I think the main cast and story at the core of this are excellent and very compelling. It's a sweet narrative and the kind that's important to share and feels like it comes from a personal place. But my problem with ASFTU is that you mostly see those develop at the start and end of each chapter, and what's left in between is really tedious and mundane adventure game gameplay that becomes very frustrating after a bit. By the end of chapter 3 I had to look up a guide because I couldn't fathom wasting any more time running from one end of the game's word to the other in vain, having missed an important item or conversation necessary to continue the main path.
Unfortunately, on top of being tedious, the "filler" feels like it kind of ruins the cohesion between the main mechanic of the game and its main story. "Space diving" as they call it, is the protagonist's ability to enter the mind of NPCs to see a manifestation of their lives and struggles, as well as the power to manipulate what's inside in order to help them move forward with their lives. This works extremely well when it's used for actual key events of the narrative, but when it's part of a mundane fetch quest... Not so much. In fact, some of the less important space dive segments ARE very good, but the disparity in quality and seriousness can be bonkers: One moment you'll be helping a martial arts' teacher realize that his passion and vocation for passing his knowledge to vulnerable kids in order to improve their lives is more important to him than pursuing a more stable, but less fullfiling office job, and the next you'll be breaking apart a guy's alarm clock so that he falls asleep in real life and you can steal his step ladder. The tonal shifts aren't great and usually come from content that feels like a complete waste of time.
And yet, again, I did like the core narrative very much and can't just chalk off this as a bad game. But definitely one you're gonna need a lot of patience with. And it's a real shame because I believe it could have been a phenomenal, say, 4 hour long gem. But they went for 12-ish hour one instead with a lot of wrinkles.
Unfortunately, on top of being tedious, the "filler" feels like it kind of ruins the cohesion between the main mechanic of the game and its main story. "Space diving" as they call it, is the protagonist's ability to enter the mind of NPCs to see a manifestation of their lives and struggles, as well as the power to manipulate what's inside in order to help them move forward with their lives. This works extremely well when it's used for actual key events of the narrative, but when it's part of a mundane fetch quest... Not so much. In fact, some of the less important space dive segments ARE very good, but the disparity in quality and seriousness can be bonkers: One moment you'll be helping a martial arts' teacher realize that his passion and vocation for passing his knowledge to vulnerable kids in order to improve their lives is more important to him than pursuing a more stable, but less fullfiling office job, and the next you'll be breaking apart a guy's alarm clock so that he falls asleep in real life and you can steal his step ladder. The tonal shifts aren't great and usually come from content that feels like a complete waste of time.
And yet, again, I did like the core narrative very much and can't just chalk off this as a bad game. But definitely one you're gonna need a lot of patience with. And it's a real shame because I believe it could have been a phenomenal, say, 4 hour long gem. But they went for 12-ish hour one instead with a lot of wrinkles.