so badly want to dispel certain preconceptions of this game--ones set by some who dismiss it ("its a vn with no real agency/choices dont do anything") AND ones set by some who gas it up ("the next great american novel" canonization discourse). so badly want to just talk about the many little optional-to-contend-with details ive come to love in this game that's so dizzingly full of them, interpretative or intertextual or something snuck into the code or otherwise, that i immediately forgive it for not caring much abt how indulgent it must look. so badly want to express the episodic experience as bad and good with the excruciating waits, tantalizing peeks of a world that crosses the boundary of the game space into other mediums and irl, and having a closer understanding of a work that changes from part to part, on an almost exponential scale, with the shifting priorities and moods of the creators--and the ideology of obsolescence that extends to both unity as an engine and the game's themes and perceived relevance--over time. and so badly want to talk about my own cowriting of this story that became a mirror into myself; fear of genetic alcoholism, anxieties on separation between "work" and "hobby", the shame of guillibly falling into something i couldn't really foresee but well you shouldve, the worry of constantly forgetting, the difficulty of accepting records and archives and memorials as washed away and lost, for me all of these and more are in it. but ky0 sprawls in my imagination so far and wide that its so intimidating, with so much i want to address.

maybe ill just lose any sense of restraint someday and spread out thoughts on the other nine or ten entries of acts/interludes that count as kentucky route zero on this website, because its an anthology of smaller games strung together at its heart and there's something to say about each element on its own. or maybe ill express how much i love the game in an actually useful and productive way instead. but for now ill settle with saying this is my favorite of them all. sometimes i forget why but i only have to go back to it, slowly replaying it all and loving the finale so much more the second time around, and then i remember. i realized why i love games most of all, after forgetting for a while, because of this one.

replayed on switch and imo, pc is the slightly better option if you got one that can handle it. i dont think its that demanding but idk how the complete version's specs are, plus on pc you can "hack" into the save files by opening them in a text editor and see the variables for yourself, becomes another aspect of playing ky0 for me. no idea if other consoles are better or worse.

my fav of the three ueda has directed so far. all of them are miracles in their own special ways but this is the one i had the strongest emotional connection with. the one where i didn't just simply contend with characters enacting stories about love and how they love but where i myself contended with love, every time i looked into trico's face during some quiet moment. i dont care abt the framerate or annoying tutorial prompts or the camera or occasionally weird puzzle design or whatever. i love you trico