Just because it’s artistic doesn’t make it a good game

There is much to love about Anodyne. The game soundtrack is composed of some fantastic chiptunes that really help build up a dreamlike surreal atmosphere. The games 16-bit style graphics are absolutely beautiful and reminds me of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI. The graphics and music combined both stimulate the player’s nostalgia as well as create an almost impressionistic feel. The games story is deliberately vague but hints at the game’s world being less than real, is it all a dream, a hallucination, or a geeky deranged boy’s fantasy? These questions are never really answered, but I guess like much art it is left to the observer to interpret.

Still that doesn’t make for a very good video game story and most important of all for a video game, the game play isn’t very good. Anodyne plays a lot like A Link to the Past, only much worse in every way. The game’s graphics and audio can only go so far in compensation for this. Anodyne might very well be a fine piece of art but as a game I falls short.