On my second playthrough (done right after the first, I guess you need to log something in between for backloggd to display it properly), I find myself particularly appreciating 80 Days' focus on the universal yet vastly different lives and concerns of working people the world over.
It's a bit frustrating that making good time results in a comparatively uneventful journey compared to the whirlwind of my first. That didn't make for the best experience this time around and I think any further runs I make around the world won't be all too concerned with the time limit, but learning to savor the trek is valuable in its own right and obviously something the game is concerned with. I have a hard time making many other confident statements about what 80 Days is interested in because even after playing twice I still don't feel like I've seen any topic or major storyline through to its ending. I'm not sure if I was just unlucky or if the paths I wanted to take were too far from what it expects, but there's constant setups without payoffs, clear markings for questlines that only really play out if you stay on a single railroad across most of a continent.
I suppose getting bits and pieces of a world too large to grasp as a simple traveler is the experience they're going for, and it's all done brilliantly. Everything is happening with or without you and you're just getting snippets as you pass through. In some ways it's unsatisfying, but what can you expect? You're just a visitor, and the sheer scale of the Earth and the diversity of people within it is the point, not any particular events.
It's a bit frustrating that making good time results in a comparatively uneventful journey compared to the whirlwind of my first. That didn't make for the best experience this time around and I think any further runs I make around the world won't be all too concerned with the time limit, but learning to savor the trek is valuable in its own right and obviously something the game is concerned with. I have a hard time making many other confident statements about what 80 Days is interested in because even after playing twice I still don't feel like I've seen any topic or major storyline through to its ending. I'm not sure if I was just unlucky or if the paths I wanted to take were too far from what it expects, but there's constant setups without payoffs, clear markings for questlines that only really play out if you stay on a single railroad across most of a continent.
I suppose getting bits and pieces of a world too large to grasp as a simple traveler is the experience they're going for, and it's all done brilliantly. Everything is happening with or without you and you're just getting snippets as you pass through. In some ways it's unsatisfying, but what can you expect? You're just a visitor, and the sheer scale of the Earth and the diversity of people within it is the point, not any particular events.