– Advertisement –
Introduction
Best Month Ever is an interactive, point and click graphic novel. In this drama heavy road trip story, we experience a month in the life of a son and mother. This game was developed by Warsaw Film School students and published by Klabater. I should start off with the disclaimer that I personally don’t really enjoy story heavy games that offer next to no gameplay. I would advise you read the rest of the review with that in mind.
What is Best Month Ever! About?
The story revolves around Mitch and Louise. Mitch is Louise’s son, and they embark on a life changing road trip at the start of the game. We as the player watch them on this journey and sometimes make choices along the way. The premise of the game is that your choices throughout the game affect Mitch’s personality and how events unfold.
As I’ve played and finished the game, I can say without a doubt, this is once again a game where your choices don’t really matter. While I will be exploring this point further in an upcoming section, it is safe to say I was disappointed.
Is there any Gameplay?
In a large portion of this review, I will be talking about the game’s story. Since the story is supposedly the part where most of the effort has been put. But I don’t want to skip gameplay completely so let us talk about that first.
Other than clicking on some dialogue choices here and there the game doesn’t offer much at all in a gameplay aspect. You get to walk around in most of the chapters, but once again exploration is quite limited as well as your movement capabilities. There are some quick time events that offer basically no depth of gameplay, along with some other short point and click mini-games. The only even remotely interesting gameplay part was where you drive a car for a few minutes. However none of these points are that important in visual novel as long as the story is good enough to make up for it. Then the question becomes, is the story good enough?
Story
The story takes place in 1960s USA. At the very start of the game, we learn that Louise doesn’t have much left to live. With that fact dawning over her, she realizes she doesn’t even know who her son is. She has been raising Mitch alone for 8 years and it is apparent they haven’t spent much time together at all. To make up for this fact, Louise quits her job, and they embark on a trip together. This trip will end up becoming the “Best Month Ever”.
Unexplored Themes
There are a lot of great themes the game wants to explore. Growing up, death, racism, childhood traumas, family, etc. However, it repeatedly fails to explore them. We see them getting mentioned a couple of times, but other than mentioning them, the game never really says anything else about it. Mitch reacts to basically everything like it’s no big deal. Even thought the game poses itself as “Louise trying to teach her son how to navigate in this often-cruel world.” She doesn’t do that. A lot traumatizing and life changing events occur throughout the story, but the aftermath is almost never discussed, the consequences never occur. As I played, I have found myself saying “I wonder how the aftermath of this is going to affect our characters.” In the end, the consequences never came.
One of the reasons of this problem, is probably the fact that the game is quite short. It takes about 3 hours to finish it. The developers certainly wanted to pack a lot of things into that 3-hour period. I want to forgive the game because of this, but as I played through the story, almost a quarter of the chapters felt obsolete. It would have been a much better call to remove those chapters and explore the aforementioned themes.
A Drift of Realism
The game wants to be realistic. It wants to show the relentlessness cruel parts of living with all its glory. But it ends up failing again. We can see the realism start to crumble towards the end of the first chapter. While these small moments don’t feel too out of place at first, as the game continues, they become larger, and the split from realism becomes bigger. A lot of things happen just to progress the plot, not because that’s how it would go in a real situation. Moments where the game feels disconnected from reality, kept me from immersing myself in this story.
The Fallacy of Meaningful Choices
At the start of the game, you are told that; your actions will shape Mitch’s character and affect what kind of a person he becomes. There are 3 main categories the game keeps track of. Righteousness, confidence, and relations. Firstly, many of the dialogue choices that alter these traits didn’t feel as impactful as the game says they were. This issue becomes especially prominent in the later parts of the game. A meaningless choice in dialogue modifies a core trait. Secondly, all your choices only end up changing 2 lines of dialogue at the end of the game. Which feels lackluster to say the least.
As you might have also guessed, your choices throughout the game don’t affect how events unfold. You may say “no” to something 3 times in a row, and in the end the game will still behave the same as if you have said “yes”. In a game like this, it is crucial to have meaningful choices. I am afraid to say I can’t even recall 1 choice I made, where it felt actually impactful.
Voice Acting
This is one of those sections where I have very mixed feelings. While some characters’ voice acting is horrendous, some are actually pretty good. When it comes to our main characters, except for a couple of places, I would say they are well above average. I was especially a fan of Louise’s voice actor. She did a great job in my opinion. I could feel most of the emotions she conveyed, and it wasn’t overacted at any point.
Conclusion
It is important to remember that Best Month Ever is a student project. Therefore it shouldn’t be put in the same bag as a product of an experienced studio. Either way, I feel many of the game’s faults came from inadequate writing. It wants to say a lot but by the end it doesn’t much at all. If all the logical and realistic inconsistencies can be ignored. The game’s overall story isn’t that bad. Even thought they have failed to explore most of the themes, there are still some heartwarming moments. I would recommend this game to any visual novel fans who can’t get enough. If you are not a fan of visual novels however and just want to hear if this game is a masterpiece or not, it is not.
