I think I honestly regret having ever played this game, I'm so disappointed.
The art style is pretty good and music is nice.
[b][u]The story[/u][/b] is bad, I dislike it a lot. It started off fine, in fact I liked the first half, it was interesting. But by the second half it introduced [spoiler]magic[/spoiler] which it then quickly [spoiler]debunks[/spoiler] with what one character says, only to then bring it back and actually it was that the whole time, which honestly I would have preferred it stay out of that, but I guess I did predict it from the beginning along with the one clue when you get to the town, so in the end I guess it's more about preference and all, so I'm a little neutral on that.
But the ending, the [spoiler]twist, or second twist I guess[/spoiler], the worst part of that reveal was the fact it never explained why they did some stuff like for example [spoiler]frame me, or ask me to solve who the thief was, WHY DO THAT? It achieved nothing, not even as a distraction for the residents to focus on me instead of them.[/spoiler] and then as you do the last diorama, the fact that [spoiler]Moira appears, teleported from the past, felt like such a slap in the face. That was ACTUALLY so insulting it's insane, you're telling me she's there and we could have rescued her, but instead she gets blasted back to that blazing inferno[/spoiler], so terrible, literally such a huge insult, the story decided to go in a goofy way, but it couldn't even COMMIT to the path it chose, couldn't even remain consistent in that. It would have been it's own version of charming had it been, and I would have been looking at it with a much more favourable lens, even if I came in thinking it was going to be [spoiler]a much less supernatural mystery[/spoiler].
On top of that however, is the fact that they fail. [spoiler]The whole point was to break the spell, the only reason the undo spell went wrong is because they were missing an item, an item that Orlando has, and you're telling me they didn't try again this time with all hands on deck to finally destroy the time freeze spell?[/spoiler] Makes the story look like such a joke. Not ONE attempt at all, and then you're told you [spoiler]can't come back. Be so for real. Maybe if they destroyed the spell, which they can, then I COULD.[/spoiler] The worst part is this is definitely the worst way to end it, [spoiler]The whole town is basically trapped on what will soon be hell, a decade or so, maybe you can handle it, but an ETERNITY frozen in the same day? Thousands, millions of years? How long until they go insane? Or are their memories going to continously be lost? And doesn't this mean that Chea's REAL parents are out there wondering what happened to her? That's so depressing.[/spoiler] HUGE disappointment, which is SUCH a shame because I really wanted to like it but... I just can't. Such a terrible ending.
The characters are cool, at least some of them, my favourite has to be [spoiler]Veronica[/spoiler] for sure. The main protagonist was also a bit of a disappointment, I mean you get the reveal of [spoiler]that the 5 year old is now a grown woman and has not much of a reaction, and then she reads a diary entry (of stuff that we already knew given the stuff I just said) and has a much bigger shocked reaction? It's insane.[/spoiler] I almost wanted to play as someone else instead of her a few rare times.
The gameplay is cool, it's one of the good things of this game, there's so much to do, so many people to talk to and a few to hang out with, with so many different minigames and things to do. It's quite cool. Especially when I kept finding new things that were minigames. Another cool thing would be all the stuff you can buy, it's a small thing but it's neat.
Most of the other minigames were cool but the interrogations were kinda meh.
Being able to pilot a boat was pretty cool, I liked that I could do that.
One thing that I didn't like was when I kept needing to go (or remembered that I needed to check something) on the other side of the map, walking is a pain, stuff always felt far. Looking back, it probably didn't take that long to reach, just a while longer than usual, but still, it felt bad.
Another thing that was bad was the low sensitivity when you're in the chronolens or camera mode, it felt HORRIBLE to turn, and as far as I saw there was no options to change that, so you were stuck with it.
[b][u]For the bad[/u][/b], besides anything stated above, there was SO many issues I had, I'm not sure if it's because I played on linux or what, but a list of them would be:
[olist]
[*] GPU utilization was at 100% all the time above 120 fps, the problem here is if you alt tab it then caused a guaranteed freeze and you'd need to restart the game. I wonder if it's just bad optimization or what. At or below 120 fps it was ok.
[*] Worse yet is options don't get remembered for future sessions and you have to set them back and forth to have them apply again as they still show being on the previous selection.
[*] The camera was bad. Changing it from the default cinematic into standard makes it better, but there should be an option to stop the camera from moving when you move so that it only moves when you use the mouse for example.
[*] Some of the buttons in some minigames didn't register, or just didn't work well. Some examples I can think of are that the cooking minigame became harder to control because of it, and the fast forward in most diorama segments didn't work for some reason, except later it did? I don't know if that was me or what.
[*] Alt tabbing makes your mouse not locked to the game window, if you have multiple monitors it means clicking on stuff you don't want and also making the camera not move until the mouse is back. To fix it I had to open the menu or the objectives list twice or there was alt tabbing out to then click on the game in the taskbar, which would then guarantee the mouse would indeed be locked to the game window. (might just be me)
[*] I've noticed a few typos.
[*] Every time you switched areas the game would stutter quite badly.
[*] Visual bugs with the cards, like when talking to some people the card with the art and stuff that would be the next objective to talk about would be blank, the normal talk cards would be fine, just specifically some mission objective talk cards or however you call them.
[*] Another visual bug would be (at least I think it's a bug?) that when a card get's updated it would appear in the top right but completely blank, I don't remember if there's more visual bugs.
[*] The game has also crashed on me a few times.
[*] Sometimes when trying to turn in the chronolens mode the camera would flip out and go crazy, I don't even know how that happened.
[*] Bought the swimsuit from the fortune teller, next time I went to her it said it wasn't sold (but I still had it), I never tried rebuying it but that has to be a bug.
[*] After the [spoiler]Accused[/spoiler] arc, when you're in your room, I noticed the TV was missing, after sleeping it returned.
[/olist]
Another thing to note is that some parts of the setting seemed odd, stuff that usually is there to block cars is for some reason seen in a place where no car would ever get to, as this is very much a walking city only.
[b][u]Overall[/u][/b], I really wanted to like this game in the beginning, so it's quite sad that it turned into such a huge disappointment, I really disliked the story, it was bad, or at least how it handled things and how the second half turned out, especially the ending. The gameplay was one of the few good things about it with its many minigames. Do be wary however that this may be quite the very buggy mess (assuming it's not just me).
I don't know if you should get this, once again the story, or especially/specifically that ending section was so awful... As stated in the first line, I think I honestly regret ever playing this game. So depressing, I wanted to like this game so much.
