Read Only Memories: Neurodiver Review (Alaedrain)
I wanted a trip to the past, but the memories were too heavy by the end
I've seen some other reviews sharing the same story: it's with a heavy heart that I have to push a negative review on a game I anticipated for so long.
Let's rewind a bit: Neurodiver is a sequel (or at least, a follow-up) to Read Only Memories, originally released in 2015 after a successufl Kickstarter. While there might be criticism to be found in that game, it gathered some attention and touched many people, myself included, with its overall story and gameplay reminescent of something like Snatcher, while bringing a dark cyberpunk-like world that was still less oppressive than usual, bringing forward discussion around identity and sexuality.
The game went on to acquire some success and ended up getting a major update/rerelease under the moniker "2064 - Read Only Memories", bringing along voice-over for the characters and some bonus content (admittedly, I haven't replayed through the original ever since this update)
Strengthening the reach of the game, multiple references were shared with VA-11 Hall-A, another successful Visual Novel dealing with the same topics, in both games.
So it's fair to say that, while much time had passed between my playthrough of Read Only Memories and Neurodiver eventual release in may 2024, it was never too far of my mind, though the the hype had long vanished. You also have to bear in mind that the sequel was announced as far back as 2019. Was the 5 years-development worth the wait?
I ordered the game as it released, happy to delve into the past ; that ended up being the downfall of Neurodiver.
Let's start up with the good: the presentation is still top notch, you really believe you're playing a weird 90s era game imported from Japan on an exotic hardware.
Graphics are charming and its pixel artworks are jaw-dropping, just as Read Only Memories was. Music is nice but never manages to become iconic ; voice-over remained and is rather good, though at odds with the pacing.
So, the package seems nice and engaging.... and yet it took me about a year to finish a game that only lasts around 6-7 hours.
My memories (see what I did there ?) might be embellishing how the first game played, but it felt more akin to old-style adventure game: roam around different locations, talk to the characters and get the right items to make the plot advance.
In Neurodiver, the game is on a rail-road, and you're barely moving around much more that 3 locations; items are almost absents (sometimes replaced by "acquired memories") and the puzzles themselves are truly lacking.
But hey, it's a VN; it doesn't need to be about gameplay, as long as the characters are relatable and the story engaging!
Which is where I think the game fails: you're playing as ES-88, a young and cheerfull Esper, who's able to dive into the memories of others thanks to her trusty Neurodiver. You end up repairing the memories of some characters which were invaded by a mysterious figure called Golden.
The overall plot is interesting and promises to deal with memory manipulation, false souvenirs, and perhaps the dangers of such a technology. But it ends up staying on the very surface of its thematics, with barely one choice along the way about manipulating a memory. As for the mysterious Golden, its origins are dealt with in mere seconds without much context and is rather anti-climatic given how threatening the initial idea ended up.
The characters, while nicely acted, also feel a bit too much on the on-dimensional side. To add up to the injury, several characters are coming back from the first game throughout the adventure, but are barely recognizable in their attitude. I also felt like the overall writing made all characters sound somehow...identical?
Needless to say, the game ends up feeling a bit shallow; with a gameplay that's almost limited to clicking from dialogue to dialogue and a story that ends up on the boring side, the only thing that kept me up was trying to see if the ending was worth enduring the tedium. And if you've read through all this, you've guessed that, to me at least, it didn't.
I feel very sorry for the people who've worked on this game, because it feels like a labor of love, but it must have had a troubled development which ended up with a story too thin to be able to go through in the end.
I can't in these conditions recommend the game; I guess I've been fooled wy my memories, and sometimes the best things are best kept in that special part in our brains and heart.