I went back and forth on this rating. Between watching a friend play it and falling in love with the story to binging most of the cutscenes all before ever playing it, I was elated to have a chance to give it a try myself. And overall, I still feel that way. The characters are fun, the world is interesting, and while the writing shows its age in a few ways — the use of the g slur, the way Raz forces himself into a few nonconsenting minds, etc. — it remains, overall, a humorous but never mocking or unkind look at mental illness.

And despite how old it is, the style's aged really well! Black Velvetopia stands out especially; it's insanely gorgeous and fun to play though, and even when I was lost, I didn't mind because I had so much to see.

That being said, the gameplay can be...rough. Some of it's just a matter of its age; the quality of life issues, such as respawning at the beginning of a level if you run out of lives, were completely average for a game of the time but feel weirdly punishing now. Worse is that the game's difficulty tends to come less from challenging platforming or game design and more from weird physics. Raz is insanely floaty in a way that's difficult to get used to at the best of times. I can handle difficult games or moments if it feels like the game is difficult on purpose and I can improve and overcome; when it feels like a section is hard because the design is bad or the physics are wonky, that's more frustrating. I felt like most of the difficulty came from the latter than the former.

The final level is hard in a way that has much more to do with the design than anything bad, which sounds like a good thing, and it is. (There remain a few moments that feel petty and punishing, but overall the difficulty feels much more intentional.) The problem is the spike in intentional difficulty between the rest of the game and the end feels very sharp, and I didn't feel adequately prepared for the level by what preceded it.

That all being said, so much of this game shines. It took me a long time to get used to the Psi Powers system, and my muscle memory from one power setup would trip me up when I switched. But when I did get a hold of it and got to the point where I could easily think through what powers would serve be best in the moment, it was really fun getting to switch it up and try new things for different fights. The characters are a delight, and not just main ones like Raz, Lili, Milla, etc; every minor character feels fully fleshed out and whole and fun. The character design is delightfully weird. The story of a young boy who believes his father hates him because of his father's thoughtless words and cruel actions, and a father realizing that his attempts at "protecting" his son have done so much harm is really lovely, and without bogging the comedy of the game down with heavy-handed moralizing. I'm not the first person to say this, but with the "psychics are an allegory for LGBT people" reading feels so unbelievably good here; fleeing your unaccepting family and building a family of your own, of people like you, and with the skills you learned from your found family having the strength to face the one that hurt you — and the means to, finally, connect with them, too.

This is all to say: the story, the characters, the level design and aesthetics, the art direction — it's all gorgeous. Near-perfect, even. But the gameplay itself felt punishing-on-accident which prevented it from being nearly as fun as it should have been. If I was just rating the story, 4.5 stars, easily, and the .5 only lost because of some of the mental-health jokes that have aged poorly. But something has to give to accomodate how often I was left wanting to snap my controller in half because of a physics mishap. It speaks to how strong this game is that even with that the score is still so high.

I'm so excited to play the second on eventually; I've read that they've fixed a lot of what made this one play a little weird, and I can't wait to get this level of story without the gameplay issues.