I know this game is loved by a lot of people —— some even say that this is the best game they’ve ever played. I also watched many streamers play this game and some of them were even moved to tears. However, as far as I’m concerned, it’s just an ordinary game, or even below-average without the unique feature that players can control two brothers at the same time.
The narrative is made up of several cut scenes. The brothers lost their mother in a shipwreck and the younger one is always regretful that he wasn’t able to save his mother. Since then, he has been afraid of water. One day, their father is seriously sick and the only medicine to save him is the magic spring in the mountains. On their way to the spring, they need to cooperate and overcome a lot of difficulties.
The basic mechanics of the game is to use gamepad to control two brothers at the same time and solve puzzles. It is an original idea and it solved a problem that no one had ever been able to solve: single player and multi players can both enjoy the gameplay. However, in order to balance the complexity of controlling, puzzles are limited to certain choices, for example, there are too many ladder climbing puzzles. This is dangerous, because the story is mostly told by cut scenes, so if the gameplay is too simple, players can get bored easily. But the level design is better than I thought. The length of each level is comparatively short so that players won’t have to repeat the same action over and over again. In addition, one thing I really like about this game is that, though I can’t understand a single word each character says, I can still “comprehend”, and I think this owes to the artists and good actors. Players can receive enough information already by pictures and their tones.
However, I don’t like the ending at all. I understand that developers want to show the growth of the younger brother, but he didn’t grow up. In fact, he is the one that keeps warning his brother that they need to keep going instead of hanging out with the girl. What’s more, after the death of his brother, when he needs to swim across the river, he chooses to be possessed by his brother. I can’t see any of his will.
Overall, in my opinion, the game is worth playing, but it’s not the kind of game that I would like to play again.
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