The Roottrees are Dead

As spoiling specific parts is required to give a full review all the spoilers will be below in their own section with the heavy spoilers being blacked out. Functionally, thematically, and puzzle-wise the game is fine... unfortunately steam doesn't allow me to be neutral and in good conscience I can't give it a thumbs up so I feel forced to go against the "overwhelmingly positive" rating and be a bit more critical. The game-play mostly consists of sifting through unrelated documents trying to remember which proper noun you forgot to google and then making relatively basic conclusions using the extrapolated data. 'Thing about puzzle games is that solving puzzles tends to be more fun than searching for them and although I used the well made in-game hint system two times when stuck it was exclusively to figure out where to go next which doesn't feel great. If you haven't played the game and are fine being narratively disappointed, are happy to do some busywork and don't think the ending is paramount to the experience (of game in which you almost exclusively read) then, go right ahead. The atmosphere it sets up is good, music is fairly chill and jazzy, voice acting is on point and the art direction is solid so there is a good amount of stuff to be enjoyed here. My biggest issue with the game is the story or rather the lack there of. The narrative is mostly realistic, if anything, but that's not really something praiseworthy as randomly learning facts about random people is realistic but without some spice to add some intrigue and to make the overall story more interesting it just ends up feeling dry. Hell, the game even has enough misplaced self awareness to mock conspiracy theories on its own internet for thinking there was more behind the narrative. LIGHT SPOILERS FROM HERE! When someone sells me a "mystery" I really look forward for uncovering the big twists and turns. Maybe it's my expectations being completely off base but a good bit of the game felt like a setup to payoffs that never came. [spoiler]A string of mysterious deaths of the company CEO's that seemed like accidents all just end up being accidents, a cult of personality that doesn't go anywhere and a dark secret that looms over the family ends up just being that a guy who's ♥♥♥♥ at naming his children is a bit of a prick.[/spoiler] Companies in real life, plunge thousands in to poverty, have private militaries to assassinate their oppositions, effectively control nations, drain areas dry of worthwhile resources then dip and the big mysterious secret of this mega-crop is that one dude was a [spoiler]homophobe back in the 1920s? When that was incredibly commonplace?[/spoiler] Really? That's it? As other reviews queued me in on rootmania being just more of the same I didn't really have an intensive to play it. Overall I don't think the game is bad, some parts of it are quite clever. But it really feels like it's lacking some kind of hidden truth that completely re-contextualizes events and pays off the otherwise mediocre narrative. I don't hate it, but I don't think it's good either I just feel underwhelmed.