Oh boy, where do I even begin? My anticipations were high following Gear Detective. The first game was good, if a little empty and short. TheOh boy, where do I even begin? My anticipations were high following Gear Detective. The first game was good, if a little empty and short. The second game expanded on the first, and was objectively better (although I personally prefer the first). I was hoping that this would continue, and that the third game would be even better still.
Now I was hardly expecting a masterpiece of storytelling brilliance from the Parascientific Escape trilogy. That being said, I was at least expecting something that didn't read like it was written up on the fly. Unfortunately, that's precisely what the story of Crossing At the Farthest Horizon feels like. It feels like the writers were really bending over themselves to try and form a coherent plot-line that connected the previous two games, while also tying up the loose ends, and doing so without contradicting any lore they had already established. Now, taken on its own, the story of this game is far from bad. However, as a fan of the previous two installments, the structure of the trilogy begins to fall apart when you really stop and take a look at certain key details. I won't spoil anything, but little bits and pieces of lore are really obviously shoe-horned in, in a really obvious attempt to bridge gaps and fill in plot holes. None of these really felt natural, and they always stuck out like a sour thumb.
Again, the standalone plot is far from bad, but when placed into the context of the trilogy, it never really felt like I was getting answers that had been there all along, so much as I was being told answers that the writers had thought up after they had already set up all of their mysteries. One of the characters, the game's main villain in fact, feels particularly shoe-horned into this particular game. And the game's attempt to connect something that the villain of Cruise in the Distant Seas had said about Hitomi's sister, to the actual truth behind who Hitomi's sister is, as revealed in this game, was so absurdly desperate. I'm not sure if this was a problem with the English localization, or an original script problem, but either way, it was such an absurd stretch of logic. It tries to invoke the same "metaphorically true" thing they did in Star Wars with Luke's father, only this game does it far less nuance. It just ends up giving you the impression that they didn't have any of it planned.
Okay so the story doesn't connect well to the previous games. But at least it's decent on it's own, right? Well, that depends on what you mean. I said that the story isn't bad on it's own, and that's true, but even so, the story is not really friendly to newcomers either. On the plus side, the game gives newcomers a chance to turn on Character & Story explanations when they start a new game. These basically interrupts the story, whenever a returning character or key story element is brought up, and gives you a brief explanation about that person or thing. It's a handy thing for them to have included. But on the other hand, I REALLY wouldn't recommend playing this game unless you have played the other two. If you do, you'll probably become really confused really quickly, or at the very least, you'll be missing a hell of a lot of context.
I also have a issue with the game's multiple ending. I don't want this to be a spoiler review, so I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that I think that, considering the nature of the game's endings, that they greatly suffered by sticking to the "good ending", "bad ending", "special ending" system from Gear Detective. The endings push their own perspective, to attempt to establish the events of the endings in this way, but in my opinion the outcome in each ending, especially the good & bad ones, are morally ambiguous enough from each other to be seen as both good, and both bad, in various ways. I would've preferred if the ending you get is more meant to signify what appeals to your own morals, as apposed to just being a "right outcome" or "wrong outcome" thing. It is, after all, your answers to specific questions that determine the ending you get. It would've given it some much needed complicity, instead of simply telling the player "you have the wrong opinions & so you got the wrong ending"
One other thing I want to talk about is the typos and grammar errors. There's a LOT of them. As in a freaking TON. It was getting to the point where there would be some kind of mistake, be it spelling, grammar, or basic punctuation, on every fifth line of dialogue. No, that isn't hyperbole. It was at the point where I stopped noticing them after a while. My brain had just zoned them out. The typo minefield here is extremely peculiar, because the previous two games were competently translated. Sure, there were weird grammar quirks, and some mistakes here or there, but they were decent for budget games on the 3DS eShop. I don't know what happened here. Maybe the proof-readers had the day off.… Expand
