"So, what did you just play, Joycap?"
That is an excellent question, dear reader! What DID I just play?

In all seriousness, if you like 'RNG Check: The Video Game' disguised as a strategy simulator, have at it - and I guess I know myself well enough to imagine this games... weirdly hard-going OST ending up in my playlist. But the rest of it isn't for me, in the same way that those that say 'doodling is supposed to be soothing', when that's the kind of thing that just so happens to frustrate the ever-loving hell out of me.

Although I suppose I can't be too harsh. It does feel like some Japanese kids' science fair experiment, and as jaded as I am, this game is at least... unique enough to convey that.

Not much else to say. But I don't picture myself coming back to this.

EDIT: Did Task Mode out of pride. Not nearly as hard as I thought it'd be outside of a few asinine requirements.

Incredible vibe game, and one that manages to create this feeling through the bits of imprecision and loss of control, rather than being a seamless, effortless experience to get anything done. You'll frequently find yourself drifting off course regardless of how well you do, with progress often backsliding thanks to the ever changing winds, but this works in the game's favour once you allow yourself to just, abandon the concept of actually trying to win in favour of taking in the atmosphere. Kaze no Notam makes slight setbacks inevitable, and it gives a sense of your movements being dictated by the whims of nature, which rapidly dissolves from a point of irritation into reinforcing the that you need to just accept where the game takes you and take in your surroundings instead, you can't do anything to fix the situation currently, so you might as well make the best of it. The objectives the game gives you just exist to facilitate some very loose sense of direction, but aren't really something that feel like anything more than a secondary element to go alongside the main appeal of getting players to chill out in a balloon, peacefully being separated from the world below. Utterly gorgeous game that encapsulates my favourite elements of the PSX aesthetic better than almost anything else.

the cities are pretty, the gameplay stresses me out. the music is too paced and of-a-time for this to be as free as you and i would like it. it goal-orients my brain; i NEED to saunter along to the circle on this lovely peaceful evening with slight rain. silence would actually make this free and peaceful but. instead uve got manufactured chillout music behind manufactured chillout missions neither of which actually allow you to chill out unless you are respectively very vaporwave-poisoned and logistics-hearted. like im talking sitting around in your air-conditioned home and thinking that all of human history was oriented towards the contemporary zenith of comfort we can get in exchange for maintaining some inane set of molecular trivia composing the organs and body of this so-called life. go drive out for as long as it takes to leave light pollution n when the earth is totally enshrouded get out lie down look up and ask god if here in this life of a million little breaths under a billion little dots there is anything to manage or not to manage. once ur done we shld hit up a waffle house, put the backseats down and sleep