Harmony: The Fall of Reverie Review (/ᐠ.ꞈ.ᐟ\ᵐᵉᵒʷˎˊ˗)
As I wrote this review, I realized the extent of my dislike of the last act of the game, so here's that paragraph at the start
Plot spoilers, obviously: The last act did kinda ruin the plot for me, it took this realistic fight against a corporation and just threw it all out the window in exchange for "deities from another dimension helped us out and then we won".
It's a weird and bad takeaway from a game which feels like its about hope for rising up against injustice and totalitarianism in our lives. We get shown the crushing realities of this sort of activism through Jade and the events of act 4. A sad realistic ending would have our heroes not win in the way they wanted, like taking the hush money. A hopeful ending would see them prevail in some way. The games ending of "lmao yeah the megacorp will force you out of your homes and then cut you off and the only way you win is to have supernatural powers" is just a really weird message??? Like what are the writers trying to say? That it's hopeless without supernatural powers?
It's especially weird because the storytelling scene on the beach geared me up for a situation where the conflict on brittle is resolved by humanity who then in turn help bring balance to reverie, the opposite of what happened in the past. But nope, all that happens is that the aspirations help fix everything on brittle and it all becomes ok because of them. Because polly jumped in a lake of magical blue water and could manipulate the future.
To me, this ruins the emotional core of the plot in the first 4 acts and makes me question where the writers were going with all this. It makes me want to just forget act 5 and imagine my own ending, which is really unfortunate.
Part of this is also that I got the harmony ending on my first playthrough, which maybe wasn't intended. Since there's no way to skip through the story to see how other choices turn out I guess I won't know if the other ending is more satisfying.
Honestly I'm not sure the extent to which the last act ruins the first 4 for me. I was deeply engrossed before the last act and I was really enjoying my time with the game despite the cons below, but the plot really really REALLY did not stick the landing in the last act.
Does that ruin the game for me? Not as much as you might think. I think I would still recommend the game for the first four acts because they are well written and I really enjoyed the augural mechanics of having detailed hints of the future, but having to
correctly navigate my way there while avoiding undesired inevitable outcomes and still making choices I wanted to make.
The rest of the review:
Pros:
- excellent music and voice acting, specifically the aspirations all have fun and unique voice acting
- i really enjoyed the aspiration's characterizations, i found them all interesting
- a unique storytelling format that is interesting and a story that is short enough that it doesn't get boring by the end
- a story which reflects current events and current realities. it was interesting to see how the events of the last few years are directly reflected in the game
Cons:
- as many have mentioned, the story post act 3 is well, really unrealistic. It kinda ruins the great realistic narrative that was carried through the earlier acts, only to completely vanish by the last act. Even the characters acknowledge how everything feels like a miracle in the route where polly becomes harmony
- the augural mechanic inherently cuts up scenes and forces the writers to write them to flow well no matter what order they're played in, which is obviously an impossible task
- choices mean a lot less when you can see in the augural that it doesn't matter, which in a way is a strength (interesting storytelling arises from polly having the augural) and a con (a bunch of choices really are just meaningless)
- as mentioned in other reviews, there are plot points that feel like they get dropped, though this may be because they end up being locked behind other outcomes that you miss. Since there's no easy way to replay the game, the end result is that some plot points are left unresolved, || why was bond involved with truth's destruction? what happened with all that? ||
Patchable cons:
- there not being a skip button, cmon...
My recommendation: play through the game once, get very immersed in the augural at the beginnings of each chapter, attempt to navigate to your desired outcomes, but don't restart if you don't get what you want.
Do I recommend it? On sale and if you like interesting storytelling mechanics? Go for it, the first four acts are great. Full price, definitely not since the game is short and the ending is weak, it's hard to justify the price.