izigame.me

I really wanted to give this game a positive review. It does a lot of things well, and it's overall an enjoyable experience, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it, much less at full price. As other reviewers have said, the game's weakness is its writing, which is catastrophic when the game is, in essence, a visual novel and reliant on its narrative. The story is compelling; I personally had no issue with its political tone or motivations. However, the entire time I was playing the game--and I replayed it just to make sure--I felt like I was missing important information. It was akin to reading a novel while skipping every three sentences or even every other page. You get the general idea, but a lot is lost along the way. Unfortunately, a lot of the story suffers as a result. The characters feel flat--I know next to nothing about most of them--or change off-screen without me witnessing the character development. So much is untold. There is a lot of telling and not showing, and sometimes not even telling OR showing. It's deeply frustrating when the story has so much potential to be great.
Therefore, the story, ultimately, feels unfinished. Unpolished. Amateur. It's bones are there, but there is very little meat. Part of the problem is the gameplay itself. While the Augural is neat as a visualization of the story paths, I don't think they could quite figure out how to marry the concept of it to the actual narrative. Constantly switching back to the Augural view between story beats broke the immersion and disrupted the flow. This becomes especially annoying in Act 4 and abysmal in Act 5 when the writers seem to give up on actually letting us play the game and give us the conclusion in bullet points. Even worse, there were times when I would pick an option in the Augural based on what it seemed to mean, and then whatever was said after picking it made no sense to me whatsoever or was in opposition to what I thought I was choosing. I love the idea of being able to visualize the impact my choices have and, thus, strategize based on what outcome I want, but the logic of it fell apart in some sections. Furthermore, so much information was just dumped into the Codex instead of explained in the game. I really thought the Codex would just be to help you remember the terminology as the game progressed, but, no, it really functions as an infodump for things the writers were too lazy to put into the narrative.
For a game that is obviously meant to be replayed, they have no options for skipping seen dialogue or skipping animation. You can't even replay the story from certain points unless you want to restart an entire act, which saves over/deletes your previous progress, meaning you have no way to go back in and look at the Augural to make different choices. It's so frustrating.
Now, the positives:
The art style is absolutely gorgeous. It was what first caught my eye when I learned about the game in a Nintendo Direct. There are fully animated cutscenes in the game, as well as detailed animations when the characters are speaking. The backgrounds are 3D-rendered and have some motion elements (e.g., public transit passing by, drones flying, waves moving, etc.). The very first words out of my mouth when the game started was, "Oh my God, I love this art style!" The bright, saturated colors on Mediterranean architecture and the fun street art of Atina; the whimsy of the clashing decor and novelty of the pool-turned-living space at the Naiads; and the surreal fantasy of Reverie and its realms, all make the world of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie feel so realized.
Even better, however, is the character design. Both the humans and the Aspirations have such lovely designs, though some characters' designs feel less polished than others (like Laszlo). We have a wide berth of races and body types represented, which is refreshing. For the humans, I am particularly fond of Jade's and Nora's designs and outfits. I love how Ursula has teal lipstick and fingernails, similar to Chaos' own lip color. The Aspirations' designs are what really take the cake for me though. Bliss' wild colors and streetwear, hearkening a Western-bent decora harajuku style, perfectly suit her child-like nature as the embodiment of happiness and fun. Chaos wears a princely outfit, topped with an onyx crown, with a strange sort of clown makeup that I absolutely love and suits his playful personality. Glory, who spends much of the game off-screen, has one of the most striking designs, her towering height accentuated by a floor-length waist cape over wide-leg pants. She has a gold septum ring and glasses with opaque red lenses, which make her seem so ominous and badass. Power is giving an imposing Sean Connery vibe, Truth leans into Tilda Swinton and Annie Lennox's androgyny, and Bond's design is clearly inspired by South Asian and Hindu iconography. All of the Aspirations prominently feature grays, blacks, golds, and reds in their design, except for Bliss and Truth, who is all white with gold accents and a black third-eye. Harmony, Polly's Reverie counterpart, is dressed in an a-line blue gown with gold arm bands. It's so feminine and striking.
The voice acting is quite excellent. I felt much more engaged--and more relaxed--because I wasn't having to keep my eyes on the dialogue box the whole time while on autoskip. The music is also very nice, though I don't have much to say beyond that I found it really atmospheric and enjoyable.
All in all, I wouldn't say I necessarily regret playing it, but I do regret that it failed to live up to the potential that was clearly there. I cannot recommend this game, unless purchased at a large discount and with these caveats in mind.