Great time, surprised how much I enjoyed the story, there is no way I was going to put 50 hours into this. Sidequests usually have good writing but there is just so much and the combat is not compelling enough to sustain the playtime. I started mainlining it about halfway through and thought the main story was well paced and exciting. Its is "another dad game", but I enjoyed how there was more going on that the typical parent vs son not accepting that they need independence and to understand their parent. This drills down into more specific dynamics between them, and extends a lot of that to the characters around them. It's not revolutionary, but its very good prestige tv-esq drama.

Tinykin is so charming, fun, and easy to play. I have not played much Pikmin and think this is more like 75% platformer, 25% puzzle game. They really nailed the appeal of being a little guy in a big world, as well as making it fun to traverse the area. The first few Tinykin you find don't immediately help with traversal, but once you get the ones that stack up and upgrade your float bubble you're zooming around the levels to find every nook and crany. And that's not even getting into the soapboard, which adds grinding - all video games should have grinding.

While the writing was sometimes way too chatty (think the later Mario + Luigi RPGs), the story was charming and fun throughout. I had so much fun exploring and doing everything in every map, and it was nice that at 6-8 hours it didn't overstay its welcome.