Games can offer unusual opportunities to cover more mature topics in inventive ways. They can allow developers to tell stories about serious concepts in a relaxed and accessible way. Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories It can often feel like a casual, everyday adventure game about being caught up in the mystery of a small town, but it still deals with serious topics like illegal activity and political corruption. It’s interesting, sure, but it often feels like too superficial an experience.
Honeydew and Cantaloupe are childhood friends who live and work at Eglantine Industries in a melon processing plant. Sounds like a fairly typical corporate job in soft drinks. However, when Cantaloupe leaves work with a suitcase one day and tells Honeydew to meet him in Hog Town, things go awry. Once there, he’s gone missing, and the quiet melon-banning town finds itself in the middle of an election in which Kitten King could take over. While everything seems bright and cheerful, there is a disturbing undercurrent and Honeydew must uncover the truth behind Eglantine and the Kitten King.
it is better to consider Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories like an interactive story with some light adventure elements. You’ll mostly follow NPCs as you notice them heading to different locations or collecting fairly obvious items to advance the story. The dialog options don’t really make a big difference. Eventually, you will have access to all areas. The obvious side quests will open up in later chapters after Things time passes or passes.
To its credit, Froach Club attempts to establish an atmosphere in the game. Characters can be likable and quirky. If the lines of characters are short, they do not lack charm. It can take a while to figure out which NPCs will end up being important, though a good rule of thumb is that someone with a name you talk to more than three times is probably in big trouble. An NPC can essentially break the fourth wall regarding the title’s Game Boy color scheme.
There are times when it seems like you expect a sense of familiarity with the people around you and the original. melon journey. I wouldn’t say context is essential, as it’s accessible and fun enough without that extra prop. But there were times when I felt like maybe I was meant to care more about two characters declaring their love or another finding lost family members.
Perhaps the biggest example of this involves the main characters themselves. Honeydew spends much of the early game looking for Cantaloupe, a friend who also works and lives at the same melon soda factory as you. However, it doesn’t really do a great job of establishing why you care enough to do it. When certain plot points happened, I thought I must have felt something about it. But because he knew very little and the relationships weren’t established, he failed. Maybe it was meant to carry more weight because you could name the two main characters after you and a friend?
But what really touched me Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories is that I could not trust. It kept crashing on my Switch. Even after a 1.0.1 patch, it was suddenly crashing in the middle of a conversation or when moving between areas. I got to the point where I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it, just in case there was a problem on my end. But no, it didn’t care about my OLED switch. Since there is no auto-save, I lost about an hour of progress at one point because I didn’t know it would be a problem.
Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories it looks a bit like a mystery of life with a sordid side hidden. There is darkness and players can tell the difference. However, it often seems like he’s trying to imply a familiarity with the characters and the world that may not be there. Although quite charming and enjoyable at times, it can feel like a very superficial adventure. There’s nothing wrong with that, although it might be a good idea to wait a patch or two before heading to Hog Town before catching up with this team.
Melon Journey: Bittersweet Memories It’s coming to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC on April 6, 2023.