Where The Water Tastes Like Wine

When I first saw this game I expected it to be your standard modern adventure game, but I was happily surprised when I started playing. First of all, I'm usually detered from these sorts of games by the large amount of reading involved, however most encounters in this game are fully voice acted, which was a massive shock. The main gameplay loop is simply walking around the country and finding new and interesting tales, which range from very hopeful and silly to amazingly depressing. With these stories you can talk to major characters who set up camp on the country map. These characters are also voiced and have really interesting dialogue. If I had to fault the game for anything I guess I would say that it's very niche in its appeal. I love this game because it's very much a game of wandering, meeting new people, experiencing now town, and telling stories that eventually evolve as more people hear and retell them. I highly recommend this game because it is truly something unique. Interestingly enough, some of the stories you hear are actually based on their location, such as finding the Jersey Devil in New Jersey, which I found really cool. This game is a love letter to American folk culture, which is something not really celebrated. If you're up for an adventure that makes you feel some genuine emotion, then I can't recommend Where The Water Tastes Like Wine more highly.

Oh, jeez. This game. Where The Water Tastes Like Wine. Where to begin? I bought it for a couple of reasons: - The soundtrack. I first found out about the game through the soundtrack. A lot of talented people brought this aspect of the game to life. It's not an all time classic in the world of video games, but much effort and consideration was put into how each state sounds. - Tarot symbolism. Each story you collect has an assigned Tarot card. The stories tie into the themes, personality traits, and mythology associated with the card. However, only a few of the Major and Minor Arcana are represented, but there's a good mix of both. - You're a big symbolic skeleton hobo. Cool! - Americana. I love media about the great American road trip. That was my childhood every Summer, with my dad cursing at us in the back seat, with a cigarette in his right hand and his left arm out the window, and with my mom trying to find something, anything on AM Radio. - A narrative about stories and storytelling. Ehh... OK, those were the reasons I bought the game. How does it actually play? You wander around aimlessly looking for nodes, which provide you a story. There are over 200 stories to collect. There's CnC regarding how the stories play out, and some of them are very well written and narrated. I especially liked the spooky stories. The walk speed is fine IMO but the camera is DREADFUL. You then find special plot characters which you regale with your stories. They want to hear a series of stories with a series of themes, which you then try to match up. You then go out looking for more stories and more plot characters, you also manage some resources, gotta catch 'em all, blah blah, and, that's it? IDK what I was expecting. The little stories themselves are usually very entertaining, but the gameplay structure just was waaay too aimless for me. I feel like this would have been one game where LESS gameplay would be ultimately more beneficial to my enjoyment of the game. 2/5.

Where The Water Tastes Like Wine lets you wander continental America during the Great Depression. The main goal is to meet with other travelers and learn their stories, and share smaller stories that you collect in different regions. The regions also have their own soundtrack, which is excellent - the songs do end up repeating a lot, but didn't become unwelcome. The smaller stories you collect do have small interactive moments, where you can guide where it goes, and they're definitely more interesting because of that. You share these stories with the characters you meet along the way. Sharing stories also lets them 'into the wild' where they might return to you in a different form. The characters are well-written and tell a lot about the time you're in. Some of them are excellent. Some are just odd, and are completely out of place - for a game that works hard at evoking a time period, it was frankly annoying to hear a story from a completely different decade. Others have commented on the travel, which does wear on you. I sunk the first eight or so hours just wandering, collecting stories, meeting people, and really enjoying myself. After a while, you have to 'finish up' by finding characters as they wander, but there's no easy way to do so. The routes are tedious, dangerous for no reason, and usually if I had a bug (there are a few) one of these shortcuts was involved. And by the way! The character in the intro is another character you have to tell stories to - the ending seems to be different depending on how often you encounter him during the game and at the end. I only saw him at the end, didn't have any other chances to interact with him, and got a really basic ending ("Hope you enjoyed yourself!") that left me wondering what happened. You don't get to go back and work on a better ending - that's it. So the stories told are excellent, but you'll need to go into it with some spoilers, and a lot of patience, to enjoy yourself.

German and Chinese language still missing, game being updated on Steam but not here. I have it elsewhere and won't buy here without a decent update and the missing languages.