Kathy Rain is another indie adventure game developed with Adventure Game Studio. The gameplay style is nearly identical to any of the previous titles using AGS, such as the Blackwell Series or the Chzo Mythos. Due to this, adventure game addicts will find this to be a slim, speedy appetizer rather than a full, satisfying meal. As for praise, the background graphics, character portraits, music and voice-acting are very well done. The narrative is cohesive and attempts to acknowledge more mature subject matter and language than say, titles from Sierra On-Line or LucasArts from yesteryear. The voice acting and the dialogue within the game are above-average which makes the sparsely-populated town of Conwell Springs a decent enough five-hour tourist trap. The story is pretty good, however, the game falls short on originality in many ways. There are two puzzles that seem very similar to those in Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father and The Secret of Monkey Island. Also, Kathy has a bad habit of telling the player what to do at the end of every cutscene. Everything advanced very linearly, puzzles and solutions were very localized and fairly simple which lowers the difficulty of the game down to a near-casual level. There were only a few locations the player could travel to throughout the game and the player does have to frequently re-visit these locations simply to ask the right person about a newly-discovered topic, which could be tedious to some players. The level of animation within the game and the lack of hotspots seemed somewhat disappointing, and as the story drew closer to the end, the melodrama increased heavily. In the end, Kathy Rain is a neat, little point-and-click adventure game. If you are a die-hard adventure game junkie who can't get enough, I'd recommend it for a five-hour fix, however, I personally believe that the current price of $14.99 is a bit high.
