CWs for Root Film: Sui*, spousal abuse, gaslighting, falling from great heights, traffic accidents, emotional manipulation, drowning, blood, graphic wounds, body horror, torture, asphyxiation.
Root Film, despite seeming like a wide turn from it's extremely pastoral predecessor, is mostly a very chill workplace comedy adventure novel game about small actors and directors working in made for tv mystery films who accidentally stumble into various mysteries and then actual murder cases. Both perspective characters Yagumo and Riho are a delight, having really snappy rapport with the supporting cast without ever sneering into the camera for a quip or belaboring the genre tropes the game is often quietly building upon. The Root games continuing to be about adults who have jobs in a specific town or city that then end up in situations is a really grounding approach to character and scenario writing that is really absent in novel games and games as a whole and ultimately makes these games really phenomenal despite also being extremely average.
The mystery solving and adventure game stuff is cleaned up a lot from Root Letter. They've dialed back the fucked up volume of locations to keep in order and have made the chapter culminations really simple affair, sitting somewhere between Ace Attorney Investigation's Logic Chess and the evidence bullets of Danganronpa trials. The steps to win these cross examinations are much more slight, but really it's better that you only have to prove like three or four argument points because the game is otherwise a breezy affair. I dislike how the tone of the overarching mystery develops against my taste and what I liked the most about the first game, but the way it builds and uses the all of the game's formal and promotional material is exciting when it does finally let you give answers. This is a really smart follow up to Root Letter that answers a lot of shortcomings of that game while still keeping the same low key identity that makes that game stand out.
Root Film, despite seeming like a wide turn from it's extremely pastoral predecessor, is mostly a very chill workplace comedy adventure novel game about small actors and directors working in made for tv mystery films who accidentally stumble into various mysteries and then actual murder cases. Both perspective characters Yagumo and Riho are a delight, having really snappy rapport with the supporting cast without ever sneering into the camera for a quip or belaboring the genre tropes the game is often quietly building upon. The Root games continuing to be about adults who have jobs in a specific town or city that then end up in situations is a really grounding approach to character and scenario writing that is really absent in novel games and games as a whole and ultimately makes these games really phenomenal despite also being extremely average.
The mystery solving and adventure game stuff is cleaned up a lot from Root Letter. They've dialed back the fucked up volume of locations to keep in order and have made the chapter culminations really simple affair, sitting somewhere between Ace Attorney Investigation's Logic Chess and the evidence bullets of Danganronpa trials. The steps to win these cross examinations are much more slight, but really it's better that you only have to prove like three or four argument points because the game is otherwise a breezy affair. I dislike how the tone of the overarching mystery develops against my taste and what I liked the most about the first game, but the way it builds and uses the all of the game's formal and promotional material is exciting when it does finally let you give answers. This is a really smart follow up to Root Letter that answers a lot of shortcomings of that game while still keeping the same low key identity that makes that game stand out.