Moses & Plato - Last Train to Clawville

I really wanted to love Last Train to Clawville. Aesthetically, it hits all the right notes: the art style is undeniably charming, and there is a lot of genuine creativity in both the character designs and the broader world-building. It sets up a setting that you want to spend time in. Unfortunately, as an interactive experience, it completely falls flat. It honestly should have just been a Visual Novel, because the gameplay elements are so poorly executed that they actively detract from the experience. Here is where it goes wrong: The Illusion of Investigation: The story is strictly on rails. Despite the detective framing, there is nothing for the player to actually "investigate." Pointless Puzzles: The puzzles are so painfully easy that they offer zero satisfaction. They feel less like brain-teasers and more like mandatory time sinks just to pad the runtime. A Useless Connections Board: The developers clearly put time and effort into building a "connections" board—a classic detective game mechanic. The problem? There is absolutely no reason to ever use it. It’s just there for show. The Plato Dress-Up Scene: This is the most egregious example of the game's flawed…

Moses & Plato: Last Train to Clawville is a well-written murder mystery with a bit of a detective twist, but the introduction to the characters and world is a bit confusing at first. The gameplay is excellent for a visual novel like this, especially in accessing Moses' mind and deducing the relationships between characters from their words and motives. It's a bit disappointing when it comes to the mini-games and the POV adjustments while exploring the Clawville Express train. On the other hand, I really liked The Wild Gentlemen's bold move to switch to an animation style rather than the realistic style of their previous games, as it shows that a stylistic change isn't a big deal if you already have a strong visual identity and story behind it. While the soundtrack is a bit underwhelming, it's largely offset by the fantastic voice acting.

Overall rating: 3.5/5 A very nice and charming detective story to puzzle away a few evenings. Characters: 5/5 The characters were the highlight of the game. Every single one of them was nuanced and written in a way that made all of them a suspect at some point, even if it was just some minor detail that made you wonder. The portraits and voices brought them to life and I ended up loving or loving to hate them. Performance: 5/5 Never had any issues with performance, the game looked and sounded beautiful. Gameplay: 2/5 The gameplay itself was really where I had the most issues. From the trailer it looked like a "Choices matter" type of game where you have to make tough decisions and manage your time, but in reality it played more like a visual novel along the lines of Ace Attorney or Danganronpa; you could not miss any vital evidence and I do not think there is the potential of messing up or achivieng a game-over scenario. This does not make the game bad per se, but I had skewed expectations during the first chapters. Gripes: There is a nice submenu that lets you draw connections between the characters, arranging them on a pinboard with the red string and all, and…

It really bothers me when a game has a "Very Positive" rating or something similar and somehow the top, most helpful review, is somehow negative. This is a story game, it's supposed to be linear, there's no changing whodunnit but that was never the point and getting fooled by marketing speak or looking into it is more of a consumer issue than anything else. My biggest criticism is with the mini-games and that M&P doesn't tell you that there's a fast travel button in the top right! Otherwise, fantastic writing, characterization, beautiful animation, strong voice acting, and a lovely return to form for this franchise makes this an easy recommendation. Don't believe the (lack of) hype.

Very well done mystery game. Voice acting was superb and the world building made me very intrigued to hopefully see more games/mysteries that explores more of the world off the Clawville train. I'd definitely recommend this game to anyone that loves a good mystery and maybe also those who love Zootopia but wish it had more substance to it.

Underrated asf