Narita Boy

"It insists upon itself." The lore of the game is very heavily influenced by Tron, which it wears on its sleeve right from the opening cutscene. That said, the story and lore feel better suited for a novel than a video game. It's as if the creator wanted to write a book but wanted to show off their vision of what the world would look like in a film, so they settled on a video game as a way to do both. I'll give the game credit for its creativity and visual effects. The music is fitting and acceptable, if forgettable. The gameplay though is frankly droll and ranges from annoying to tedious. There's quite a bit of back-tracking with no map or helpful indication where to go at times. The combat is primarily a three hit combo with little expansion on its depth apart from adding an uppercut, downstab, and thrust move later on. The enemies are damage sponges unless they have an indicator for a "power" you can use (of which there are 3, indicated by a color) that will allow you to basically one/two-shot them at the cost of enemies being able to do the same to you. This means that battles constantly vascillate between whacking everyone over and over or running the risk of dying instantly and having to redo the entire battle sequence. As you go on, enemies will come at you with a combination of no indicator or all three so you're trying to navigate fighting a group of spongey or instant KO enemies. There is a dash to help you avoid damage; however, too many times that same dash sent me in the opposite direction of where I was holding the joystick, right into the enemy I was trying to avoid. It seems like the hitbox does something weird when doing the dash as there were times that I could jump over an enemy and not get hit, but when I jump and dash over them, I would get hit. The game says you that you can dash through enemies without getting damaged, but this odd hitbox would say otherwise. Just check YouTube if you're interested.

No keyboard remapping ? 1 minutes of unskippable intros every start? Prevents PC from going to sleep? Also too much useless dialogs.

Everything that's good in this game (and there's actually a lot of goodness in it) is destroyed by terrible controls that can't be personalised. I tried keyboard and decided to give it up after few hours...

Narita Boy has a certain flare. I will give it that. When it is not trying too hard to be dark and edgy by showing scenes of torture, mutilated characters, and using crucified characters as barrier style enemies, the bright colors and dramatic set pieces of the game are outstanding. The music is pretty solid, so I have no complaints there. The game play is where things suffer. The controls are too loose, and the platforming aspects of the game are wonky. The enemies are not overly challenging, but have a tendency to land cheap shots. There are some really strange design choices, such as puddles suddenly becoming dangerous for nonsensical reasons. There was an early forest section I was looking forward to because it seemed to promise something different and new. However, after gathering all the needed items and skills to access the area, it turned out to be not much more than a walk through cinematic and the power that I had worked for would not be used again or even mentioned. That same cycle of buildup and disappointment permeated my whole time with the game. About the time that I thought the effort of chasing down yet another string of irritating sections with copious backtracking to get all the keys needed to get a MacGuffin that I thought would open up a creative and interesting part, the game disappointed me. After reading all the glowing reviews for this game, I felt like I had been a victim of a bait and switch. While the game is not horrible, I do not feel the experience of playing it was worth the money or my time.

Really dig the atmosphere, music and overall gameplay. Story also, it’s an emotional experience. Highly recommended.