The best way to describe Wandersong's gameplay is that it's like an RPG without battles. The obstacles that the player has to overcome mostly consist of figuring out how to progress, usually by talking to townspeople in order to trigger some sequence of events. Does this mean there's nothing to the gameplay? Pretty much. This isn't a dealbreaker, as there are some dialogue-focused games that I do enjoy, but Wandersong is not one of them. The reason for this is because the dialogue is not good. There's been a recent epidemic of certain indie games all having the same brand of terrible writing- every character speaks like a teenager on the Internet. You know exactly what I'm talking about- lowercase letters, being overly "wholesome," usage of quirky language like "heck." It's all lazy, and it's all in an effort to create artificial charm and likeability that isn't really there. It's bearable in something like A Short Hike because of the gameplay around it, but when there's nothing to distract from it, like in Wandersong, it just gets really, really grating. Couple it with a boring meta-focused plot that wasn't clever the first dozen times it was done and it's almost painful.

Let's focus on the positives now- after all, that's what the game's main character would want. Although the puzzles are extremely easy, the way they're all integrated in with the singing mechanic in different ways is pretty well done. Likewise, certain wacky turns of events, like suddenly being in a non-linear platformer, or being trapped in a Majora's Mask-esque scenario, or sailing through the world map with a band of pirates, are pretty appealing and give you a reason to keep playing in spite of the dialogue. All in all, it should've fully been a rhythm game with some puzzle elements instead of just having occasional rhythm segments that are oddly impossible to fail.