Amelia Fruzzetti
But more than that — whether it was simplicity, or cleanliness, or maybe just good old-fashioned nostalgia — there was something immensely charming about the entire experience.
Much like a Pink Floyd laser light show at your local planetarium, The Artful Escape can razzle and dazzle, but you probably won’t remember it too long after the fact.
If you haven’t tried Layton before, you could do worse than giving Layton’s Mystery Journey a whirl, considering you’ll get at least a couple dozen hours out of the experience. But if you’ve already played through Katrielle’s quest once, then this is a port that you can safely skip over.
This is an impossible game to rate on a numbered scale. The score below ultimately reflects an arbitrary placement, one that makes the game seem merely middling when it’s really like a full-course meal that was delicious but an absolute pain to work through. Eastward is far from the YIIK class of terrible “Earthboundlike” games, and certainly deserves more attention than that mess. If you have a lot of patience, this is an easy recommendation. And if you have none, I would stay far away. I’m not sure if I’ll ever head Eastward again, but the journey will always remain fresh in my mind.
Life Is Strange: True Colors tries to tell a mature story, one of grieving and self-loathing, how it transforms our lives and others, how we come not to find relationships but build them with those around us. But for all of these themes, it scarcely succeeds at capturing any one of them. It can be compelling, captivating, and charming at one moment and forcefully maudlin at others. It tries to capture the full rainbow spectrum of human emotions, every last hue and shade that makes up the complexities of ourselves. But it only has four colors.
I think the most irritating thing about Oninaki is that its flaws don’t feel like they come from laziness or apathy, but a lack of time and budget.
If you’re new to 2, then it can be a great starting point if you’re unsure of your commitment to a 100 hour experience, as it’s a wonderful sliver of what the full game offers. And ultimately, I think I’ll look back at it even more favorably than the main questline. Just like the game it’s an addendum to, Torna ~ The Golden Country is an unpolished gem: an experience with rough edges that dazzles in spite of them all.