Pretty cool, mostly into just the neat physics puzzles, fun vehicle stuff, and good open-world design, but nearly everything else (including combat, writing, art direction, art quality, animation quality, UI/UX quality, traversal mechanics, mounts, and crafting mechanics) is less refined and less engaging than other major modern action-adventure games. A far from flawless game, I still deeply dislike the terrible menu systems, tedious cooking mechanics, and combat controls from the year 1999 where your character doesn't even move when they attack. Why are apples and mushrooms in the "fuse items to arrows" menu? It's not actually funny enough to justify getting in the way of good combat.

I can't imagine I'll care enough about the game to write a full review when I'm done (whether that's from getting burned out on traipsing around or actually forcing myself to do the critical path to completion). I am not saying it's a bad game, it just doesn't land much for me, and the overwhelmingly positive response to something that still feels this clunky and dated honestly feels weird at this point (I know it's actually because of the safe and universally appealing simple design sentiments that risk so little that the game alienates no one). This is hardly better than any other major AAA action-adventure game, merely equally good at best (and everything is really clinging by a strand of glue to the physics-building mechanics to keep up).

Sorry to the dev, they are a VERY brilliant level designer, but I can't in good conscience "recommend" this game because it's just not going to be accessible to the vast majority of players, even people who love and play a lot of platformers or even first-person platformers. There is a small audience of players who either: 1. are good enough to not make mistakes consistently, 2. have the patience to replay content dozens and dozens of times when they do make small mistakes.

This is the first time I've tried a game like this knowing it would probably try my patience too much, and I did really enjoy the time I spent with it, but it's disheartening to me to feel like I'd be another 15+ hours of replaying the same content to get to the end because I don't have the ability to not make small mistakes in games (I'm 32, I know what my hands are capable of, they make little slip-ups once per 10-15 minutes, it's just how things go).

I got to ~290m after 13 hours of playing, and I'm just tired of replaying some sections of this game too much to consider continuing. My friends who are still playing are at 300-350m and regularly falling back down to 150m, requiring hours of replay just to get to the last failed jump. That's by design, obviously, but I don't think very many people will have the patience to get to the top if it takes 15+ hours of mostly replaying previous content to do so.

Great game feel, great camera setup, and, as stated above, absolutely brilliant level design. Looking for shortcuts is pretty fun, many sections I've replayed a dozen times I absolutely loved for some amount of time, but emotionally the negative feeling of falling to 100m-150m has grown to the point of completely ruining any enjoyment of playing the game.

Would love to play something similar from the developer that has a different approach to losing progress or gives more difficulty options or control to the player, their level design sensibilities are immensely good.

Level Design: 9/10
Locomotion Design: 8/10
Accessibility: 1/10

[EDIT 2 - Updated for proper context after initial writing, along with some details on how people who do like it have treated me. These occasions are so deeply indicative of why I often avoid talking to random strangers about subjective experiences of media, and why I'm seeking out healthier communities where complex disagreements can happen without conversations devolving into childlike behavior. A "negative review" I'll leave on this profile as an indicator of my values (both in games and in socialization), I'm not saying this game is BAD, I'm explaining why this game does not appeal to me and many others like me.]

So for context, I played this for 20ish hours for the Action Button Discord game club. I spent a good amount of time on the server, there were some dope people, but, uh, stay away? It's a very toxic place. All you gotta know is the mods encourage bullying and have a thread dedicated to letting a clique of their favored users bully anyone they want on the server behind their backs (obviously myself included). If you ever visit and notice it feels weirdly hostile all the time, this is why, the clique at the heart of the server actively fosters an immensely hostile attitude because they think it makes them cool or something. I won't post the screenshots of the things they say there, it doesn't even merit attention, it's just a generic bad online community.

Anyways, I said "I have played several and I don't like any JRPGs, they're not for me," knowing JRPGs are quite popular on the server. In reaction to me (and many other users who felt the same), a LARGE number of users aimed to convince people who don't like JRPGs that they should play THIS GAME specifically. In retrospect, this was stated with ZERO context as to WHY -- no analysis of tone, gameplay, structure, themes, or formal qualities. Simply bold assertions that "people who don't like this ENTIRE GENRE should obviously play this because it's amazing." Also, some of them dumped on all other JRPGs while making this recommendation? Which was... Interesting. Among my friends, it's pretty normal to provide more context because we understand that, you know, we don't all like the same kinds of things?

What followed was me trying a game I knew was NOT FOR ME, yet I really wanted to go into with a good faith effort to understand why people felt SO strongly that they'd try to convince people who DON'T LIKE THIS KIND OF GAME to play it anyways. I also wanted to be part of a community and see how it went, obviously! Maybe I'd be wrong. I told my roommates and friends, "Well, I guess I'm trying this thing I know isn't for me because I want to at least try to understand why people might love it so much."

But after 20 hours, I had too many other games to play, and I started to get into making video essays, which didn't leave me with time to do things I wasn't exceptionally loving. Ultimately, I wrote all of this as lesson for myself and others regarding the immense lack of understanding people can have about why other people enjoy and love any given aesthetic experience and why some people DON'T. The reasons I didn't like this game were strong and multitude, and after being treated beligerently for months in a community I realized in retrospect was quite toxic, I really didn't feel like tossing them in the trash rather than laying them out at least for myself.

When it comes to JRPGs, I have fond memories of FFIX as a child, and then I played some subsequent FF games, I've tried many turn-based games and RPGs, but I don't think I've finished a single one. The only JRPG I've liked AS A GAME is FFXII because it let me script my party members and feel smart without the thing I hate most about the genre. I find turn-based combat without a grid to be interminably boring, I just cannot ever get into it (and with a grid, I think it's cool, but I also kinda suck at it or eventually find it too repetitive, so I still don't finish those either). I've now tried TWO of the "great contemporary JRPGs," DQ11 and Persona 5, and they're both still VERY boring to me, though for different reasons.

As for the combat of DQ11, I immediately turned on auto-battle and cranked the gameplay speed up to max. I tried taking control a couple of times, but every time it felt pointless, there were no decisions I made that weren't obvious, nor any decisions I saw the AI make that weren't the same as I would make. It took 20 hours for me to see a battle where the AI made a couple of odd decisions, only to learn that it was programmed to understand future moves the enemies would make so it could choose the right moments to heal. After 20 hours, I reached a point where when combat started, I would sometimes put my Steam Deck down and watch TV and just wait for the battle to end to pick it back up. The game plays itself flawlessly, the choices I made out of combat (gear, skills) also felt completely inconsequential, and I considered this all a boon because I would've quit trying to see what the game was about sooner if it was any other way. Some seemed to enjoy taking control, others thought it was a better JRPG because it played itself? Either way, this showed me that in gameplay, I'm fundamentally disconnected from the people who like such an experience.

The only credit I could give to the combat with MY values is the monster designs. For me, they're 3x better (more charming, more aesthetically appealing) than Pokemon, and I honestly wanted to befriend or capture them more than kill them. I actually found butchering them in the hundreds to honestly just be a bit tonally dissonant and bizarre. Why would I want to kill things that are cute and charming?

Exploration was fine, the levels are simple and easy to explore. There are some creative moments I found in exploring towns specifically, I would expect those to evolve further over the course of the very long game. But I found most of my engagements with the world to be relatively shallow and like anything I've ever experienced in a 3d game. It didn't do enough to awaken or even tickle the exploration addict in me, especially as the primary reward mechanism was tiny chests and smashing every single pot in the world (which, I get it, that's how these games have always been, but...I didn't like it then any more than I like it now). I don't assume anyone who loves the game would put level design at the top of the pillars of their conception of its greatness.

So how about the story? Kind of...the main appeal of RPGs? Welp, in this case, I felt more detached from the core audience here than I've felt from any game in a long time.

I got 60 hours into P5 because it has a mature and compelling story that focuses on adult and human problems, has generally relatable stakes, distinct and clear themes, a deep and IMMEDIATE focus on character relationships and character progression, etc. All the reasons people say it's amazing. I may even finish it one day!

DQ11 by contrast is best described as a children's storybook, and I cannot say that with the fond and loving tone that people who love the game do. Within 20 hours, not a single emotionally impactful moment happened. When the protagonist witnessed the burning remains of the town he grew up in, he stared at the wreckage dead-eyed and eternally silent, his companion made a blithe remark, and then I looted the wreckage of his childhood home for pots to break (full of worthless items). Whatever depth one might claim to occur in this game's first 20 hours could easily be argued not to be occurring in the text itself, any "deep" take I can imagine would just be interpretation weakly supported by the dialog or events of the story. Most I've seen who love the story evangelize its simplicity, I don't think I even saw a positive remark about these story beats (all the remarks I saw regarded how charming people found the companions and NPCs). Extreme storybook simplicity appears to be the explicit INTENT of the story.

But... Personally, I haven't read children's storybooks of this nature since I was 8 years old. I can't even really remember liking them, to be honest, even as a small child, I feel like they just HAPPENED to me. I didn't start enjoying or caring about stories and reading until my friend's mom read us the first couple of Harry Potter books, and then my brain EXPLODED with an OBSESSION for reading, sending me spiraling into Enders Game, which then sent me into that entire series, quickly picking up more adult fantasy/sci-fi fiction alongside YA fiction. By the end of high school, I didn't even read YA much any longer.

And that may come across like I'm trying to "I am very smart" about reading. But no, I'm 32 as of writing this, I really don't care what someone thinks of my (admittedly not even very good) reading history. I'm just clarifying what I enjoyed as a child and why that led to who I am as an adult. I wasn't 12 years old saying "Wow, I'm too smart for baby books," I just read what was on my mom's bookshelf. The "criticism" levied at me by uncharitable people who are bad at talking like adults was: "You should just get over yourself, it's really just a skill issue that you can't enjoy such delightful bedtime story vibes." Of course, that response is massively more insulting than anything I'm saying here about what I enjoy and value personally -- but I've come to discover many people who pretend like subjectivity is the highest moral good are also often the rudest and most insulting towards anyone who has a even slightly differing opinion to them and actually bothers explaining it with formal language. Oh well!

So... While I was fascinated to see a Discord server full of adults -- some I know in their 30s like myself, many of whom I know love esoteric cinema, presumably complex adult media, literature, philosophy, etc -- get incredible joy and comfort and warm feelings from the video game version of an epic-length children's storybook, I can't fundamentally empathize with what they feel. It's not a frame of mind I can EXPERIENCE, let alone enjoy. I tried my best to "get it" from their perspective, that's why I tried the game in the first place. I don't look down on anyone who can enjoy this, I can actually admit that seeing what other people could enjoy here opened my eyes to aspects of game interests I never really bothered engaging with and trying to understand, and I'm glad I tried. Still, ultimately the experience clarified the CANYONS of value differences between me and the demographic of this game.

In the 20 hours I played, I spent 99% of the time bored, frustrated, and confused, challenging the dialog, challenging the plot beats, challenging the world-building, and showing my roommates in bafflement to see if they felt similar to me. I think fans would say I shouldn't even TRY to analyze the plot, themes, or character writing in an analytical way, or "do so in a way that meets the product at its level," but that level is very explicitly... That of a child. I don't want to be in the frame of mind of a child. Frankly, I've almost NEVER wanted to be in the frame of mind of a child, even a lot of the time when I was a child!

The best the game may have done for me is to be funny, and it even didn't accomplish that to my taste. I consume tons of comedy from across the globe, and the humor here (such as a scripted event where you walk a dog up to a guard to make the guard who is scared of dogs run away, that's it, that's the whole joke) just made me feel like I was witnessing something made for a primary audience of 8-year-olds. I understand some people get something out of warm and simple comedy that exists more as a tonal effort than as an effort toward "clever comedy," but that just doesn't register for me as anything beyond "huh, this is for kids I guess?" Sometimes a work of media needs a BIT of comedy like that to get the engine going, but I can't enjoy it as the primary substance. (I have a sneaking suspicion that some adults who love this game because those elements are delivered with a JRPG would never touch a book or TV show or movie that has exactly the same tone or substance.)

The structure and feel of the towns were quite neat, but it didn't entice me the way similar areas in something like FFIX do. Something about the aesthetic here feels... Basic? Washed over with the storybook aesthetic and very little of substance or nuance beyond simple signals and symbols -- this is the city where we have a horse race, this is the city where we have a fighting tournament, this is the city where people speak in haikus. Again, I have this suspicion that maybe the story gets more profound or more serious dozens of hours in? (Spoiler: There is some huge twist in Act 2.) I don't know, but the world so far felt like it had less depth or maturity than even "Avatar: The Last Airbender," something still a bit too childish for me personally, which I know is a more controversial take than all this. (Note: Two of my favorite media products in existence are "Steven Universe" and "Adventure Time," and I've also recently rewatched early "Spong Bob" to confirm that it's a work of comedic genius, so I am not at all principally against children's media universally -- in those cases I specifically like them because the writing and comedy do not infantilize the audience. "Appealing to children" is not a negative quality, but to me "appealing PRIMARILY to children" doesn't leave me as a member of the audience -- escapism into a comforting frame of mind is not of value to me, I seek comfort in many other places.)

Some folks who like this game in that server had obvious acerbic, sarcastic, and/or dismissive responses to anything I've written here. Since writing the unedited version of this review, I've been thoroughly insulted by multiple adults for not liking this video game explicitly designed for <10-year-olds as the primary audience (they actually ended up so hung up on this review that they were complaining about it weeks later). I didn't bother expressing any of my opinions in their discussion thread until after abandoning it (to explore how receptive the community would even be to a differing opinion) because the thread was basically nothing but adoration and I knew I'd just be hit with an attitude of "you're not the audience, soft sweet cartoon games should not be analyzed the way your brain thinks, get out."

Regardless, I've done my best to filter my opinions about this game to be as charitable as I can while still being true to how I feel based on my own values, and to clarify the enormous canyons that can exist between value systems -- the lesson being that you probably know what you like better than any pushy stranger on the internet who can't properly filter their opinions into something useful for anyone who doesn't already feel the same way that they do. (Well, actually the REAL lesson is that if you find yourself in a community that's full of impolite conversations, constant sarcasm, a tone of endless insincere insulting irony from people who really should have aged out of that already, and passive-aggressive bullying, a lot of which is not only perpetuated by the mods but actively supported by them -- uh, maybe you should just leave and not try to figure out how to fit in! It turns out there are definitely communities where NONE of this happens.)

The closest I can get to empathizing with people who like this game is a realization after trying it out. If FFIX were remade, I would want it in exactly the same format as this. I love that world -- its stories, characters, dialog, aesthetic, coziness, complexity, and simplicity -- in the closest way I can get to the way other people love this one. I haven't been able to make myself replay it because I cannot tolerate experiencing that kind of JRPG combat, and so I'd love to get to "play" FFIX as a narrative adventure with combat that manages itself. DQ11 and FFIX share MANY of the same aesthetic principles, but FFIX has a stronger appeal to writing sentiments I care for, including a much more IMMEDIATELY deeper approach to character writing, dialog, and emotional adult storytelling that is requisite for me to begin to enjoy any work of writing of this kind.

It's fine. People clamoring for this to be "best indie of 2022" are a little off their rockers, IMO. This is like 50% of the way to what I would think the best version of this concept could be. It's very haphazard, clearly largely slapped together. A game that does everything this game is doing and adds visual polish, mechanical polish, more depth and a little bit more player agency in choices would really be remarkable enough to impress me. The first few hours are also not good at all, it takes a little too long to get to the "actual pop-off" moment, and then past that moment very little changes beyond just sort of squeezing more particle FX varieties out.

It was very satisfying as a way to give me the bare minimum of interaction to enjoy something while listening to video essays for like 30 hours, so a solid B on that front.

The short verdict is that Pentiment is an amazing narrative adventure game, second only to Disco Elysium with the goal of telling a coherent interactive story with clear themes that seamlessly braid into a compelling plot delivered through a lot of really interesting choices and consequences. Some people will surely write really long and engaging essays about the themes and substance and delivery of this game, but, honestly, it's so dense that I don't feel like I can really scratch the surface of that kind of analysis without playing it multiple times and treating it like a college essay, so I'll instead just lightly cover why I enjoyed it as much as I did across the important elements of narrative gameplay.

STORY / PLOT - 8/10
The game's plot is a series of interconnected mysteries spanning three separate time periods. The plot isn't riveting in the sense of a dramatic thriller, but that's because the focus of the game ends up being the characters and the larger narrative of the town. The mystery is used as a structural skeleton to weave together the stories of the townsfolk and those living in the church on the hill above them. The game is, by volume, actually more "slice of life" than it is "murder mystery", as even talking to townsfolks about the mystery or recent dramatic events often takes place during literal meals that you share with them.

Given that premise, the plot is serviceable and keeps the ball rolling. It's not going to blow your mind, and at times it might even feel a bit frustrating because not everything delivers a clear or direct conclusion when and how you might expect in a murder mystery. However, the plot does its job and ultimately pays off in a relatively satisfying way that ties all of the story and theme threads together.

DIALOG - 8/10
In terms of raw prose, the dialog is spartan and naturalistic. There is a lot of levity and sarcasm, and while I can't say the game actually made me laugh a single time, it all flows in a way that feels relatable and incredibly human. You feel at home with the characters fairly quickly, and the way soft personality-driven humor comes through in the vast majority of conversation is one of the major components of making the game feel real and relatable.

There is a real sense of economy of words, as all dialog is delivered in speech bubbles instead of the giant text boxes common in Obsidian's (and similar) titles. You can tell this "word-per-bubble" budget genuinely forced the writers to actually edit their ideas down and not waste the player's time. Conversations flow very organically, with interruptions and asides, and everything feels timed out such that it's the closest feeling you can get to voice acting without actual voice acting.

CHARACTERS - 6/10
The naturalistic style flows into the characters. No single character is a standout -- no one steals the scene, no one is hilarious, and no one is the most charismatic or the most memorable. This is because the town is the "main character," and everyone makes up its corpus in a meaningful way.  Even while some characters are more or less "plot-relevant," if you take the time to actually talk to everyone, you see that everyone is the star of their own little story, and they're all focused on their immediate lives and relationships. The details about each character's life flesh out the setting more than tell you individual compelling narratives that will stick in your mind, yet their delivery of those details is at all times enjoyable as a result of the very believable naturalistic dialog.

Unlike classic Obsidian (and similar) games, talking to every "NPC" in this game doesn't feel like you're just bouncing from exposition dump to exposition dump. People tell you how they feel and who they are in ways that are poignant and direct, which is enhanced by the word economy that the speech bubbles enforce. You learn exactly as much as you need to about any given character, no more or less. Death, relationships, and raising children are ubiquitous topics, and how each person speaks about these things gives you a sincere dive into the time and society in that they live. 

PACING / STRUCTURE - 8/10
The game is broken into three acts. Fully explaining how these acts are structured is impossible without spoiling the flow of the game, and experiencing how those parts flow into each other without foreknowledge can greatly enhance one's experience of the game.

So without spoilers, it can simply be said that the structure and pacing of the game are quite good. There are lulls at certain steps, periods where you talk to a LOT more people in a dozen disparate little stories, and then there are parts where you're only allowed to experience the plot on rails and not allowed to explore or talk to anyone. Some of the flaws in pacing tie to narrative design flaws explained below, but all things considered, the highs and lows of the story structure are compelling, and the slowest moments of the game are also the richest in character and tone, so it never feels boring even if sometimes you are mozying and other times you are running.

NARRATIVE DESIGN - 7/10
It's a very simple game with very basic mechanics.

- You can pick background details for your character that unlock special dialog options.
- You can talk to people and select dialog options.
- You can sometimes "persuade people" (which shows you a meter being filled/emptied based on things you've said or done that affect that persuasion positively or negatively, and the only way to "succeed the check" is to have enough positives to fill the meter).
- You can walk through (many) interconnected locations, most of which are always available but some of which are contextually available (such as based on time of day) or only available at specific plot beats.
- You can interact with a small number of interactable things that are prominently highlighted with a big interactable icon (there is no "pixel hunting" like in a point-and-click game, anything you can do in a location is completely obvious).
- You can choose how to "fill your time" within certain windows where the resulting scene will move time forwards to the next time block.

So how do you create a compelling murder investigation with multiple possible outcomes with those limited mechanics? Well, to really explain the answer to that would mean spoiling the entire story. One of the strongest elements of the entire story and narrative structure can only be understood after finishing the game, experiencing the outcomes based on your choices, and then looking up the other outcomes you didn't choose. Without spoiling anything, suffice it to say that the game does a pretty good job at making it so every possible outcome feels narratively satisfying, even if it may suffer a bit from the "well technically there is still a best choice" syndrome so common in games like this.

Taking it in good faith that all of the narrative design is fundamentally okay and enjoyable, let's look at some of the frustrations a player might run into. All of these flaws are very common in narrative games, and almost no game has "solved" the frustrations these types of things can result in for players who think really hard about how they interact with games (though, again, the game that has solved all of these issues is Disco Elysium).

First off, it's not always obvious who you can talk to at what time of day. If you're thorough and a completionist, you'll eventually realize that you are basically obligated to talk to everyone, everywhere, every day if you want all of the content. It's often very random who has something new to say and who doesn't, and there are even some special events in places you might not expect to look at some times in the day, encouraging a completionist to walk through every screen of the entire game during every time period and trying to talk to every person (which would easily add ~2-3 hours to the game given the number of days there are). This is arguably not fixed by playing multiple times, since most of the time you won't find something somewhere you didn't expect to, so it wouldn't feel like you're exploring story branches in a second play, it would just feel like you're wandering around randomly hoping to see something you maybe missed.

The above problem also results in a lot of paranoia about "how you use your time." It turns out an enormous amount of the narrative is NOT something that uses up your time block. In any given time block, you can and should talk to many people, sometimes every single character in the entire game, if you want to best get all of the information you can get before proceeding to choose a scene that will progress the time block. This makes the pacing of the game feel very weird because it's obvious that the designers intend for you to maybe talk to a few different people at different times of day and what they have to say will be the same whether you did it in the morning or afternoon, but the time pressure the game puts on your makes the "gamer brain" constantly paranoid whether they're going to miss something that there was no reason to miss.

Next, when it comes to choice and consequence, it turns out most of the game states are very binary. Many outcomes result from a large number of prior dialog choices you've made, but in most of these cases, getting what you want out of the situation is a result of simply being polite and agreeable to everyone all the time (go along with what they say, respect them, don't make a fuss). It's arguable this "agreeable" bias ties to the themes (see below), but there are not many opinion-driven outcomes wherein siding with one versus another idea results in equal narrative pay-off. You're often not choosing A or B (or N) but instead choosing A or !A. This failure in narrative design is very common, Disco Elysium may be the only narrative game that manages to avoid it for the majority of its runtime.

Many outcomes are dependent on specific character backgrounds that you pick at the start of the game, so you're allotted a handful of things that seem like you could interact with (in conversations and in the world), but in reality, you can't unless you have the right background. As an example, in Act 3, there are three conversations wherein three people each ask you for advice and the conversations each end with a choice, and then to convince them to do the thing you choose (your advice) you must succeed a "persuasion check." However, in this game persuasion checks are tied to accumulating "positive points" based on dialog choices you've made, and in ALL three of these conversations, being able to gain "positive points" is tied to conversation options that are only shown based on your background. If you don't have the relevant background(s), you see few dialog options that can change the outcome at all, and the persuasion check at the end is completely impossible, leaving you wondering why and possibly just looking up the solution. (Also, START MINOR SPOILERS to make matters worse, you can make them do what you want by telling them to do the opposite thing and then failing the persuasion check, which in this case does not feel like a thematic and purposeful narrative decision regarding "reverse psychology actually works" or something. END MINOR SPOILERS)

THEMES - 10/10
This game has a LOT of themes, and it manages to weave all of them into the entire story and even somehow manages to make all of them relevant to the murder mystery and the final outcomes of the story. It's a rare occasion to see game writing that understands themes at all, let alone makes it a rule to make them present in every single aspect of the narrative and every conversation you have in the game. This is the meat where someone could write a very thorough essay on every one of these.

- Agreeability and mob mentality.
- Social bonds and obligations.
- Myths and legends evolving with culture.
- Proletariat versus the rich.
- Mortality contrasted to daily living.

It's also remarkable that it's a game where Catholicism is ever-present (you literally talk to over a dozen monks/priests/nuns) and yet it doesn't actually feel like religious doctrine and religiosity are being shoved down the audience's collective throat. Some might actually get ruffled at the idea of being forced to play as a character who participates in a highly religious society without the option to meaningfully not be religious, but the thorough focus on making all of the characters feel human first and religious second (or third or fourth) helps you to understand this is just how it is. The story does not specifically regard Christianity or Catholicism in any real detail -- it's historical fiction for sure, but it's "light" historical at best. It instead regards much more how religious and political institutions affect small societies and it just so happens in this case it's the Holy Roman Empire.

OVERALL
This is a great narrative game with an enjoyable structure, a compelling story, and interwoven intelligent themes throughout. Absolutely worth playing for anyone who enjoys storytelling-focused games, even if you think the "historical fiction" focus might not be your cup of tea.

The short verdict is that "God of War: Ragnarok" improves the original game in nearly every way. It was a fun, enjoyable, and incredibly immersive game, and I didn't put it down for two weeks, clocking in at nearly 50 hours. It's the first time I've gotten a Platinum Trophy in a Playstation game, and I did so without even looking at the requirements for all of the achievements (I always aim for completionism, but I just give up if the game is boring by that point or if some achievements are stupid). Overall, I highly recommend playing the game, especially for anyone with a PS5 and a TV capable of running the game's optional high framerate mode.

NARRATIVE - 9/10
Starting with the big ticket item, this story is by FAR better than the first installment. The performances the first time around were fantastic, but the story itself was incredibly haphazard (it all boiled down to a dad and his kid trying to climb a mountain and then weird shit just keeps getting in their way). This time around, there are a variety of skillfully interconnected plots and characters, and thematically all of the character threads weave together into a beautiful tapestry about the nature of parenthood and the expectations that children have placed upon them.

All of the new major characters are brilliant, and there are so many of them. Some people complain about the "Marvelization of dialog" because most of the characters have a modern way of speaking, but this did not bother me at all and, frankly, I think the whole criticism is very overblown. If you think of the fact that these characters are PEOPLE presumably translated to ENGLISH (a language they wouldn't be speaking), it's not that hard to accept the jokes they make and how they talk to each other. People who make these complaints have clearly never actually read historical literature -- dumb jokes and quips in plays go back to ancient Greece. Hell, most historical comedies have more dick jokes per page than anything we watch today.

I find this style of writing for this adventure game MUCH better than a bunch of "mystical mythological characters" all speaking a faux and completely made-up version of "archaic old English" because that's not how people talked at any point in history regardless of the language or culture. You can't have the humor people shared in other times and cultures because it was all idiomatic to those times and cultures, so why should it be removed entirely rather than replaced with something the modern audience could understand?

Anyways, setting aside the "dialog tone," the dialog overall itself remains as brilliantly written, performed, and directed as the first game, if not better in some cases. The complexity of the large cast of characters breathes a lot more life into it, for sure. I also have to call out the immense attention to detail in terms of the writing economy. It's clear that Sony Santa Monica had an army of narrative designers and writers working together to be able to pace so much dialog across every level literally flawlessly. Characters talk a LOT while you go through levels (whether optional areas or the critical path), and you almost NEVER hear someone get cut off in the middle of talking.

Lastly, the story and plot are overall well structured and delivered, though not without some subjective flaws. I don't particularly care for the theme of "fate and destiny" and how they deal with it. It calls so much attention to itself constantly, but there's very little tension because you can predict how things are going to go. To put it simply, I would say that element of the plot is perfectly fine for a very short story, but when you're hitting the same narrative beat over and over and over for 20 hours of plot, that's not particularly clever story writing, it just starts to feel repetitive. Also, I would say the resolution at the end of the game actually kind of didn't make sense to me, but not to a degree that ruins it.

CORE COMBAT - 8/10
In terms of the basics of combat, there are not many changes here from the original. It's mostly refinement, a few mechanical additions, and of course a new weapon. I would say for me, the best addition of all was the new weapon, which was incredibly clever and fun, and it opens the question as to why I've never used such a weapon in such a fun way in gaming before when it's actually relatively simple. (I also have to say I feel quite chuffed that the new weapon was one I said the game should have when asked in an interview how to improve ranged combat in "God of War".)

I have to recognize the criticisms that people have of the RPG mechanics on gear. It doesn't bother me, but I also don't feel like it adds that much to my enjoyment of the game. I wouldn't mind if they stripped down the power tiers and numbers by like 50% and made the game more about skill expression, but I understand why they took the path that they did and doubled down on it in a sequel.

While the player experience is amazing and polished beyond belief, I do have to call out some criticisms of enemy combat. I love that they introduced a lot more enemies, mini-bosses, and bosses, that's great. However, having studied the AI in the original game extensively (as I was looking at it as a template for a game I was working on), I know that they consciously abandoned some principles in AI design from the first game. In "Ragnarok," you will be hit in the back more than you are ever hit from any other direction. You will be stabbed in the back, you will be shot in the back, and you will have characters leap at you from any distance to hit you in the back, there is simply no consideration whatsoever for the player to be allowed to focus on what's directly in front of them for more than 2 seconds at a time. Note as well that I was playing on the normal difficulty.

I think I understand why they had to make enemies be able to attack you from behind much more frequently, and it's probably because the player has more tools and abilities than in the first game. If they didn't do that, then combat would feel too easy because so many enemies can be hit-stunned for long periods of time. However, the real issue here isn't just the AI itself, it's also the CAMERA, which has such a restrictive angle that you can't see any enemies that aren't directly in front of you. The combat designers as a group are put in the position of just having to say "well, to keep this camera and to make the game hard, we have to just accept that it's a core element of our game that you're mostly getting hit in the back, so let's put these huge flashing arrows and have your allies constantly scream at you to let you know what the hell is going on behind you." It's a really unfortunate path that they took, it does not play well compared to other major action game titles, and I frankly think that they would've been better off just pulling the camera back in combat rather than stubbornly sticking to this camera philosophy.

Another nitpick criticism I have is that they use an incredibly aggressive and obvious super armor system on enemies, but it's completely hidden from the player despite dominating every moment of their gameplay experience. I know, having made such systems myself, that there are objective and mathematical rules in terms of damage types and some kind of hidden poise meter that deprecates and fills based off of damage and enemy states, but from a player perspective, it's complete nonsense. Runic attacks that usually will stagger any boss sometimes randomly just won't, the number of times you can hit an enemy before their poise is restored is completely unclear, and there are also some minor actions that sometimes will break poise and sometimes won't (because of hidden meters). The bottom line for me is that this has convinced me that most games like this should display a poise meter if they're going to work like this. The current design basically boils down to taking turns with the enemy, staggering them when it's your turn, which just feels weird -- I'd honestly prefer the Fromsoft approach where most bosses and hard enemies just can't be staggered much and you have to choose when to hit them.

Lastly, unrelated to enemies, since I'm trying to keep this review free of spoilers, I'll just say there's a whole combat experience that I think stayed around exactly as much as it could without becoming boring, and I'm glad it was there and that they didn't stretch it out too much across the whole game given it was shallower than the main combat experience.

CRITICAL PATH - 10/10
The main content of the game is paced at ~20 hours. Some people are just going to go through that and ignore the side content, and I'm honestly curious what that experience of the game would feel like, but I'm too attached to my completionist attitude to ever find out.

Everything in the critical path of the game is incredible. I can't say I have a single thing that comes to mind that was not enjoyable. There's one particularly slow section in the middle, one that some people might find intolerable because it's more story-focused and the gameplay around the story is pretty boring, but as a one-off experience, it was fine for me. The main bosses and story setpieces were incredible, my only minor gripe was I wanted one of those "interact with an entity the size of a skyscraper" moments that are classic to the franchise, and unfortunately this game did not serve one up, but that's not really a negative given everything it did serve up was amazing.

EXPLORATION / OPTIONAL CONTENT - 6/10
This is where the game drops from a 4.5 or 5-star game for me down to a 4-star game. There is a LOT of side content, slightly too much, and at first, it seems really well-paced to the critical path, but the longer the game goes, the more stuff opens up, and the more optional stuff starts arriving that you're expected to come back to at the end of the game.

The best side content is the character-driven sidequests, those should honestly be considered part of the critical path and absolutely shouldn't be missed. Everything from there forms a sliding scale downwards both in terms of cost invested and quality of experience, down to a handful of quests that are literally chores that ask you to return to areas you'd never have any desire or reason to return to simply to kill a handful of enemies. It's painfully obvious that the designers believed players would want to return to these areas to pick up missed collectibles, but I'm not sure I know a player who cares about getting all the collectibles in a game and doesn't neurotically do everything in their power to make sure they get them all the first time through. I did have to backtrack for ~5 things, but the game's side content acts as if you're going to backtrack nearly the ENTIRE game world.

Exploration up until that end-game content felt amazing, I actually said to folks that it felt like you didn't even have to pay attention to the quest log, you just explore and do the obvious things and you'll complete most of the quests. However, there ended up being a handful of things that are easier to miss (like treasure maps), and like I said, new side quests are introduced up until the end of the game. Mathematically, it's almost optimal to put off all side content until the end so you just explore each zone once, but that would ruin a lot of the difficulty pacing. Regardless, the maps are quite enjoyable to explore, the level design is largely impeccable both in critical path and side areas, and I had a really good time seeking out every nook and cranny for trinkets.

As for the optional hardcore combat stuff, I would say this is really where the pacing falls apart. There's one open zone that's split into two areas, and for some reason one of the hardest optional bosses in the game is in the first area and an easier optional boss is in the second area. You're presented with a handful of things you literally cannot do without the correct gear levels, and the fact that you have to trek all the way back to all of them is an annoyance. The thing that this game does improve, however, is that the last two optional bosses are actually quite manageable when you finish your gear upgrades, unlike the Valkyrie Queen in the first game, which I couldn't beat even at max level.

Muspelheim trials are okay, it's mostly less grindy than the first game, and they got rid of that awful randomly-generated Niflheim content. However, the last 6 Muspelheim trials require you to replay random combinations of the first few to unlock them one at a time, and that decision is just completely incoherent, there was NO reason to pad for time at that point in the game, it should just be patched out entirely, it's nonsense.

ART / ENVIRONMENTS - 9/10
In terms of art direction, it's one of the most beautiful games ever made. Sony Santa Monica is lagging behind a bit on some aspects of tech art (such as skin shaders) compared to other huge budget studios like Naughty Dog, but the game is impeccably optimized, and many regions are some of the most astounding and creative environments I've ever seen in a game. The addition of tons of fauna (little animals, bugs, birds, faeries, etc) makes a lot of the environments feel incredibly alive and more fun to look at, even if they're all placed in a very theme park fashion.

CONCLUSION
It's a great game. There's no reason not to play it if you like action games. I'd rank it easily above "Elden Ring" for anyone who's a completionist, the optional content here is definitely far better even with all of its flaws, and the game is a very digestible amount of content that only slightly overstays its welcome. It's a great adventure with a bunch of characters who you'll love to spend the time with, and I'm excited to see what comes next from the studio unshackled from the PS4 in four years from now.

Among challenging platformers with something like time-based medals, usually the completionist mindset is only allowed for the best of all players. The optional content in such games usually is somewhat tedious, incredibly difficult, and mind-numbing to accomplish. By contrast, the best aspect of "Neon White" is a challenge level that does not expect flawless execution but rewards knowledge and careful thinking. It's not easy to 100% the game's challenges, but it is attainable without being overly frustrating or annoying. For people who want more than that, they can chase beating their friends' scores or speedrunning.

Aside from that, there's not a lot to say about what makes "Neon White" fun aside from the fact that it mixes up all the different forms of moving through 3d space in endlessly satisfying ways. Nearly every cool thing you've ever done to get around platforming with an FPS camera is served up here, and they're all celebrated and combined with impeccably satisfying level design and unique twists that render all of them utterly compelling.

The only bad thing one could say about the game is that the storytelling is a bit obnoxious and not as compelling or deep as it should be for how much dialog is present. The characters are fine, but it does not explore them with much nuance or detail, and thematically there's not much of anything to pay attention to, let alone anything remotely related to your experience of the gameplay. It's arguable that without the aesthetic and story, the game wouldn't feel quite as satisfying, but it can also just be argued that there's no reason for the writing to not be either better than it is or less present than it is.

Overall, my top game of 2022. Incredibly satisfying.

Level Design: 10/10
Gameplay: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Story: 4/10
Characters: 5/10
Dialog: 5/10

Like other reviews have outlined, this game is far too pre-occupied with a few things that hold it back from being an overall cool/fun/engaging experience:

- Too many tedious "plate-spinning" mechanics. Coming back to the game 6+ months after I first played it, I realized I couldn't even remember enough of the SUPER SPECIFIC ways you survive the early game, and the idea of reading a bunch of guides or failing 5 times again to figure them all out just didn't feel worth it.
- Way too many vague mechanics with incredibly specific solutions. You can literally fail a run just because you didn't buy a book when it was offered to you (since there apparently is a limited number of each book). You could survive HOURS of a run without knowing that there is NO available solutions to you left.
- The way time is managed in the game just isn't a fun gameplay loop. Some sort of turn-based system (that just auto-skips over turns while you're waiting) would be far better, since you have to pause the game so much anyways that the existence of a "real-time clock" isn't doing anything productive.

What I can say positive about the game is that it has inspired me as a game design more potently than almost any game I've ever played. That's not reason enough for me to recommend it to other people, but it is notable. There are a LOT of fascinating mechanics and interactions and ideas in this game, and I think there is a version of it that could be one of the coolest games ever...but unfortunately, for me, this isn't it. It needs a lot of refinement. Someone who puts 15+ hours into trying to understand and progress in a game like this -- a person who loves the type of game it is and wants to connect with it -- and then comes out of that time feeling like they've made barely any progress...that's not a great game in my eyes.

Gameplay Design: 5/10
User Experience: 6/10
Narrative Design: 6/10
Plot/Story: 3/10
Narrative Themes: 6/10
Visuals: 7/10

I had a decent time with it on a lower difficulty, there's a lot about the gameplay loop that I enjoy. The core combat was fun, the controls are tight, and the class designs are good. Levels are laid out nice, exploring feels good, and the metroidvania mechanics are cool.

And that's about where the good ends.

OVERALL: 5/10
Combat Design: 5/10
World Design: 7/10
Narrative Design: 2/10
Story / Plot: 2/10
Aesthetic Visuals: 7/10

The game is going to be too hard for 90% of game players. It's brutally unforgiving, enemy and trap damage is massive, there are so few avenues to regaining health in a run, and what is there is either pitiful (the rune that gives 1% HP on enemy death is a joke) or insanely random and not within the player's control whatsoever. If you're having a rough time, you MUST break every box/lamp/etc for the hope of a health drop, which is NOT a fun play pattern at all (especially when even tiny book or candle props might sometimes have health hidden in them).

So, sure, they have difficulty options, that's great. The first thing I did was make it so enemy bodies don't hurt you, because, insanely, only one class has an ability that gives them iframes. There are certainly games where not giving the player iframes is rational, but this isn't one of them. Enemies move in crazy patterns and many of them fly, half the enemies shoot projectiles, of which there are many many types. With your limited mobility and complete lack of iframes, avoiding every enemy, hazard, and projectile is going to be impossible for anyone who isn't a gamer savant who probably streams on twitch semi-professionally. The screen is, at any moment, so full of damaging entities in random patterns that it's just ridiculous.

Next I lowered enemy health a bit (that's not bad at all, you do good damage to all normal enemies) and enemy damage by 20% and then 50% because it's honestly such a slog, you die so fast.

In spite of all of that, I was having fun! Until it came to beating the bosses. They are plainly just not fun. The game acts like you have more methods to avoid damage than you do, and the projectile patterns and some boss behaviors are just flat out sadistic to a degree that isn't even remotely fun. I got through three of them, but on the wizard in the library, he has a second phase that is perhaps one of the worst boss designs I've ever seen in a game? I decided I had no motivation to keep going once I got to that, it just felt like the designers didn't respect me as a player whatsoever.

My biggest criticism beyond how crazy it is to avoid damage is that, unlike other roguelites, this one does NOT have massive player power spikes in 90% of runs. The vast majority of "relics" are not only not powerful, many of them are just flat out strictly bad and offer little to no value to the majority of classes. What makes that worse is they made the baffling decision to hide what relics do until you use them for the first time. After 8 hours with the game, I just determined to look them up mid-run because that's bad game design when relics can offer literally ZERO benefit at least 50% of the time. Turns out even looking them up didn't offer much, it just showed me that, yeah, no, I don't want almost any of them.

The bad relic design is made even worse when the entire game is built around a system where you can only equip a couple of them per run, and if you go over a certain value of a meter that fills up, you start losing health! The idea of gating player power progression in a roguelite behind HEALTH when the powers aren't even good is just...absolutely insane? As a game designer, I struggle to think of a justification for going that path, it's just so anti-fun from top to bottom.

The only power spikes you get are "traits," which are assigned to you AT CHARACTER SELECTION and completely random. Also, most of the good ones make you take 2x damage, guaranteeing you always kind of feel like ♥♥♥♥ even when you're more powerful. Again, literally anti-fun design. I understand trade-offs, but they should've brainstormed literally any trade-offs other than "make the player die faster", because I can think of at least dozen potential ones within their design, and yet they seem to think the ONLY way to balance these things is by taking more health away from the player.

They have a huge skill tree to invest in over time, but after 10 hours, it's just grinding. You don't get meaningful power from the skill tree, you don't feel like you're actually getting stronger over time, and the lack of run-specific power spikes makes the lack of skill tree power spikes even more egregious. The tree nodes start costing SO MUCH GOLD that it feels like it was designed purely for the small audience of fans they have who are addicts of their game sinking in HUNDREDS of hours, which, sure, you should find ways to benefit them, but Hades did literally everything better in terms of run design and progression design, making the game accessible to all players instead of just pro gamers.

In terms of gameplay, at the end of the day, it's a very conventional and basic point-and-click adventure game with no deviations from the formula other than how some things are presented. They get the structure of that done perfectly, there was never a moment where I was majorly confused as to what to do next, the interactions and critical path were very clear, and a lot of the optional content was easy to engage with, though I know I must have missed some more obscure things. My favorite thing that they did differently was how they log all of the things you've learned in a "mind map," which makes getting exposition about the (very weird) story very easy.

What this little adventure game gets perfectly right are tone and setting. The art, sounds, and demeanor of all of the characters come together into a vivid picture of the world that the creators aim to immerse you in. It's grimy and it's weird and it's kind of uncomfortable, but it's also fascinating, and the classic "point and click adventure" formula fits right against the setting incredibly well.

What the game does decently is character writing, as it comes to making clear and evocative characters. However, while the dialog is incredibly evocative and does well to make crystal clear characters, what the characters actually SAY is not particularly compelling. The prose and dialog try very hard at a poetic "mystique" contrasted to plain vulgarity, but because there's so much more of a focus on vibe over substance, you don't really get anything out of any individual line no matter how poetic or funny it might be trying to be. Ultimately I lump "character writing" of this type into "tone and setting," because the characters end up serving as strong pillars of the setting without ever providing compelling arcs or drama in their own right.

The story and plot are riveting in terms of dramatic beats to get you invested in how absurd the scenario is that is unfolding. However, there is a lot about the setting and events that undermine the story, with the setting presenting a very mundane and dry presentation of MOST aspects of the world (going into so much detail about the nature of the environment, the politics, what it's like to really live in this situation) and then proceeds to have most characters not truly question just how absurd the premise of the plot actually is. Sure, some people say "man, that's crazy!", but that's not really enough when what's happening is so insane. Just calling something crazy is not the same as actually questioning and analyzing it, and this story is NOT interested in characters actually trying to understand the situations that they're experiencing (whether that means understanding the situations literally, personally, or emotionally).

The best example of this is when the protagonist meets his mom's friend who is the "originator" of the "Superduck," a sentient biological super entity. He literally explains the craziest shit imaginable to the protagonist, and she has NO QUESTIONS about ANY of it. The story just acts like people would accept things that they obviously wouldn't, especially given other things they've questioned or not accepted. If stuff like this was happening all over the world all the time, that would be one thing, but there's a clear insinuation that all of this is new, weird, and scary. I can see that the writer is trying to get across a theme of "the world is always weird and scary, why would these salt-of-the-earth people care about some new weird and scary thing," but I just don't feel like the setting is absurd enough to support the absurd story, and this just causes a lot of tonal dissonances.

My last major issue is that the story itself is too full of vague poeticism. There are a lot of ideas thrown at the screen, but I'm not convinced they really have any kind of interesting interplay. I'm not left thinking about or considering anything meaningful about what was presented after finishing the game, it just kind of boils down to nihilistic absurdism with only a veneer of heart. The implications of what it means for your character to "succeed" at the end are immediately undercut with a sense of imminent doom in their future regardless of the outcome of what happened in the story. I am fairly certain I got the "good ending" because of one or two things I collected earlier in the game, but the story is so obsessed with its own nihilistic tone that there can't actually be a "good ending."

The real issue with "vibe" versus "substance" here is that none of the themes presented really go anywhere or have anything to do with each other, and the themes, story, and character arcs do not interweave in such a way that they elevate or progress one another. You've got a hodgepodge of themes that go nowhere: corporate greed, religious absurdity, modern technological absurdity, family "trauma", etc. The events that occur don't really resolve any of these themes, the themes don't really have anything to do with each other, and at the end of the game, it just feels kind of like you went on a slow-paced Disneyland ride through someone's bizarre hallucinogen-fueled dreams about their fucked up childhood growing up in Louisiana.

Obviously, that was enough to get me to finish the game, but the writing clearly has literary aspirations that it's unfortunately not living up to.

Narrative Design: 4/10
Tone/Setting: 8/10
Plot/Drama: 7/10
Story: 4/10
Themes: 2/10
Character Arcs: 4/10
Dialog: 4/10

I wanted to love this, the aesthetic is stellar and the audiovisual execution is very high quality. However, unfortunately, the writing is not good. While playing with two close friends, we spent the entire 4 hours mostly tearing into the weak plot, confusing themes, and redundant concepts that it echoes repeatedly without really saying anything of substance.

I don't throw around the word "pretentious" lightly, and this is perhaps one of the most pretentious games I've ever played. It's trying SO HARD to be INCREDIBLY deep, but I've read better abstract short stories and plays written by undergraduates or maybe even high school students handling similar abstract existential fantasy concepts.

The creators had AMAZING visual ideas and can script a decent interactive adventure game game, but if they wanted to have story and writing be such a core part of the experience, they needed more experienced and refined writers on staff to edit this and smooth it out.

Gameplay Design: 3/10
Narrative Design: 1/10
Plot: 2/10
Themes: 4/10
Characters: 0/10
Aesthetic Visuals: 8/10
Technical Visuals: 7/10
Audio: 6/10
Music: 7/10

pretty good game I could write way too much about it (what's good, what's not good), and maybe I will one day, but regardless, it's clearly worth playing given the number of hours I've played it. I've made copious and unashamed use of guides through the entire thing because of their terrible quest lines, and ultimately I think Sekiro is WAY better as a difficult video game with great combat, but this is a pretty fun time.

Combat Design: 7/10
World Design: 8/10
Content Design: 6/10
Narrative Design: 2/10
Story / Plot: 2/10
Aesthetic Visuals: 6/10
Technical Visuals: 4/10

The game overall is very simple. It has many mechanics, but every mechanic is just as deep and interesting as it needs to be engaging, but nothing individually is remarkably well-done. The systems and gameplay all feel and look absolutely amazing, and the presentation of art, sound, and music are all really the HIGHEST quality a game like this can achieve.

At first I was disappointed it was only 15 hours, but after about 12 I was already growing a bit bored with the experience. Since nothing is taken particularly deep, I didn't feel meaningfully connected to anything and some systems started to get repetitive. I put effort into the layout of my base, but ultimately the cultists are shallow and used as resources rather than as characters, so I didn't feel attached to that aspect of the game at all.

The combat is serviceable at worst, pretty good at best. It has some notable flaws (most egregiously with how it handles hit and hurt boxes with these weird quasi-2D/3D characters), but playing on the normal difficulty, the game is pretty easy and the flaws don't get in the way of enjoying it nonetheless. I could've done with a bit more depth in weapon and ability variety, it all felt very low-scope in its gameplay ambition when it comes to combat.

Curious to see what future content they release, I'm not super convinced I would want significantly more content for the game unless it really adds some depth to the mechanics. Another 10 hours of exactly what's here would get quite tedious.

Some faults aside, it was a very enjoyable game and well worth playing.

Systems Design: 7/10
Combat Design: 6/10
Narrative Design: 4/10
Visual Aesthetics: 10/10
Music: 9/10

This was a pretty good interactive story. The systems are basic but feel deep enough to be engaged with the choices you make with the action economy. The progression is satisfying, though by the end you do feel "overpowered" as it were, there is not much risk or consequence after the first 4 or so hours.

The writing itself is decent, it has its moments, but there isn't much to be said about the prose and dialog. Everything is very utilitarian and functional, which matches the set and setting, but there's nothing mind-blowing here from a writing perspective. The best element is the world-building and the ideas behind everything going on, it is a very smart and well-considered setting, and every element of the world that you engage with feels realistic and believable. That said, like a lot of sci-fi, it suffers from much of the writing boiling down to "exposition dumps," which is a large part of the writing feeling dry and not emotionally engaging. There were some sequences of exposition that my brain just kind of tuned out entirely.

My last issue was that every ending I completed found me feeling very little for the characters involved and like there needed to be much deeper moments of connection with the characters and my own protagonist for me to walk away feeling like I meaningfully grew attached to anything. This was made worse by how much the game feels like it's encouraging you to get every ending -- when you can "collect endings," it makes each one feel incredibly inconsequential. I think I prefer branching stories with a more focused and deeper story and a singular climactic ending over this "go really wide" branching narrative style.

All that being said, the whole thing is incredibly respectable for the efforts of a single writer and designer, I look forward to what more they will produce in the future. I'm not sure I'll come back for the expansion at the end of the year, feels a bit weird to tune into a game like this for only an hour or two months later. I really hope the success of this allows him to take on a more ambitious project in the future with similar ideas that can go deeper into the writing.

Narrative Design: 7/10
Story Writing: 5/10
Character Writing: 5/10
World Building: 8/10
Visuals and UI/UX: 6/10