New England Detective: Breakfast in Boston

Every visual novel comes with a fair amount of tropes - and it is surprising, because after playing this game you'd think NED: Breakfast in Boston ate all of them, scarfing them all down in a wicked plate of clam chowder! Okay, I am slightly exaggerating. In fact, on a positive level, the choice of having a few characters share a Swedish background is unconventional, and so is the fact to put a strong emphasis on the setting, in this case, Boston. Unfortunately, a lot of these themes are rather marginal and as deep as a wikipedia page - in fact, more like pure namedropping after browsing a wiki page. The writing is not exactly compelling and it throws around some factoids that are convoluted and questionable, with no character getting any depth and a smorgasbord of stereotyping (my favourite has to be "You know French? Psht, I am European, I know 6 languages" bit).

All in all, I played this game on Steam and in less than the two hours needed to apply for a refund I reached the 100% achievement completion rate. I think it says a lot. I don't want to be too harsh, in fact I did not ask for a refund and if there's gonna be a sequel I hope it will flesh out of the aspects of this game that were woefully undeveloped - it felt more like a kinetic novel than anything. Just know that it's a game to get during a sale or in a bundle, as for the same price you can get much more developed, dynamic titles with better artwork and better writing.

Sammo ★