Kentucky Route Zero is in one way a collection of stories intertwined between ghostly caricatures of the past, complicated stressed and living individuals, and government and environmental factors that work in such mysterious and incomprehensible ways to the denizens living underneath and on it that they might as well be supernatural, and which they are shown as within the entire work.
Every Act has interesting messages to tell, and lives to reflect on and shed a tear with. By the time everyone comes together to mourn the end of the journey, each person is fleshed out further than the featureless faces that adorn them would suggest. The game touches on several aspects of a decaying shifting void that is midwest America, whether that be the brainwashing ghastly denizens of corporations that push people into the neverending spiral debt hole they craft, or the old denizens on the high mountain scattered long after their nature project failed with an attachment to a dingy computer program that sounds constant static. There isn't really a single piece in here that feels without purpose or really in the wrong space at all. It is dense, certainly a less explicit piece than most, and a large amount of factors that make up the whole are something that it intentionally encourages you to research on your own. Each dialogue in their own points to several meta and thematic factors that don't just have to do with the characters at the receiving end of each line.
The visuals and music are just as thematically placed, each a perfect painting and screenshot in of itself. A lot of work was put into matching the perspective of the characters and where the camera is placed. A few specific examples that stand out to me is the revolving passage of time in Act 5, as a cat hearing everyone mourn and discuss where they're going, or the overbearing perspective when you move about the Hard Times. Or my favorite part, The Entertainment, as you bounce between each painfully depressing line.
I won't claim to understand all of what I saw as I played through the game, and honestly there are a lot of things that are too subtle for me to catch on, or maybe I'm just not in tuned enough to just get it. But that's fine. It's still a masterpiece of the medium, something I wish to see considered in high regard for the recognizable future. I hope it inspires people as much as it teaches me on aspects of life I've never been a part of or could directly relate to. It's a perfect encapsulation of what it sets out, and I was very emotionally invested. I highly recommend getting Kentucky Route Zero.

The first thing you can do in the game is decide to name your dog, or just decide it's an old traveller following you until the day you are unable to give him treats or his legs give up.
An amazing trip from start to finish, Kentucky Route Zero is the game that made me realize magical realism can be achieved by other communities of the world aside from latinamerica. The bibble belt of USA comes to life in this game, showing you stories of decadence, the hardships of debt and the dehumanization of people thanks to it.
I'm 24 years at the moment of writing this. I can remember the times I have cried since my adolescence, since I was called a crybaby while growing up.
I didn't cry trough many hardships of my life because, I recall, tought that tears are precious things that must be conserved. But this game made me cry. After an encounter with a character that brought up in me the remembrance of the beauty of non-existence and being alive in memory, I realized this game was for me. But then, while I was walking away from it's house, a mesmerizing rendition of You've got to walk (that lonesome valley) by the Bedquilt Ramblers, a band started to produce covers of gospell and bluegrss for this game, I understood that it wasn't just for me, but it would be one of the loves of my life.
This game has made me feel like home. A home that's starting to break down, full of mosquitos and filth, with no water or electricity, but the house you grew up in, with the pets buried in the yard and your gradma's pot boiling while she listens to the radio. A house that will probably cease to exist once you leave, but that during your stay in it will take roots in you

The word masterpiece gets thrown around a lot with games, but with Kentucky Route Zero that description is apt. The writing is some of the best that gaming has to offer; effortlessly profound, taking you on a journey that never goes where you'd expect and that lingers long after it's over. The world is like a dream, and yet it feels so tangible.

Everything from the story, the characters, the art, and the soundtrack crashes together to point to the game's themes. It's a special thing to behold, a creative at the top of their game like this. For days after the end of the final act I was just in awe of everything I had experienced. There will never again be anything quite like my time on the Zero.

Really beautiful game. Well written in a way that games aren't normally well written - normal when people say that a game has good writing it's another way of saying 'the dialogue is snappy' or some such. This feels much bigger than that, and solves many of the issues of "story games" for me. The game itself is sort of a point-and-click adventure game but stripped down largely to character interactions and given direct control of the cast. The 'gaminess' of the game is all in service of the story and, as such, makes it perfectly suited for this format.
I have quite literally just finished this and have so many thoughts about it that I can't really coherently put them together but all I can say is that it's magical, daring storytelling that you're unlikely to see anywhere else.

(Initially reviewed this with 4 1/2 stars but amended to 5 after stewing on it for a bit).

This is my favorite game of all time as well as arguably one of my favorite novels. It's devastatingly beautiful and vitally necessary. The strong influences of the magical realist, southern Gothic, and postmodern literary traditions make it more of a participant in the broader culture than almost any other video game, but at the same time the way it builds up its world and story collaboratively with the player would only be possible in an interactive medium.

Beyond any of its impressive formal qualities, though, the most important thing about KR0 is the way it talks about the real world and the American South in particular. At the same time compassionate and mournful, full of rage and despair and just a few glimmers of hope, it's one of the most honest and vibrant depictions I've seen across any art form of the way America eats itself alive, and the myriad ways people struggle or give in as they're digested.

When I wept at the end of Act V, I wept for the broken dreams of everyone who has been destroyed by America.

What impresses me most about Kentucky Route Zero is that despite how liberally it borrows many of its best traits from other mediums, it so clearly could only work as a game. In most games, the camera is an object to manipulate and control, a tool to serve the gameplay above all else. KRZ's use of camera takes more cues from films and cinematic technique than the vast majority of its counterparts, where its slow pans, layered zooms and stark scene transitions are calculated, artistic choices, left out of the players' hands and implemented to elicit specific emotional responses or entrench us deeper in the thick atmosphere of its world. The writing is at a strong literary level which doesn't overcome, but is simply not even concerned with the trap many games fall into of using dialogue as exposition crutches to push their stories further. Plot is secondary to mood and atmosphere in the story of KRZ, with its writers placing all focus on novelistic passages that emphasize detail and imagery, meshing well with the mysterious, unexplainable happenings in the world that are presented audiovisually.

What makes it so vital as specifically a game though? Not an easy question to answer, and KRZ is so elusive and oblique that I imagine it means a lot of things to a lot of people. To me, it's about a few key choices related to interaction—the way you occupy multiple characters, write your own story with well-constructed dialogue choices (another subversion here in that again, this informs the way the story feels moment to moment, rather than giving us any actual agency over how it plays out) and immerses you into its most surreal qualities. There's a wonderfully dense thematic tapestry that is carefully weaved throughout the five acts as well; the throughline that sticks out most as I write this is the lack of control we have over our lives and our situations, the way we don't understand so many things swirling around us, beyond us, but often just accept what we're given with a sigh, moving forward, not looking back. Aren't games, at their most basic level, ultimately about control and pushing forward to what lies ahead?

One cannot live on vibes alone. Getting 3-4 hours into a narrative focused adventure game and finding the narrative still doesnt have any hook or tension, whilst also being very deliberately slow as hell, basically leaves me 2 acts in with nothing in the narrative keeping me interested.

Yeah the aesthetic is great and the dialogue system is good. And I get the appeal of the game's setting and what it's going for.

I dont think it helps that I think the adventure/puzzle gameplay segments are outright bad. There's nothing compelling in them at all and they go at about half the pace they should do.

If you want an Americana story focused adventure game with cool dialogue play the Missing.

Kentucky Route Zero is without a doubt the most pretentious game I have ever played. I would be ok with that, if the plot warranted such pretentions, but unfortunately a lot of the story beats in KRZ didn't really resonate with me. I don't think this game is nearly as deep as gamers think it is. So much ink has been spilled over "the american dream", and I don't think this has anything new or insightful to add about the current state of modern north american life. Yes, capitalism is bad. Yes, most people are forced into indentured slavery due to insurmountable debt. Yes, the system is rotten to the core, and we need to find our own happiness through....the power of friendship. I'm sure all of this would seem groundbreaking if you have never checks notes read a single book in your life, but I have had this story rehashed and retold in every artistic medium over and over again for decades. Also I am still salty about having to sit through a fucking hour long play in this game. The whole thing reeks of something some brutal undergrad student would try to convince me is deep at a house party.

Despite my overall gripes, I can appreciate some of the narrative experimentation this game does pull off. Having a non-static main character is nothing new in games, but switching characters mid-conversation creates an interesting disorientation of self and presents a way to exposit the inner thoughts of characters in a way I haven't seen before. Also, some of the actual gameplay itself is really unique; there are many small moments that stick out, and I found myself consistently caught off guard by small gameplay choices that I will not spoil here. I think that breaking this game up into chapters works ok, but also led to a wildly inconsistent tone that may have worked when playing each chapter years apart, but doesn't really work when playing the game over the span of a week or two.

I sat for two weeks after completing this game before I wrote about it, hoping that mulling it over a bit more would let me draw out more nuance from what I had just engaged with, and hindsight would allow me to appreciate the whole more. Unfortunately, my take on the game hasn't changed much since the credits rolled. I know this game means a lot to a lot of people, and I can understand why, but unfortunately the storytelling didn't resonate with me in any profound way. It's worth playing, as a piece of experimental storytelling, but it's not the decade defining piece of art it has been hyped up to be.

I think it's safe to say that Kentucky Route Zero has left me overwhelmed with thought. It's a game that has a lot on it's mind but takes it's time to let it all out. Like a lonely campfire story that takes all night to tell. It's a game that truly feels like it has a soul to it. A beating heart that invites you to listen at it beats to a rhythm you feel like you've known all your life. I recommend knowing as little as possible before playing, the journey is best experienced with fresh eyes, unknowing of any destinations along the way.

I feel like there's so much left for me to say and yet I struggle for the right words. A game that has left me truly speechless, and one that I will think about perhaps for the rest of my life.