izigame.me

I honestly do not know how to feel about this game. I struggled for a bit on how to sum up how I felt. I needed to sleep overnight to really gather my feelings about it. It’s also hard to say exactly my thoughts in depth about the game without spoiling it, and I refuse to add spoilers into my reviews. For a game that is primarily story-based, I’ll attempt to do my best.

To the Moon is a visual novel made in the format of a cheap RPG Maker game. The artwork, I have to be honest here, doesn’t really look that good. It’s bland, cheap-looking, and doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from other RPG Maker games. If I showed you this game without telling you what it was, you would simply think it was more RPG Maker shovelware. I won’t harp on this too much, though, because I think that it is absolutely possible to create art even in the form of something that looks cheap or indistinguishable from other games in the same engine. However, it is noticeable, which is why I bring it up. The music in To the Moon is stunning and beautiful. The main piano motif they use for River is fantastic. It’s moving, and really helps weave this emphasis into the game’s somber scenes, and it is a song that becomes synonymous with her. That seems to be by design, so good on them for that.

The issue with To the Moon is the writing.

I was stunned when I learned that this game only has one writer when the credits rolled. Genuinely shocked. While playing through the entirety of To the Moon, it felt like two writers were clashing against one another’s styles. It’s as if they both wanted to tell different stories. The tone constantly shoots itself in the foot. The cause of this are the game’s two main protags, Eva & Watts. Without spoiling too much, their job is to essentially explore the memories of patients to grant them a last wish that they can experience in their mind during their final days. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it. Much of the game’s plot involves these two trying to help a man named John, who is on his deathbed, to reach his wish to go to the moon by viewing and altering his memories. This isn’t a big spoiler, this is information you receive within the first 20-30 minutes or so, let me live.

The problem is that Eva and Watts are terrible characters. Both of them show no empathy or sympathy for the events they’re viewing in John’s head, even when the events are depressingly sad. One could argue that they’ve seen many memories like this in the heads of other patients, and maybe that’s fair, but they don’t really show that in their personalities or display behavior that would point to that. Their dialogue is, and I don’t like using this word but it's apt here - cringe. Eva and Watts constantly behave like children for characters who are supposed to be in their late 20s or early 30s. They make needless pop culture references, and the game derails its own pacing at times simply to make unfunny bits involving them, such as one where Watts spends hours drinking at a bar with John in one of his memories. Humor is subjective, and you can argue they’re supposed to be the comic relief of the story. Sure. These are your protagonists though, in a game that is trying to deliver a message that’s really powerful and moving, but you have two morons who are essentially Jessie & James from Pokemon in terms of being goofy. Eva says things like “What the cucumber?” which is cringy in its own right, but even more so when you consider that characters in this game swear freely anyway, albeit the exact words being censored. Watts ridiculously references different media such as Street Fighter, Marvel, Dragon Ball and Doctor Who. (Huh, guess where the names John and River came from?) What is the point of writing these two like this? What, did you think the story was too ****ing dark or something? It’s not that dark, I’ll tell you that much. All of this quirky dialogue is off-putting, and takes you out of the experience. With all these depressing events they’re viewing, Eva & Watts come across as ***holes and childish for the way they react a majority of the time.

Funnily enough, in some weird moment of self-awareness, Eva scolds Watts at one point for being a moron and says she’s “trying to get into this.” Me too! If you’d like another piece of dialogue from the game as an example of the writing, here’s an actual quote I noted because I was simply so baffled that I was reading it. Watts says early on, “Because we always succeed, because we’re awesome.” Ughhh.

It all really angers me - because on the other hand, To the Moon’s story around John and River is actually a narrative I want to love. There’s something here that is actually saddening to view. To the Moon has events that invoke something beautiful. Something meaningful, something remarkable, something special. Yet the writer insisted on butchering this beauty with amateur, piss-poor bottom of the barrel protagonists - with written dialogue that feels like it was written and forged in the Nine Hells of Ao3, by a 13 year-old girl with a Tumblr blog who’s never written in her life.

What’s worse is that To the Moon’s tragic story features a tale about a mental health condition that is worth telling. I won’t spoil what this condition is since it’s pretty important to the plot, but I know some people who would love to hear that they’re being represented in a game. All this quirky dialogue from Eva & Watts makes it feel like that the writer isn’t taking this condition seriously. It feels insulting, and that genuinely makes me upset and frustrated with the game’s narrative. Hence why I was shocked the game only had one writer. Why? Why would you do this? Why would you butcher and lobotomize your own narrative like this? You had something beautiful here, something meaningful that could really mean a lot to certain people, and it is simply utterly wasted.

I think an important and underrated facet of games is tone. It’s what allows a game like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta to coexist in a genre with Dark Souls, and in turn with The Witcher, or etc. If you can nail your game’s tone, then everything built around becomes woven together, like a perfect silk cloth. Not everything has to be a despair-ridden romp, that’s not what I’m saying. What I am saying is that your game falls apart when it has an inconsistent tone. To the Moon’s poorly conceived dialogue provides nothing of value towards forming its tone, and ultimately has a very inconsistent one throughout due to this. What an example to hear what I mean? It’s like if you sat down to watch an artistically beautiful film like Forrest Gump, but you had someone right next to you on the couch the whole time cracking jokes and roasting moments of the film as if they were a Red Letter Media wannabe. That’s what it’s like.

I apologize if it seems like I’m harping on these two protags, but this is a visual novel. The most important parts of a visual novel are the narrative and dialogue. So when the dialogue gets unwoven by being so poorly-written, the tone of the game collapses. And when the tone of the game collapses, then so too does the house of cards the narrative stands upon. I don’t really recall a time where I’ve been this disappointed in a game’s narrative. It makes me sad because there’s something here with potential. It genuinely made me begin to tear up at times for certain scenes, albeit right before I was sobered back to reality by the rest of the writing.

I’m also not sure why this is rated so highly either? Perhaps if you’re only a teenager or never experienced a proper narrative in your lifetime of “muh cozy games”, sure, maybe. I’m already in my seat and cozy, thank you. I want my games to give me something that’s worth my time, and To the Moon is simply not that. I do not recommend this game, even on sale, because I think there are better ways to waste 4 hours. Drive to Chick-fil-a or something instead, I dunno.

Score: 53