Kathy Rain: Director’s Cut

I had heard very good things about Kathy Rain, so I picked it up on a recent sale, and finished it in 3 days. Save for a few gripes I had with the game, I really had a good time with it on the whole. It's not a masterpiece in my book, but does a lot of things that I absolutely love. Most prominently, the atmosphere is almost perfect. The setting is very Twin Peaks-y, not only through the small town by the lake and thick forest setting, but also due to the 90s vibe, idiosyncratic set of characters, hautingly beautiful score, otherworldly places intertwining with dream sequences, and even a few direct references here and there - such as Sheriff Truman, or the owls not being what they seem. My favourite place was around and inside the lakeside cabin, the whole vibe felt Lynchian through and through. And while I still prefer a beautiful hand-drawn environment over pixel art aesthetics, the visuals were really on point, and I enjoyed the game's look. The story goes in interesting directions, and tackles quite serious themes in a remarkable amount of depth. I see from other reviews that a lot of people didn't like Kathy's character, but I found her really on point, considering her troubled upbringing and childhood scars. She might come off as snarky in the beginning, but really exhibits her complex character and layered personality later on. The puzzles were enjoyable, for the most part logical, and appropriately hinted at throughout the game without spoling solutions or such. The 1995 setting also involves some PC puzzles, with appropriately slow boot times, and a bunch of hacks involving floppy disks that were the icing on the cake for me. I didn't have to use a walkthrough at all, but one puzzle towards the end really annoyed me. This is a European game that is set in the US (a bit of a miss in my book, could have been brilliant with a native Scandinavian setting), so I expect some degree of adaptation to US norms. But shoving a puzzle on my throat with a MM-DD-YYYY format was such a questionable choice. Other than that, I really enjoyed my time here, and I would warmly recommend it to any point and click fans that might also dig a David Lynch vibe: funny, tragic, and otherworldly all in one.

It's an ok PnC but I expected way more given the reputation Story and puzzles did not really get me hooked. That said it's not a bad game, just not as engaging as other PnC on Steam, Worth it imo as it usually gets heavily discounted I will give the 2nd entry a go though

Fun little point and click with a good story. Puzzles were very straight forward, except one that was a little too obtuse. On to the sequel!