people will tell you that the worst part of flower, sun, and rain is all the damn walking. the running back and forth, the constant little tasks, the characters who exist just to annoy you.

hell no it isn't. that's the good part. all those stupid characters who just make you do things for them? the huge island you just have to get through by foot? the nonsense puzzles you need to look through a big book to solve?

that's CHARM, buddy.

no, the worst part of flower, sun, and rain is when it tries to connect back to the silver case, a game that only made about 60% sense at any given time but made up for it with an incredibly slick presentation and writing style with an eye to the future in terms of Oh So Many Things. none of it works or provides anything meaningful, and most of it is half of an idea with a big "maybe play the next game to find out more..?" vibe all over the place.

the dialogue here can still be funny, witty, or evoke strong lasting imagery in your mind, but anything regarding the Strict Plot is just really not worth it. look up any explanation of it and you'll see people throw in "apparently" and "somehow" all over the place. and this really isn't a game where you can just say "ignore the plot entirely"-it's there, and the latter third of the game is dedicated to it.. but it is not good.

but that's not why you came to this island, right? it's a vacation, relax a bit.. talk to the people you meet on the way. don't focus so much on what'll happen tomorrow when there's still so much left of today!

Reviewed on May 07, 2023


3 Comments


10 months ago

i like the silver case and i even explicitly played this game for the connections but in retrospect i completely agree because i think that almost ruined the game for me. i got almost nothing out of it because i kept trying to figure out how it "fit" into everything...

10 months ago

yeah it's just a huge mess. there's a little bit of a cool factor in seeing certain characters again but making sense of why they'd be there or what they're doing or who they even are post-silver case is just.. it does not work.

2 months ago

as a note i've now played "the 25th ward" and i found it to be the worst in the series overall, which really exacerbates the issues i mentioned above.