Enh.
It's not as if the game lacks charm entirely—there's a good joke or two—but instead of feeling satisfyingly brief, like I was hoping for from the reactions of others, it's more like the first act of an adventure game, compressed, with a scene that ties up some secondary threads arbitrarily declared the ending. It's like if Secret of Monkey Island ended with Guybrush and his crew getting on the ship, but with 90% of the puzzles on Melée removed.
Trading quest puzzles tend to be a boring chore, and Frog Detective's VN-but-sluggish interaction model definitely doesn't help there, but more importantly it isn't even really a puzzle. The closest it comes is "these objects serve a similar utility," but as a telegraphed substitution ("give me something that serves the same utility!") instead of something you have to work out for yourself. It might work better for small children, but also as someone who grew up on Humongous Entertainment I expect better of children's adventure games, so I don't know.
It's not as if the game lacks charm entirely—there's a good joke or two—but instead of feeling satisfyingly brief, like I was hoping for from the reactions of others, it's more like the first act of an adventure game, compressed, with a scene that ties up some secondary threads arbitrarily declared the ending. It's like if Secret of Monkey Island ended with Guybrush and his crew getting on the ship, but with 90% of the puzzles on Melée removed.
Trading quest puzzles tend to be a boring chore, and Frog Detective's VN-but-sluggish interaction model definitely doesn't help there, but more importantly it isn't even really a puzzle. The closest it comes is "these objects serve a similar utility," but as a telegraphed substitution ("give me something that serves the same utility!") instead of something you have to work out for yourself. It might work better for small children, but also as someone who grew up on Humongous Entertainment I expect better of children's adventure games, so I don't know.