It’s hard to exactly describe if I liked Flower Sun & Rain. By all means one of if not the weirdest game I’ve ever played, it’s one of a few titles that could fall under the auteur label, alongside games like Deadly Premonition, NieR, and Death Stranding, where I’m being delivered some insane person’s brain in the form of a neat little program that fits into a video game console. The hangups are ultimately created by the fact that auteur-driven games could be expected to go largely unchecked, there’s less (if not no) audience-orientated focus-testing, no one in place to institute checks and balances to make FSR a fun game. FSR is art driven by some lunatic to create an experience and that experience is their own.
That means, while playing through FSR, every weird little design quirk feels deliberate. While the slightly odd at times English translation may seem stilted, it almost feels like its purposely disorientating. The agonizingly slow ‘I spent most of the game walking between NPCs that spouted nonsense at me and told me to go somewhere else’ also feels purposely disorientating, as if to lull you into a sense of delirium – to accept the insane shit you’re being dripfed by weirdos.
The puzzles follow that same mindset. Request 15’s Lost and Found report features 3 puzzles, one is to add up 4 numbers, one is a kind of nonsense interpretation of the game’s in-world guidebook (this is a frequent issue), and the other was a number puzzle that was as far as I could figure out, completely impossible to figure out on paper. I ended up having to calc it in Excel. I checked Gamefaqs and they recommended trial and error. That’s a pretty typical case, and so the puzzles also end up feeling disorientating, though maybe less in a purposeful way. Maybe they’re just bad puzzles. I think they’re just bad puzzles.
As a result, in some capacity, FSR feels like a dream. It does not feel real. The main character (Sumio Mondo)’s sole purpose is to get to the airport to confront a terrorist situation but continues to accidentally inject himself into the problems of random NPCs that ultimately do fuck all. As the plot develops, it gets more and more abstract but Mondo ends up being the one semblance of grounded-ness you’re offered. Mondo effectively rejects his situation. He’s going to that airport no fucking matter what. In a conversation with another character they warn of the pending situation and Mondo just says ‘I genuinely do not give a shit anymore’. You could make a point about that being pretty emblematic of a typical player’s experience. FSR wastes your time, but on purpose for some inane, inexplainable reason. By the end, Mondo ultimately seems to accept everything going around him at face value, presumably like the player he’s been conditioned to accept everything because of these fucking agonizing walks from one side of a Micronesian island to the other side of a Micronesian island. It’s a big island!
Now, is it any good? Jury’s still out on it. I’d say not really. Much more fun to think about.
That means, while playing through FSR, every weird little design quirk feels deliberate. While the slightly odd at times English translation may seem stilted, it almost feels like its purposely disorientating. The agonizingly slow ‘I spent most of the game walking between NPCs that spouted nonsense at me and told me to go somewhere else’ also feels purposely disorientating, as if to lull you into a sense of delirium – to accept the insane shit you’re being dripfed by weirdos.
The puzzles follow that same mindset. Request 15’s Lost and Found report features 3 puzzles, one is to add up 4 numbers, one is a kind of nonsense interpretation of the game’s in-world guidebook (this is a frequent issue), and the other was a number puzzle that was as far as I could figure out, completely impossible to figure out on paper. I ended up having to calc it in Excel. I checked Gamefaqs and they recommended trial and error. That’s a pretty typical case, and so the puzzles also end up feeling disorientating, though maybe less in a purposeful way. Maybe they’re just bad puzzles. I think they’re just bad puzzles.
As a result, in some capacity, FSR feels like a dream. It does not feel real. The main character (Sumio Mondo)’s sole purpose is to get to the airport to confront a terrorist situation but continues to accidentally inject himself into the problems of random NPCs that ultimately do fuck all. As the plot develops, it gets more and more abstract but Mondo ends up being the one semblance of grounded-ness you’re offered. Mondo effectively rejects his situation. He’s going to that airport no fucking matter what. In a conversation with another character they warn of the pending situation and Mondo just says ‘I genuinely do not give a shit anymore’. You could make a point about that being pretty emblematic of a typical player’s experience. FSR wastes your time, but on purpose for some inane, inexplainable reason. By the end, Mondo ultimately seems to accept everything going around him at face value, presumably like the player he’s been conditioned to accept everything because of these fucking agonizing walks from one side of a Micronesian island to the other side of a Micronesian island. It’s a big island!
Now, is it any good? Jury’s still out on it. I’d say not really. Much more fun to think about.