Nostalgic Features from True Classics

Firstly, don't let the graphics deceive you, this isn't an RPG like Paper Mario, this is actually an adventure game. While there are encounters akin to 'boss battles', they aren't played out using statistics, but rather rely on your ability to pay attention to the world and remember the details of the story and characters. This game is essentially a combination of elements from various classic Nintendo games: - The graphical style is taken from Paper Mario. - The core time loop and notebook mechanics are taken from Majora's Mask. - The characters' speaking noises are taken from Animal Crossing's 'Animalese'. Ultimately this proves to be a sensible decision: Taking what has worked in critically-acclaimed games and reusing it to good effect. There are also other areas of the game where it wears its inspiration on its sleeve... - There is an eye symbol akin to the Sheika eye from The Legend of Zelda that makes frequent appearances. - One character wears a heart-shaped mask that resembles Majora's Mask. - There is a train that bears similarities to the Excess Express from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. - A certain region near the end of the story likewise appears to take inspiration from the endgame of The Thousand Year Door. (To say more would be to spoil the story.) The decision to make this an adventure centering around items and dialogue and without any proper combat is an interesting one. It's mostly effective, but makes most of the major events of the game quite easy. It's quite hard to place this game as its easiness and deceptively friendly-looking characters make it seem as it if ought to be aimed at younger players, and yet the second chapter heavily revolves around an incident involving a gun, and it gets quite dark at times, especially towards the end and in the postgame, hence I probably wouldn't recommend it for younger children. It's a surprisingly long game. The game only has five chapters, but the chapters gradually get longer as the game goes on and the story gets more complex. When accounting for interruptions, I'd estimate it probably took me about 20-24 hours to complete everything including the postgame content. (Though I was taking my time over it.) I felt it started to drag a bit towards the end, and was close to outstaying its welcome, but overall was well paced. I enjoyed most of the chapters apart from chapter three because its ending left a lot of unexplained ambiguities. A lot of the resolution is done with a poorly written song with clichéd and fairly ambiguous lyrics. If the story is about what I think it's supposed to be about, I wonder if they purposely censored it so they could get a console port with a lower age rating. Though even then, I'm left wondering if one of the characters ran away from home or committed suicide. It's not very well hinted. Part of me wonders if something was lost in translation and whether the Spanish version might make these details clearer. There was also a detail from the end of chapter two that didn't really make sense in regards to why a character behaved as she did, but it didn't really spoil the chapter. Again, part of me wonders if something was lost in translation. Most of the story was enjoyable, albeit also mostly predictable in the earlier chapters. The 'twists' aren't especially subtle, there's usually some fairly obvious clues leading up to them. In some cases I think the storylines would have been better if they had been played straight and avoided the twists. However, the overarching storyline (or 'myth arc', you might call it) made up for most of the weaknesses in the individual stories. It definitely added some depth and intrigue. Most of the characters are likeable, and some that weren't likeable to begin with became more likeable after some character development. There was only one character that I really didn't like, and one that I liked to begin with but stopped liking after a plot twist. Lastly, while most of the English translation is generally good, there were a number of areas with some pretty glaring grammar errors and other mistakes. (E.g. "You returned them their kite.") There's quite a number of them, but the game has a lot of text, so percentage-wise it's probably not that much. However, one thing that persists through much of the game is a muddling of pronouns. 'They' and 'their' are used to an extent that feels unnatural to a native English speaker. For example, characters that have been firmly established as male or female will still sometimes be referred to as 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she'. Most notably, there's a sidequest titled "Help Him Conquer Their Fear" which mixes both 'him' and 'their' when it should be using 'him' and 'his'. Ultimately it's nothing that hampers the meaning, but it makes the game look unpolished and takes some of the shine off of it. All in all, I'd say 80-90% of the game is a good experience, hence I give it four stars out of five. It's not quite as great as the classics that it immitates, but it comes incredibly close to recapturing what the true greats managed. (I'm also grateful for the modernisms being kept to a minimum. That'll likely help the game to age well.)