A hospitalized Boy comes to terms with his own story by traveling with his Mom to a beautiful fantasy world; ultimately helping his fellow patients find closure by walking a mile in their shoes.
Name
Rakuen
Companies
Laura Shigihara
Released
5/10/2017
Platforms
Linux, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC (Microsoft Windows)
Long story short: Characters feel like cardboard cutouts which makes it hard to care about their stories. The voice acting and singing feel really out of place. Gameplay was really clunky.
I had to think on it a while, and, whilst not a bad game, I don't think I could recommend it. I liked the world of Rakuen, but I didn't like the story it told. I'll mostly include my grievances, as there are already a lot of reviews covering the percieved positives.
A quick list of positives:
- It's obvious that there was heart put into this. I'd recommend it if I could actually connect to the story.
- Instrumental OST was quite good
- Pixel art and character art was cute
- I actually really liked the fantasy world, but the story it was used to tell took away from that.
An in-depth list of the negatives:
I found the voice acting and singing really jarring. In a game that's otherwise silent, voice-wise, the songs (which are a key part of the story) feel like they come out of nowhere. It definitely took me out of the world after I'd established my own headcanon on what I believed their voices to sound like. There was narration at the beginning of the game, and then never again.
Character-wise, I barely felt any connections. There were characters like the chef and the seamstress that were named and placed in the real world, when they easily could have remained in Rakuen only and still had the same effect and impact on the story. Most of the other patients felt like strangers throughout the entire story. We stuck our noses in their business for our own gain, and then had nothing to do with them for the rest of the story. Shigahara got this right with Sue. We actually interacted with her outside of her stories multiple times, and got a lot of hints toward her backstory that felt good to put together when we finally took a closer look. Unfortunately, that's the only time it went right.
The game play itself felt clunky. It feels like the idea of puzzles was given up after the second story, which I'm grateful for. It was frustrating going back and forth between rooms and areas when you couldn't travel faster than walking. I also found it frustrating that the items were bound to X and talking to Mom was at Q. I didn't talk to her that much, but it felt weird having them so far apart.
You can see the heart that's been put into this, but I think some more time into refining the game and characters would further drive the impact this game has had on a majority of those that have played it.
Rakuen is an adventure game about a little Boy who lives in the hospital. One day, the Boy asks his Mom to escort him to the fantasy world from his favorite storybook, so that he can ask the Guardian of the Forest to grant him one wish. In order to receive his wish, the Boy must complete a set of challenges that revolve around helping his neighbors in the hospital by interacting with their alter-egos in the fantasy world...
...A cranky old man who guards a broken music box with his life while complaining that he never gets any visitors; a young woman in a coma whose husband hasn’t left her side in months; a little girl who laments over a friend she was never able to say goodbye to after growing ill… The Boy slowly begins to realize that his neighbors are plagued by secrets and struggles that are mysteriously tied to the strange hospital.
