I rate games very raely on plattforms, but this little game is worth it. Is's a nice mysterious story until the end. You've got a small inventory an items to deal with. The puzzles are very diversified, sometimes a bit demanding, but not frustating. Nice thing is, that you chance characters now and then. The pixelart is very detailed and kind of nice with it's lighteffects. The only thing I'm really missing, are voiceovers. That would be a big update for the athmosphere, like in Gemini Rue ... All in one, I can really recommend this game.
I really enjoyed the atmosphere of this game: the pixel art is done very well, the environments are very detailed, the characters look distinct and original. The soundtrack is not intrusive and helps create a good ambiance.
Unfortunately, rest of the game is mediocre. Here are the main flaws for me:
* Story. First couple of chapters were pretty intriguing, The team did a lot of worldbuilding and were actively building up the characters. I expected some interesting developments or some twists in the end, but close to it the story's culmination was pretty banal and disappointing. Additionally, the pacing is poor. 75% of the game you get tension building up, but then the latter part is just text dump after text dump explaining everything. And all the building up of the world and characters didn't matter at all
* Dialogue. They are alright, but sometimes it felt like they were written by a kid
* Spelling. A lot of mistakes in the English localization
Another thing was the gameplay. A lot of it was solving basic puzzles, e.g. place different sized gears on pegs to connect a gear chain; rotate some tiles with patterns to connect beginning and the end; look at a tangle of wires and follow them to correctly determine each wire's beginning and the end. It got old pretty fast.
And my minor pet peeve are the controls. Your character walks around slowly, but you can hold a button to make them run. As a result I had to play with that button held all the time, because there is no reason to not run.
Overall it's an alright game strongly ruined by lackluster story pacing, dialogues and mistakes, which should be the main strength of such story-driven games. It's alright for a single playthrough, I'd recommend getting it with a discount.
beautiful pixel graphics, everthing comes together nicely. a very nice relaxing adventure game with fantastic atmosphere and a mystery to solve. and that is the bottom line. highly recommended.
Tales of the Neon Sea is a futuristic pixel-style point n click adventure where you play as private detective Rex, half human and half... I guess robot? The game has various puzzles, mini games and such in it to add some variety to the gameplay.
The story is interesting, you investigate a murder that eventually ties to unsolved murders 15 years earlier with a serial killer that never got caught. The way the story unfolds is done in a good way and the game is separated into four distinct chapters. The characters are well-written, albeit perhaps a bit cliché at times. The localization is done well and the soundtrack is really good.
The gameplay is your standard point n click; interact with the world, combine items to solve puzzles, etc. but it also contains some mini-games, time-sensitive events and platforming which works out well. There are also segments were you play as a different character. You control the characters directly, I recommend using a gamepad rather than KB+M but it's a personal choice in what you would prefer.
Overall, I definitely recommend this game and since the game does end on a note that opens up for a second game I am hoping that the developers will return to make more games in this universe starring Rex. With that said, it does seem like they have a completly different game coming up so it might be a while before we will see that - if at all.
