Ambitious and ultimately flawed, but I still enjoyed playing Contact.

It's certainly one of the most engaging meta-narrative games I've played since IMSCARED, but it also doesn't quite feel like it achieves everything it wants to do with its bridging the gap between Terry, the Professor, and you/me. Very brave and even thought-provoking, but perhaps just a biiiiit surface level?

The gameplay is easily the most divisive part of the game and for good reason. In some aspects, it feels undercooked. A lot of it is tedious and unengaging by design; it doesn't make for a good-feeling game, but it at least has a reason being the way it is. Experience being divided up into over a dozen stats that level up on gameplay context is very cool, but level grinding is very slow and monotonous due in part to large XP gates and the passive combat.

Still, the charm of games like moon and Chulip do exist in Contact, albeit in a less overt way in favor of playing more like a typical RPG. Dialogue is cute, character designs and art style(s) are mostly pleasing to look at, and the environments are genuinely very well-composed for the DS.

I dunno, I think this is just a good, solid game, and I deeply appreciate its ambition. The ending even tugged at my heart just a bit.