns they exist in are the critical backdrop that make them pop. Max and Chloe need Arcadia Bay for their story to work. Sean and Daniel are sculpted by every place they pass through on their journey.

Haven Springs doesn't exist. Yeah, I've seen photos of the place it's based on, it's kinda similar, but visual similarity only goes so far. It's a town "where everyone knows your name" to such an extreme that it has a dedicated social media app. Leisure activities include city-wide LARPs and going to the record store. It's a fantasy, I suspect a particularly generational fantasy, and it's taken for granted that you will love this place, because you, dear Life is Strange player, fall over for mountain aesthetics and alternative music, we know this. And, look, they're right. I'm not immune. I want to live here.

Also taken for granted: Typhon's motivations. We understand they are evil with little more setup than the words "corporation" and "mining." I finished episode 5 still trying to puzzle out if the grand conspiracy was actually worthwhile to any party involved, and at that point the game had long left me behind.

Those complaints aside, what kept me invested was the same thing that's kept me invested for the other 3 or 4 games. I liked spending time with Alex. And Duckie. And Steph and Ryan and the ice cream shop owners and that guy who lost his cat. Disappointing as the plot may be, the crew that guides you through it almost make it work. If anything I'm bummed we didn't get more time with the supporting cast. (The game runs short compared to the previous entries.) Charlotte seems like she has a lot going on, should I do another playthrough and see what happens if I choose other options for her?

I probably won't, because I'm too satisfied with the route and ending I got. I thought a lot of the decisions were fairly obvious, but the end-of-chapter stats screens tell me the masses were surprisingly split.

Part of me is worried what I'm actually describing is growing up. The other part of me is booking a flight to Colorado.

Backloggd ate my review so I'll try to reconstruct it.

Like Homestar Runner? Great, play this. I'm never too enthused by how much they go back to Dangeresque especially in the post-regular-update era but I will devour any morsels the Chaps deign to throw at us.

The game consists mostly of Strong Bad looking at things and making quips. They're fine. It's the vocal performance that brings out that old H*R magic. Coach Z managed to make me bust out laughing delivering the line "What is it?" He put all the emphasis on the last word—"What is IT?"—and turned a line with zero narrative or mechanical value into a joke. That's the stuff.

Puzzles are straightforward and rarely puzzley. You'll spend way more time talking to pieces of paper than thinking about what to do with them. Even the score counter seems to be primarily measuring amount of dialogue found. I'm not sure I has what it takes to get 100%. I will though. Who knows when I'll see these dumb animal characters again.

Still trying to figure out if I like JRPGs and I've retreated back to the 80s. I enjoyed this a lot more than expected! It's impressive something that felt this big and grand could exist on the NES.

Definitely wouldn't have made it without some enhancements from this remaster though. I toggled encounters off from time to time, mainly when I was deep into a dungeon and wanted to retreat to restock my inventory. I'm glad they give the option to do that and trust that you'll play the game the way you most enjoy.

But I mostly left encounters on and just clicked through them, which I think made me overleveled a little? That's fine. To someone like me who's mostly here for the story, it's more fun to steamroll through encounters than get stuck. The final boss gave me a scare when I thought I might have to try strategy, but the DPS won out in the end.

I'm excited to explore the rest of this series. Which is good, because I've already bought all 6.

Life Is Strange Lite. A lot of the things that resonated with me (the house, the storybook, etc.) felt like 80% realized at most. It'd be too easy to say that's just because it's only 3 episodes instead of 5.

I love the core premise that all the major choices are choices between two conflicting memories. Memories are not as reliable as we like to believe. Sometimes, intentionally or not, you end up choosing whatever feels real to you. Now, I ended up with a story arc that muddies a key part of Tyler's narrative vis-a-vis his gender identity in a way that I thought was... iffy, to say the least. It's the natural conclusion when putting all those puzzle pieces together, but maybe this is a case where the most obvious connections aren't the correct ones.

The environments are gorgeous and I savored what little we saw of Delos Crossing. Should I move to Alaska? No. No way. Should I visit Alaska? Probably.

The care with which it handles the trans representation (He's actually played by a trans man! Yes!!) makes me much more forgiving of its shortcomings, I think. Again, it's a case of enjoying it but never getting a deep enough sense to leave a strong impression. When Alyson or Tyler aren't on screen, they stop existing. With Life Is Strange 2 I feel like Sean or Daniel could still be out there somewhere. That doesn't make sense, but I could easily choose to believe it.

You know how kids are gross? Not like, playing with dirt and bugs gross, just an inherent background grossness. You share your game controller for 5 minutes and they hand it back sticky, why is it sticky, do your hands secrete slime?

Daniel looks gross. Visually, I can tell he'll make my controller sticky. He's so real. It's an awesome accomplishment of animation and writing.

Daniel has psychic powers which go unexplained (it's a metaphor!). He has to learn how and when to use them. You... are not Daniel. You're his older brother. You can't control Daniel, only influence him through your words and actions. It's terrifying. I don't have children so maybe this is naive, but I feel like I've gotten a taste of how scary it is to realize someone you've raised their whole life is indeed a person independent from you. Making Daniel a separate entity is a brilliant choice that makes story branches natural and meaningful. Gone is the "choose your ending" ending of LIS1.

The story is about anger, and sometimes you can feel that anger directing the story instead of the other way around. The animation I praised earlier also starts to look more budget as the game goes on. Apparently there were lengthy delays between episodes when it was coming out, but that was the only seam I could spot. As a single package I loved this, and I want to replay it with different choices as soon as possible.

It's unfair even to say "It's unfair to compare this to LIS1." It is, deliberately, the exact opposite of that game. I appreciate that.

There's one interesting moment in here, early on: Taylor, stranded on an alien planet and presumably wearing a spacesuit with "I'm Fluent In Sarcasm" written on the front, asks you whether it's safe to stay in the mildly radioactive ship overnight. How do you know if it is? Well, you google it, of course. You're asked to do that fairly directly, and you get some good results about what dosages are lethal to humans before the results turn into walkthroughs for this game.

All of the most interesting moments are early on. The game gives the impression of being written entirely in order. Any tough decisions are near the beginning. The middle turns the choices into "Progress" and "Not Progress." By the end your only options are different ways of saying "What's happening?"

This is apparently a lengthy series and I genuinely can't tell if it has a really dedicated fandom or if the devs wrote their own fan wiki. Either way, I won't be continuing. I cannot overstate how much I disliked Taylor. Started intentionally leading them to danger very quickly and had to consult a walkthrough to get the good ending.

I do feel a little bad about this. When I decided I Like RPGs Now the other month I dove into this one with the mindset that I'm going to see the story through and not give up when it gets tricky, and here I am doing that.

The battles are fun, or at least they were 30 hours ago. I kind of dread them now but that's probably me getting impatient with the game. The BP and weakness system create good strategies without getting overwhelming. Thing is, I ended up building a party that relies heavily on multi-target elemental attacks to whittle down the enemy defense, and I just ran into a boss whose ability is disabling those specifically.

Not a huge deal, all I have to do is change my party and grind the weaker guys up while figuring out a new angle of attack. Except... in 40+ hours, this game has not managed to make me care about any of these characters. The story is bad. No, worse: the stories are bad. All 8 of them, equally insipid.

I could do the grinding, or I could stop playing.

Oh well. I was only playing this because I heard such good things about the sequel. I established my baseline. Mission accomplished, moving on.

It didn't completely win me over on this replay, but I was definitely unfair to it on release because of the voice cast. I still think the acting is generally subpar but that's not because of the different actors.

Fairly well written and tackles interesting themes without feeling like it's stepping out of bounds. The limiting factor is the fact that it is a prequel. I don't think those themes totally hit in the Chloe/William story, for instance, and it ends on a grotesque post-credits scene that only serves to remind you of what lies ahead for these characters. That cheapened the effect for me.

Up until there, though, this really connected with me. I think I prefer the fire to LIS1's storm in terms of obviously symbolic natural disasters. Chloe and Rachel's relationship isn't one of those "better left to the imagination" things. Overly tidy as it is, this is palatable filler.