(Ideally both!) From Morizora Forest’s jaunty theme to the eerie music of hospital flashbacks, distinct compositions in different areas reflect the mood of that place and help establish the stark differences between the real and fantasy worlds. While the other patients’ backstories are uncovered during the Morizora Forest quests, the Boy’s own story is doled out through environmental breadcrumbs you’ll discover throughout the hospital. In another frustrating holdover from old-school RPGs, larger scrolling screens often have obstacles that you can’t see until you reach them, such as a rock blocking the path you hoped to use to exit to the next screen or an upper and lower level with no stairway connecting them. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. But my dissatisfaction with the puzzles and ending make the game difficult to wholeheartedly recommend. The Promised Land falls somewhere between those two, and what first appears to be a drama in the vein of Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt, soon reveals its broader ambitions and bigger ideas. A fantastical place from a storybook the boy’s mother often read to him that houses colorful creatures, locales, and characters aplenty, along with a guardian capable of granting the boy one wish. He’s sharing a hospital floor with a comatose woman whose husband won’t leave her side, an angry old man who never has visitors, a man suffering from dementia, and a bedridden girl who desperately misses her best friend. Without question, Rakuen is an ambitious indie endeavor and I admired many aspects of it—the Boy’s authentic child-like wonder in the face of real human tragedy, the funny and endearing inhabitants of Morizora Forest, and the mystery surrounding the Boy’s hospital stay, to name a few. There’s something beautiful about the hardships and trials we face as people. A fantastical place from a storybook the boy’s mother often read to him that houses colorful creatures, locales, and characters aplenty, along with a guardian capable of granting the boy one wish. However, to do this, he’ll first have to make new friends and help those around him find closure. For most of the game the Boy’s mother is by his side, providing gentle hints when asked, supporting his adventures, and protecting him when things get too scary. It is a type of contrast that I regularly praise whenever it comes up in the games I cover, and the specific manner it is employed in Rakuen is quite effective. But in Rakuen this sort of puzzle logic really frustrated me—possibly because I went into the game with the wrong expectations. Rakuen is a story driven adventure game centering around a young hospitalized boy and his caring mother who one day uncover a door leading to the world of Rakuen. One major difference between the two games is that while To the Moon is primarily story-driven, Rakuen is full of real, adventure game-style puzzles. (Fickle, huh? During his hospital stay, the Boy’s mother has been reading to him from "Rakuen", a fantasy book about a young warrior who returns home to Morizora Forest to find his entire tribe has disappeared. By helping these fantasy people, he provides closure for their human counterparts and helps them find peace. I think the most upsetting example of this untapped potential to me is the mother character. Perhaps not surprisingly she befriends Takeshi when she walks home after her bike gets a flat. As you progress through Rakuen, new areas of the hospital and Morizora’s Forest become accessible, culminating in a large area to explore with no convenient way to do it. This goal is soon thwarted when, in the cave’s first room, you learn that the Leeble blacksmith has been separated from his tools. Initially sung by in-game characters to reiterate what just happened in the story, these songs reemerge near the end of the game as the other characters rally for the Boy who helped them—a little cheesy, but a nice way for the story and music to come together. The problem is, the bulk of Rakuen’s puzzles just aren’t very interesting. In an adventure game, where exploration is more story- or puzzle-driven, your findings should contribute to puzzle solutions or to your understanding of the world. All rights reserved. Visually speaking, you may think Rakuen isn’t particularly ambitious from looking at the screenshots, but the graphics work hard within the confines of the 16-bit JRPG style.
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