The final stretch of this honestly single-handedly reduced my rating, mostly due to its length but also in the specific ways it decides to utilize its time and, frankly, abuse mine.

It was already pretty light on the adventure-puzzle side of things but the aesthetic and score had made the journey effortless, not to mention it generally being a pretty snappy game. But it's important to stress that mechanically this doesn't have much going for it, and too often its mechanics are closer to busywork than actually harmonizing with the world and themes. "Improvisation" was my favorite chapter to play, not because I played Simon Says [which I definitely did] but because it had an exciting spirit to it that most other chapters didn't. There's a point late in the game where it goes off the rails in a way that's meant to be resonant, but I found it a little weird. [I guess I'll mark this review for spoilers just in case for the following comment, but Sayonara Wild Hearts this super isn't.] Anyway, by the end of the game the "mechanics" are you holding a mouse button and dragging up or down to move through time, and that's it, and wow that is phenomenally boring, and you do it a lot!

The visual style and music in this are truly out of this world, and similar to how I felt with Cuphead this makes me want developers to really consider underutilized aesthetics, if it's in their wheelhouse and artistic inspirations. Hopefully it goes with a game I will want to play again at all, but I will at least be excited to see new things.

An aside: it is apparently incredibly easy to break this game? I managed to break the scripting three times, and had to exit and continue to be able to progress. Two of those times I'm not even sure what I did "wrong" and the other time I guess I clicked too much? In this adventure game? Also, the first time I finished the game [loaded the final chapter to see the other ending] there was no music. Seems buggy! Didn't hurt my opinion of it too much though, other than it happening late enough in one chapter that I had to walk around and pick up items again which was a little annoying.