Fragile Dreams tends to get mislabelled as a survival horror game, which is one of the many reasons detractors tend to score it so low. Yet, while it does have elements of the genre, it was clearly designed to be a lot more than that. At first glance, it has awkward controls and clunky combat, but part of me feels this was done intentionally to drive the player to focus more on exploration and engagement with the environment. It's a visually gorgeous game, set in a hauntingly beautiful post-apocalyptic Japan akin to Nier: Automata, where nature has overgrown throughout most urban environments. You navigate this world, filled with terrifying spirits pulled straight out of Japanese mythology, though those encounters are few and far between.

Throughout your journey, you are accompanied by a variety of companions along the way, and the handful of NPCs you interact with all bring something interesting to the table. But the game's real heart shines through the memory items you find, narrating the tales of various survivors and their experiences throughout the cataclysm that wiped out most of the human race. Some tell individual stories, while others are spread across several items. These, along with the game's main plot and character interactions, are what makes Fragile Dreams such a fantastic title; it's not just an interactive experience, but a very emotional one as well.

I always have trouble trying to sell this title to people because it's very hard to put into words how deeply it touched me. I really wish we had more games like this out there, and I'm very thankful I got to experience it.