Tales of the Neon Sea Review (Mearl)
TLDR:
Nice graphics and character art.
Writing is poorly executed and riddled with spelling en grammatical errors. This is so apparent throughout the game that I cannot recommend it.
Longer version:
The game has some good things which will catch your interest. The pixel graphics and artstyle are in my opinion beautiful. That and the characters presented was enough to peak my interest.
But the game falls flat in many other ways.
The writing is terrible:
The most annoying and offputting are horrendous spelling and grammer mistakes. Words are sometimes misplaced, missing or miss spelled. There are grammer errors like missing spaces or other symbols.
But besides that, some characters are horribly written. This already becomes apparent in one of the early chapters where you meet officer Karl. Officer Karl dismisses Rex's solid evidence straight away as unreliable for no apparent reason. Karl seems like a very shortsighted officer that focuses on trivial things. He is just a a very unconvincing police officer and should have no place in the investigation. And Karl is certainly not the only NPC that does this.
Besides chracter writing the overal story arc also leaves some things to be desired. There's basically 2 characters you follow in this story; Rex the human retired detective. And William the cat. I love cats, and William sure is helpful to Rex. But I simply don't understand the additional cat plot with the mobsters. It seems out of place. . But I must admit, I have not finished the story completely, so I might have missed something.
The puzzles are okay. I found most of em them entertaining and at least a little challanging at times. But there's just way too many of them. Sometimes the simplest tasks are changed into a puzzle.