I wanted to like this game - the music in the trailer is amazing, the setting is a rarely seen one, and the characters seemed unique.

Unfortunately, the in-game music is less remarkable, the dialogue is railroaded so tightly that the characters feel one-dimensional instead of complex, and the branching story paths feel completely arbitrary - it seems at least half of them require you to unceremoniously ditch your passenger. Also, even if you've seen a cutscene before, you can't skip it, or even speed it up - this makes unintentional trips down the same story path boring and frustrating, and there's no real way to tell which turns will and won't uncover new content.

All of that could be forgiven if the gameplay were fun, but... it just isn't. The collision geometries will often have you colliding with invisible hitboxes, the "autopilot" doesn't work well enough for you to rely on it, and the frequently obscured road means you will often rear-end unseen traffic.

The car's velocity occupies the distinct territory of "too fast to stay in the right lane, too slow to pass in the oncoming lane reliably," and there are no brakes. You can stop for passengers, but the controls don't give you any way to slow the car. So if you have three cars in front of you in the right lane and three cars coming at you in the left lane, you're either going to rear-end the car in front of you or sideswipe multiple cars while lane-sharing.

The result is a buggy, unsatisfying game that seems to fail at everything it sets out to do. The setting is interesting, to be sure, but I feel that exploring it isn't worth sinking several hours into such frustrating gameplay.

I wanted to like this game - the music in the trailer is amazing, the setting is a rarely seen one, and the characters seemed unique. Unfortunately, the in-game music is less remarkable, the dialogue is railroaded so tightly that the characters feel one-dimensional instead of complex, and the branching story paths feel completely arbitrary - it seems at least half of them require you to unceremoniously ditch your passenger. Also, even if you've seen a cutscene before, you can't skip it, or even speed it up - this makes unintentional trips down the same story path boring and frustrating, and there's no real way to tell which turns will and won't uncover new content. All of that could be forgiven if the gameplay were fun, but... it just isn't. The collision geometries will often have you colliding with invisible hitboxes, the "autopilot" doesn't work well enough for you to rely on it, and the frequently obscured road means you will often rear-end unseen traffic. The car's velocity occupies the distinct territory of "too fast to stay in the right lane, too slow to pass in the oncoming lane reliably," and there are no brakes. You can stop for passengers, but the controls don't give you any way to slow the car. So if you have three cars in front of you in the right lane and three cars coming at you in the left lane, you're either going to rear-end the car in front of you or sideswipe multiple cars while lane-sharing. The result is a buggy, unsatisfying game that seems to fail at everything it sets out to do. The setting is interesting, to be sure, but I feel that exploring it isn't worth sinking several hours into such frustrating gameplay.