Rakuen review

Note: This page is nonsense and is pending a rewrite/expansion

It is impossible for me not to look at this game through the lens of To the Moon. Just like practically any other game I play, it’s a case of being unable to review it to people who didn’t already play the game - most of my favourite moments and/or gripes are far into the spoiler territory. But I will try anyway!

Rakuen is a game about a boy in a hospital, who goes on a magical adventure with his mom. They enter a parallel world and interact with alternative versions of other people in the hospital and magical creatures such as… worm lamas?! Our main objective is to help fellow patients’ alter egos in order to grant the boy a single wish. You can already guess that this is a recipe for a sad game.

The story structure consists of you tackling 1 patient’s story at a time. I won’t go beyond that, but you could see it as several very short To the Moon-like games in one - there are even songs by Laura Shigihara! (duh, she made Rakuen). The game is more open world than you’d expect from the premise, including some side-quests and easter-eggs.

The game is reasonably short, fun, and has good combination of art, music, and chance of making some cry. Overall a recommend!

Something I see useful to mention is that the game comes with a very nice .pdf manual. Whenever I felt stuck in a puzzle, I could just pull up the file and read a bit instead of having to look up the answer online. There is no shame in that, this isn’t The Talos Principle! :)

A note for people who already played it - some may be fine with it, but I really disliked the ambiguity of whether the game was magical realism or a case of “it was all in le head”, a problem I had with at least 1 other great game I played this year. It didn’t ruin my enjoyment, but I wish it wasn’t this way.

Technical & Linux notes

On first launch on Linux, menu text was missing. Trying Proton broke things even further. However, switching to Beta branch (you-beta-believe-this) on Steam fixed everything. I did not experience any problems after that.

The beta branch uses a custom engine based on Ebitengine, while the original one has RPG maker XP you might know from a lot of other games. I remember movement feeling slightly more floaty than RPG Maker, but since it’s a story / light puzzles game it shouldn’t affect your enjoyment, and might even increase it.