[h1] A hidden gem held back by it's length [/h1]
I should start off by saying that i was very pleasantly surprised with Last Resort, so much so that it has earned a spot among my favorite VN experiences of all time (with emphasis on “experiences”, I’ll go into more detail about this later on) and exceeded my expectations that were set from other reviews.
[h2]The Good[/h2]
The biggest praise i could give to this game would have to go towards it's excellent writing, that, despite it's short length, managed to convey the exact emotions it aimed for with such accuracy that it made me sob a few times, and even made me take a break to recollect my thoughts, despite not being the kind of person that’s usually affected by games to such a degree. It’s a shame too, because I feel that a lot of people might’ve misunderstood the developer’s intentions and attributed that to the writing being “bad”. It’s kind of hard to explain stuff like that without making them feel like a “to be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty” type of situation, but bear with me. At the end of the game, you receive a note by the developer stating, among other things, that “[spoiler] Every one of us wants to run away from our problems from time to time [/spoiler]. That’s [b] the feeling [/b] I’ve tried to put into the “Last Resort”.” And, knowing the vast thematic scope that the game went for and it’s incredibly limited runtime, it couldn’t really be any different. The point wasn’t for the player to emotionally connect with the characters themselves per se, but for the characters to act as a reflection of the player’s own life struggles. The emotional resonation is meant to happen through the incredibly accurate representation of the thoughts and feelings that the protagonist goes through during the events of the game. Or at least that was my personal interpretation that allowed me to enjoy the game as much as I did. Aside from the writing, the artwork is also very pretty, the animations were better than I expected them to be and the soundtrack was nice too.
[h2]The Not-So-Good[/h2]
Considering the game’s main theme is escapism due to disappointment in our everyday lives, it’d be nice to see a bit more of the protagonist’s everyday routine and actively experience his thoughts during it instead of being quickly filled in on his background before going straight to the main plotline. However, that doesn’t mean it went on for too long. On the contrary, the main issue lies in the game’s incredibly limited length which didn’t allow it to deviate from the main plot. In that sense, the execution couldn’t have been much better, but at it’s current state it almost feels more like a proof of concept and the developer’s talent in writing rather that the full-fledged visual novel it could have been. It’s not an incomplete visual novel by all means, but based on it’s scope it doesn’t feel fully realized. However, it still does offer a worthwhile experience at a fair price. Aside from that, there’s a violin track that plays around the beginning and the end of the game that has a weird 360 effect where you hear the violin constantly rotating around your head if you wear headphones. I don’t know if it’s intentional or not, but I found it incredibly distracting. I’ll also agree with other reviews that the bouncing in the eyes’ irises was a bit excessive, and in my opinion so were the bouncing question/exclamation marks and multiple hearts. It would maybe make sense in an H game to signify progression, but in a normal vn they were a bit too much, and a simple face expression or at least fewer popup symbols could’ve done the job. Lastly, while I wouldn’t outright categorize it as a negative, the voice acting unfortunately ended up breaking my immersion more than anything so I opted to disable it. I personally didn’t find the deeper voices and the Russian language to fit the characters that, unless I’m missing out something, weren’t supposed to be Russian. But again, it’s not really a negative. The voice acting is more of an added bonus from the developer, and the lack of voice acting is just as serviceable.
[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
Hidden Resort is an emotionally engaging, worthwhile experience that unfortunately doesn’t deliver as much as it could due to it’s short length. Despite it’s shortcomings, it delivers what it promises at a fair price.
[b]Final Score:[/b] 8/10
