Roman Sands RE:Build

BORN TO WORK WORLD IS VACATION 奈落の島20XX I AM EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH 410,333,666,440 MILKED COWES

[h1] Nice Art, No Substance [/h1] If you fit in the two common categories of 1. hating time loop/timed games and or 2. hating fetch quest simulators, I have bad news for you; this game has both in spades. It's such a terrible shame too, because the game has a cool atmosphere and story behind it, but it's just absolutely ruined by how they decided to execute the gameplay. You do fetch quests for 4 characters in a sequence every day. you unlock more items/time to do more fetch quests or do them quicker. That's the main loop of the game, and unless there's more I'm missing here, they lost me. I would've thought either the story could grip me beyond that, or maybe the game would hook me in the plot before i got sick of the loop, but it never did. Everyone's an a-hole, you're doing chores for no reason, that's it. I'd only recommend experiencing this game second hand through someone else. It's not worth subjecting yourself through boring tasks just to maybe possibly understand what's going on here. Plus, Lain did a lot of this way better.

I haven't played Re:Build; I'm fond of its aesthetics and I'm excited to sit down and play it in one or two hyperfixated sittings. But, as far as I'm concerned, what I'm doing here is reviewing the original release. I'm well aware developing the first iteration (and, seemingly the second, given how long it took) of Roman Sands was a hellish experience. It was described to me as such, anyways. It was a janky mess--sure. But there was so, so much love in it, and in its narrative. It oozed a particular vibe that seemed to me entirely original, taking inspiration from your then novel vaporwave-bust aestheticism. Somehow capturing exactly what it felt like to read Ballard's Vermillion Sands. Words cannot describe how hard it hit little 16 year old me. I was only scratching the surface of the indie scene at the time, so playing through Roman Sands while hitting blinkers felt like catching a glimpse of god in a fallow garden's tomato bush. It felt real. True. True in the only ways well constructed lies can be. It sparked something in me that I don't think I will ever lose. I tried to kill myself, about two months ago. Right after the new release date was set. I barricaded myself in…

The most vindicating depiction of the service industry that I have ever seen in interactive media. What do you MEAN this game has multiple acts? Like, Big Walk is spectacular, but this is my current frontrunner for GOTY. I don't know if anything's gonna top this for me. The folks at Arbitrary Metric consistently write the best dialog I've ever seen in a video game. I will expand this review once I actually beat the damn thing. I'm having far too much fun to rush it.

I really like this! It's obviously really strong aesthetically, I really like the way they did the 3d models for the characters. Likewise the environments are great in all acts. Though the old people are grating at first, I found myself become more sympathetic to them over time, even liking them despite their very pointed flaws lol. It was great getting to know them as you work through each task they can offer you. Act 1 Kara is pretty great, I wish there were more reasons/opportunities to interact with her but oh well. The puzzles are not difficult to discover nor to solve imo, but still present enough of a challenge that it feels good solving them. There's a lot to dig into thematically too if you're into that, though you can also understand the story of the game just fine without diving into the minutia of it. My only criticism is mostly in act 2, where some of Kara's dialogue tends toward being a bit over indulgent for my taste in a way that was likely intentional but didn't really land with me. While I understand that repitition is a recurring theme, and the essence of what she was saying was interesting to me, it just dragged itself out in a way that I think could …

very good ♥♥♥♥