i'm still working on my first playthrough, but i fell in love with this game at first sight. i booted it up, got through the intro sequence, and it's been a whirlwind romance ever since. i tried to type an "early impressions" thing here, and it ended up being a 5-paragraph essay, so i'll just leave it at that. this game rules, i can't wait to finish it so i can write a review that breaks backloggd's character limit (idk if there is one, but i will inevitably find out). there's so much to talk about here.

cute lil thing, a low-stress heartfelt adventure you can finish in one sitting. the comedy is good, but never reaches laugh-out-loud heights, the music is similarly good. i really like the art style, it feels like a blend of all the best parts of 90s cartoons like daria, doug, pepper anne, but it definitely has its own visual identity. the animation is pretty rudimentary, but that never bothered me. the gameplay is essentially walking around and talking to people, with some minor variations here and there to break things up. there's a pickpocketing minigame that you can thankfully disable, which i did because i found it so easy that it was just adding time without challenge (and some UI elements got in the way of the meter, which was annoying).

it's a little buggy, there are plenty of graphical glitches like how your sprite tends to walk in front of things when you're actually behind them, but this also didn't bug me. i never had any bugs that got me physically stuck in a corner, you'll just sometimes pop over the foreground. i even found an infinite money exploit in the second area, which i thought about repeating to hit the story's goal but $25 out of a total $97k is too small for me to commit to the bit.

in short, this is a nice adventure that doesn't break any ground but is just the right length for a fun journey meeting weird people and finding yourself as you save your mom's store. you should play this game if you watched a trailer for it and thought it looked neat - that's really all there is to it. does it look like something you'd enjoy? then it is.

this kind of felt like other narrative indies i've enjoyed, such as the first orwell game, so i felt like i knew what to expect after the first few chapters, and it ended up surprising me.

first off, this game has a pretty decent length - i was expecting to finish this in an afternoon, and it took me two long sessions over a weekend to finish. i also think a lot of the presentational elements are great. the contrast between excellent character portraits and the 3d room in the top portion of the screen is a fun stylistic choice, and the soundtrack is all good. the only disappointment is that many of the songs are rewards for finding collectables, so the music can be quite repetitive at the beginning.

the gameplay was all pleasant. clicking on cameras to activate them, scanning rooms for objects and navigating drones through obstacle courses, that all worked and even though the mechanical depth was shallow, there is plenty of variety in terms of room layout. by the end, you know how to deal with any situation and feel like you have speed and competency, but that's also not the main draw of this game in my opinion.

the narrative is where song of farca really shines. the worldbuilding is perfectly in-depth for a game of this scope, and you learn about the island and the world in ways that mostly feel very natural. i found the writing for all the characters to be varied and generally high quality, and the plot throws plenty of twists and shocking moments at you. things get very heavy at points, and while it sometimes stumbles in its tone, it remained enthralling throughout my entire playthrough. it feels like playing a page-turner.

overall, i really do think this is worth playing, especially if you like detective stories and political intrigue. this is a well-rounded, fun, and intense story with an entertaining surveillance gameplay shell wrapped around it to keep you engaged.

first, i want to get this out of the way: the art is great, the music is perfect. most of the writing is good, and i appreciate that the dialogue options were often pretty varied in terms of what type of howard you're going to be. most of the real-world themes it tackles are handled with care, if not always gracefully, and i think all the concepts for its worldbuilding are cool, if not entirely unique. the blend of concepts, i feel, is pretty unique. there's a lot going on in the background.

this is a tricky one to rate, because there are sections of it that feel so at odds with each other. i respect the ambition in terms of how many topics and tones they touched on. i'm not sure it gels into a cohesive experience for me, but i really want to talk about all the sections. i'll keep spoilers to a minimum, but there's obviously structural spoilers since that's most of what i'm thinking about.

it opens as a detective adventure game, has two or three very short stealth sections (which are so easy you'd be hard-pressed to fail them on your first try). i like this section, it's very classic noir, and the mystery it sets up is pretty compelling. it takes you to some beautiful settings

after some time, probably halfway through my playthrough, it completely changes tone and gameplay. i think this starts out as an interesting change, but doesn't stick the landing toward the end. i really like the section in the camp, aside from having a popular twitter/streamer personality hanging out which kind of broke my immersion and felt a little out of place. not a huge deal. i really liked the focus on participating in a found community, and it treated the subject matter in a way i thought was humanizing without being patronizing necessarily. it's not perfect, but i appreciate that it went there and didn't fuck up.

after that, however, you go to a lab, where the scenes mostly take place in a single tiny room. by now the tone has shifted so drastically from where we started that i wonder where it's going, and if i'm playing the same game at all. not necessarily in a good way.

then there's the epilogue, which sets up what *i think could be a really interesting sequel. but is this game*, on its own, a satisfying and complete package? i can forgive a cliffhanger (and i am looking forward to a sequel, if they make one), but i feel like a lot of the plot threads lacked the closure they were owed.

i think my biggest issue here is that it feels pretty rushed toward the end. i only encountered bugs at the end, i found that the gameplay and setting were monotonous and sparse for the last couple hours, and it feels like the focus on setting up a sequel was to distract from not knowing how to wrap up the other plot points. the ending sequence, while beautiful, didn't really punch me in the gut like i think it wanted to.

do i recommend this game? yes, i think this is worth your time, just know it's an uneven experience and writes some checks that end up bouncing. i think there are sections that i'd rate 2/5 and sections i'd rate 4/5, so make of that what you will, but don't let a lukewarm review scare you away, this game has ambition and heart, and i really want to play a sequel someday.