izigame.me

I wanted to love this game. The art style and soundtrack are great. The idea of road tripping around possibly running into dangerous people and uncomfortable situations sounds decent. However, I'm not recommending it for the following reasons:

"No one's road is the same!"

This line is incredibly deceptive. Your experience will be the same as everyone else. Each person is getting the same story for the same characters (not yours because they're blank slates that will all take on your personality) in a different jumbled order. You might think this will feel fresh, but taking a linear story and chopping it up and throwing it in random order is jarring and breaks immersion. This is especially obvious with characters like Jarrod.
My first playthrough, I thought "I wonder how unique this story is." and on my second playthrough, I realized I was running into the same events I saw the previous playthrough 80% or more of the time. Replaying through something you've already done is painful. I think most of the positive reviews of this game have only played the game through once or less. If you consider your second playthrough as someone else's experience of this game (think of it as someone's first run), then you realize how untrue it is that everyone's run is different.
The procedural generation for this is pointless in most situations and downright against the story telling in some situations. I really don't enjoy going forward in time, but watching a character story suddenly be backwards in time.

Player Agency

Okay, so I'm not having a unique experience. At least I have agency and can make my own story or affect it, right? Wrong. Your choices don't matter. You will be put into a situation and what you say/do will almost never change what happens...and when it does it's simply you dying instead of not dying. There are ones that pop up at the top of the screen and seem important but there are very few and I've seen a situation where one happened and it still didn't happen when the time came. Alex decided to make a bomb despite me making a solid argument against it, which really pissed me off. Later, he has the bomb, we try to stop him, and he finally gets it and disarms it.
You can never just leave a situation. You can't just go back to hitching if you dislike the scenario you're in. On the Sonya ones where she has you do things for her, I tried rebelling and not doing it, but the game just waits for you to comply. You can't avoid it. The best I could do is look away from everything when she's forcing me to film the speech. The result was: she told me I sucked at being a cameraman. That's it.
The time your choices matter is for what I assume based on other reviews are 3 endings for the three 'factions' you are forced to talk as. One thinks getting people to vote for the token Democrat will magically solve all problems. One thinks we should be violent and rebel. The other, which I tried to focus on, is more neutral and didn't have a good ending. As I expected, this game seems to try to force the vote as a solution. I say this as vague guesses because I am struggling to force myself to play through the game again to see the other endings and whether I can improve my ending. It's painful having to watch the same cutscenes and do the same minigames and be forced down dialog lines that don't change regardless of how you answered.

Different views

Let's get this straight first: I'm very much on the Democrat side of the political spectrum. I didn't think this game would offend me with its preaching. I do however absolutely hate consuming political content or really discussing them in general. I think the two party system is idiotic at best and I think we waste time talking about how we think we can make the world better. I also think the "get out and vote" thing is BS. I think if you aren't the kind of person to think blind voting for someone because they're Democrat will magically make the world a Utopia, then avoid this game because it will probably annoy you or maybe even piss you off. The most annoying thing to me was that I had to side with those people every single time I was asked how I felt about using violence for politics. Why can't the neutral party also dislike violence?

Immersion

I found myself often staring at the game just running because I didn't realize I needed to look around and talk to someone. This is how immersion-breaking this game is. I'm supposed to be driving or whatever else, but I somehow need to also look away from the road or what I'm doing for extended periods of time to have a full on conversation with someone? Come on. There are also few extra things to make you feel like you're not in an on-rails story. You do what the story tells you and you'll like it. Or else.
You're also forced to have dialog as though you never met these characters before. I met Jarrod for the 5th time and I still have to ask why he's mad at the Brigades? Come on. My immersion has broken too many times from this game being in a weird broken linear story of repetition.
There's multiple situations where I wanted to do something but couldn't. A few spoilered examples that were the more serious ones:

I walk up to Democrat picketers planning what they'll do. They tell me to leave. I don't. We stare each other down infinitely. I can't talk to them.
I am at a hotel trying to investigate John (and falsifying it), but during my search, I hear some muffled screaming in a room on the top floor. I spend the rest of the event trying to figure out how to save them. I can't find a way.
I'm given the number for the Brigade leader but I'm unable to talk to him.

I'm sure the list goes on, but this is what comes to mind immediately.

The powerups

The powerups you can unlock as you run into different stories is both kinda cool and really annoying. I started off with two scenarios where I needed the "Clever" upgrade to say what I wanted to say and it really pissed me off because I knew it wasn't going to matter that I could do that again next time. I'm just getting railroaded. I later unlock hacking and lockpicking and think it's cool that I now have more options...but then I realize it means I'll always hack safes instead of finding the code and lockpick to steal cars instead of being forced to hitch or pay. My game becomes easier and less interesting. It's not like Fallout where I just have more options. If I am about to run out of energy, I'm going to have no choice but to rummage through trash, hack stuff, pick locks, etc. Otherwise, it's just "Let's see if the story will still be good if everyone dies." (Nothing will change. You'll just see less things.)

Summary

So all in all, every thing I thought I'd like about this game was a lie. I didn't have agency. I didn't get a variety of experiences, but instead a disjointed line of a story. I'm left with a sorta okay story with a crappy ending and some decent art and soundtrack. Since the primary things I expected out of this game are what disappointed me, I simply can't recommend it. Oh, and for what it's worth, this review is based on buying it 50% off. I didn't even pay the full price for this and I feel mildly ripped off. Did I get enough for the money? Uh...maybe? But I can't recommend it because of the false representation of what it is.