Pretty easily the least compelling entry Spike Chunsoft has in their catalogue of generally great mystery titles. After completing ToTK, I needed another game to fill the space between then and the release of SC’s newest mystery game, Rain Code. I had played this game previously but dropped it about halfway through, and replaying it I quickly realized why.
The story in this game can be compelling at times, but the characters are littered with overused tropes, even by Spike standards, and the main character’s constant horniness and general lack of personality made it so I didn’t really care for him as a protagonist. Almost all of the somnium segments of the game felt incredibly tedious and boring to me, with most of them either being extremely simple or having you result to trial and error to find the right path you’re supposed to take in order to get to the end in under 6 minutes. By the end I was so done with them I ended up using walkthroughs to find the right path through so I could continue with the story. I'm not even going to get into how unpolished the whole "erm you can somehow retain your memories from other timelines a little bit kinda because PARALLEL WORLDS EXIST!!! but that's literally all we're gonna say about that and hope that it flies" because DAMN.
There were definitely some positives though. The reveal of what the Psync machine was capable occurred genuinely fried my brain, and I had to pause the game for a solid 5 minutes as I ran through all of the possibilities this could have for the plot. However when it was revealed what this function was really used for, I felt slightly disappointed, as I believe this mystery could have used that twist to far greater proportions. The ending twist was fun, but I pretty much saw it coming. The first 10-15 hours of the game are really engaging, but by the end, the tedium really starts to kick in and the plot didn’t ramp up in the way I had envisioned which left me with a feeling of indifference toward the game.
After hearing that the sequel has been received even less positively than this game, I’m likely going to skip out on that one and just hope that Rain Code is able to give me that fulfilling feeling I was looking for.
The story in this game can be compelling at times, but the characters are littered with overused tropes, even by Spike standards, and the main character’s constant horniness and general lack of personality made it so I didn’t really care for him as a protagonist. Almost all of the somnium segments of the game felt incredibly tedious and boring to me, with most of them either being extremely simple or having you result to trial and error to find the right path you’re supposed to take in order to get to the end in under 6 minutes. By the end I was so done with them I ended up using walkthroughs to find the right path through so I could continue with the story. I'm not even going to get into how unpolished the whole "erm you can somehow retain your memories from other timelines a little bit kinda because PARALLEL WORLDS EXIST!!! but that's literally all we're gonna say about that and hope that it flies" because DAMN.
There were definitely some positives though. The reveal of what the Psync machine was capable occurred genuinely fried my brain, and I had to pause the game for a solid 5 minutes as I ran through all of the possibilities this could have for the plot. However when it was revealed what this function was really used for, I felt slightly disappointed, as I believe this mystery could have used that twist to far greater proportions. The ending twist was fun, but I pretty much saw it coming. The first 10-15 hours of the game are really engaging, but by the end, the tedium really starts to kick in and the plot didn’t ramp up in the way I had envisioned which left me with a feeling of indifference toward the game.
After hearing that the sequel has been received even less positively than this game, I’m likely going to skip out on that one and just hope that Rain Code is able to give me that fulfilling feeling I was looking for.