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As many of you know, the study that brings us here today is well known for dealing with issues that are not very common in the world of video games. Along these years, They have specialized in telling very deep stories that have to do with the deepest aspects of society, especially as far as relationships between people are concerned. Titles like Tell me Why or Life Is Strange are clear examples of what Don’t Nod is capable of doing with very simple games, but they hide much more behind them.
In this review of Harmony The Fall of Reverie, we will tell you first-hand what we thought of this new story, which will take us to discover new worlds, a lot of characters and, above all, it will help us keep in mind something that often happens unnoticed, our choices have consequences, and in many cases these consequences can be catastrophic or get closer to our goal, whatever it is.
Analysis of Harmony The Fall of Reverie
An interesting story from the beginning
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie It is a story that puts us in the shoes of Polly, a young woman who after a long time away from home returns to her home. This return is not something he has decided by choice, her mother, Úrsula, has disappeared, and beforehand there is no clue to indicate where she might be or what has happened to her. Polly has been out of town too long and everything has changed too much; the people, the neighborhoods… everything is very different from how she remembers it, and also, there is the fact that her mother and she did not have a good relationship, which complicates everything even more.
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Alma, the neighborhood where she grew up, is very different from how she remembers it, and Las Náyades, a place of recreation and residence for artists and creatives, is emptier than ever. Polly goes straight to her mother’s room looking for an answer. However, what Polly finds will lead her to discover a world totally different from ours, a necklace that belonged to her mother and that floats in front of her. In her eagerness to know what is happening, she will be dragged into Dreaming, a world in which she will discover that she is not a mere human like any other and that their destiny and that of this world are linked.
Dreamy, it’s home to Aspirations, some beings represent the desires and feelings of people. Happiness, one of these aspirations is the one that tells us that in this world Polly is Harmony, a person with very special powers and who can help the Dream Heart recover her strength. To do this, Polly will be able to access the Omen, a power that allows her to know the future and its consequences. With Felicity’s promise to help you find your mother, the story of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie begins and Polly’s journey to save the Dreaming world.
Our choices will mark the destiny of all
Harmony’s Story: The Fall of Reverie plays out much like a choose your own adventure book in which we will have to choose the way in which Polly/Harmony faces the situations and conversations that she will find. The Omen, a kind of tree that shows us the future, is the central axis of this narrative, in which we will have to choose between different nodes that will make us advance in history, leaving any other option we had before inaccessible.
Thus, if we choose one of the Omen’s “tree” nodes, the rest will be inaccessible, leaving inaccessible any node that is directly linked to it, so our choices have a full influence on the development of the story. Also, in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, we will not only have to choose thinking about the next node, our decisions will have an impact on the story far beyond the next node, even blocking entire branches in later episodes.
Also, the Don’t Nod team doesn’t make it easy either. We will have nodes that will be blocked and we will have to meet certain requirements before accessing them, such as having seen a certain number of previous nodes, having chosen a certain node at some point in the game or having in our possession a certain number of aspiration crystals. And it is that in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, we will be able to accumulate crystals of each of the aspirations depending on which node we choose.
A game in which you barely play, but in which you carry all the weight
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is about a story in which our role is relegated to Omen and its choices. We won’t be doing anything else during the game other than reading and deciding what the next node is and where we want to take our characters. Said like this, it may seem boring, but the reality is that after a while, and if the story has hooked you, you no longer care about doing nothing, you let yourself be carried away by the story and its characters, who have everything you need to stay hooked to the monitor.
Yes, it is true, that this extreme simplicity is a very sharp double-edged sword, since the entire weight of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is supported by its history. The fact that this story doesn’t hook you from the beginning makes everything else seem empty, and with nothing else to do interested in what happens in the story, there is nothing else that keeps you tied to the chair. On the other hand, the fact that you don’t need a skill to play means that anyone who is interested can play it without any problems.
An aesthetic that fits like a glove
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is characterized by being framed between two worlds in which the color and settings are very different from each other, creating huge contrasts between one scene and another. Therefore, the drawing aesthetics that has been taken is a more than correct choice, since it allows us to enjoy fantastic scenes and landscapes without getting carried away by large graphics or with highly detailed or charged backgrounds. The creators of Tell me Why know very well what they are looking for, that we focus on the story, and the truth is that they achieve it.
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The design of the characters of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie that we are getting to know is outstanding, and they give off that essence that they are supposed to give off. In addition, the fact that we only see background images and the characters moving in the foreground, makes everything take on a force that transmits what the story is showing us at all times. In addition, we can let the texts on the screen pass automatically, so that at times it seems that we are watching a movie or a series in which we can choose what happens with the protagonists.
Music evokes everything we see on the screen
Although this may be the weakest point of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie next to the gameplay, I must say that although it does not stand out, it completely fulfills its mission. The soundtrack accompanies us through the conversations with the other characters, trying to emphasize the situation we are facing. However, I don’t think that the fact that the music stands out more or less harms the gameplay of Don’t Nod in any way, although it could have added some extra points. The game arrives translated into Spanish, however we will have to settle for voices in English.
conclusions
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a game that risks a lot with its proposal, betting on a purely plot game, leaving out practically any interaction on our part. The story is intriguing from the start, and the number of choices that are available means that we can play it on more than one occasion. The quality of the drawings, the design of the settings and the characters and the depth that has been given to each one are the strong point of this title, which seeks, as always, to leave a mark on us as they have done since Don’t Nod with its previous titles.