Road 96: Mile 0 Review (Shreksan)
Honestly, Mile 0 pales in comparison to the first Road 96.
It feels like the devs took the main issue with the original game, Road 96, and amped those up without adding much positive to balance it out. The same over-the-top, sometimes bordering on nonsensical, writing appears here in an almost incoherent manner. Some plot points are set up only to be brushed over/sidelined, and even the main story hardly makes any sense. Spall's review spells out the specifics of the latter, if you're interested.
Furthermore, the characters all feel rather one-note and boring, except for the protagonists, who have their own issues. Zoe is better written, being largely one-note when you aren't playing as her. That said, because Mile 0's narrative revolves around meaningful choices and multiple endings, you can decide how she will react to events in the story as you control her. The problem is that only one of the options actually feels in-character, and the rest feel forced on to forge the branching narrative the game promises. I'm not sure if most of these character-breaking moments even matter, since all the endings seem to revolve around what you do at the end of the game? Idk tbh. Kaito suffers from a similar issue, but that's not all. For the first ~2/3rds of the game, he comes off as overbearing and almost creepy, yet neither the narrative nor Zoe seems to react to this in any meaningful way. The narrative then ends with his sudden, seemingly unnecessary betrayal of Zoe that could've been entirely avoided if he'd waited, like, thirty seconds for her to catch up. Maybe a little longer if he wanted to let her read the files before he handed them off to the Black Brigades. Once again, Spall's review also adds some useful context so go check that out. Thus, not only is Mile 0's branching story built on character-breaking moments, but even when the narrative takes a more linear approach, it still doesn't make much sense.
Beyond that, the gameplay's just kinda boring. I actually like walking sim style games, so that wasn't much of a problem for me. The skating sections, however, felt awkward. The camera is locked and sometimes gets put at odd angles that don't let you see what you're doing very well. Additionally, some of the hitboxes seemed a bit jank, leading to me being hit by obstacles I'd clearly dodged. The conversation minigames were one of the more fun aspects of the original game, yet in Mile 0 they're scarcely featured. When they are, they're so simple that it often seems like you'd have to intentionally choose the wrong answer. Failing these minigames just resets you to the last checkpoint, so it's not even like purposefully failing them would cause you to have a different ending or something. I did like how interacting with the world could lead to your character's 'moral meter' shifting, but these also felt like only one option was in-character, and I'm also not even sure if they affect the narrative of the game beyond aesthetic changes.
Being able to draw on the walls and tattoo other characters was fun, though.