I went into this knowing full well that To The Moon is a point and click story, not a game. I love visual novels, 16-bit graphics and am I'm very story-oriented in my game selection. The game has beautiful music and an interesting concept. But I didn't love it and it seems to be a combination of things. Poor mechanics take away from the visual novel style- awful pathfinding, repetitive tasks, easy puzzles that seem tacked on for the sole purpose of making it more 'game like'. I found myself wishing it had embraced its visual novel-y elements by making it easier for the 'reader' to navigate between scenes. As far as story, I feel like I played a different game from other reviewers. I found the pop culture references to be trite and excessive. The various scenes as you travel through the game feel inconsistent, as if the game isn't really sure when they're happening. To avoid spoilers, that all I can really say on that one. The dialogue felt very 'young', for lack of a better word, which undermined its attempts to be a mature story. Maybe the issues above just pulled me out of the story too often and too hard, or maybe it was that I didn't really connect with any of the characters. I 'got' all the references, but I was left feeling like maybe the game was just meant for a younger target audience...and if your major selling point is the strength of the story, that story should be an enduring one that is able to stand on its own for multiple age groups.
...but I actually wasn't able to bring myself to finish the game. It's a very visually interesting game, with interesting story concepts. The problem is that the execution just falls flat somewhere along the way. The supporting characters are completely uninteresting, and about an hour in, Kate herself started to rub me the wrong way. Maybe I was just tired of the awkward movement paths or the frustratingly executed puzzles. When I found myself with zero desire to explore what should have been a very interesting world, a main character I'd grown to actively dislike, and a tendency to clench my jaw during quests... I knew it was time to throw the towel in. I'm surprised to hear that Syberia is sometimes compared to The Longest Journey- I was on the edge of my seat with TLJ, and had to force myself to try and finish Syberia.
