While I'm sure some people would love FSaR, it's bland puzzles and intentionally cryptic storytelling left me bored.

User Rating: 7 | Hana to Taiyou to Ame to - Owaranai Rakuen- DS
We've seen a few "esoteric" titles recently, and it's always a risky proposition. Games like The Path, Braid, and Lux-Pain all work to bring us new twists on old ideas, or brand new ideas. FS&R also tries, and while I'm sure it'll find an audience that will love it, I tried but failed to bond with it.

The game is, sort of, a point-and-click adventure. You wander around many varying environments, talking to people, observing objects, and doing some research. All of your research ultimately leads to numbers -- codes, numbers in patterns, and even simple formulas. You jot down these numbers, and then, when the moment is right, you feed them back into the game. Someone may be hiding a secret, or even a common object such as a picture needs to be "analyzed". To do so, your character uses his computer (he calls her "Catherine"...) to "jack-in" to the person or thing being analyzed -- a completely risk-free, pointless (I'm sure there's a deeper point I'm missing) exercise in working through your 11 "jacks" and seeing which one allows you to plug a virtual cable into the thing. You then must enter the correct corresponding number from the story. If you succeed, you get your tidbit of info, or move the story along. If you fail, you try, try again...

That is the gameplay. You meet many fascinating, quirky individuals along the way, talk to them, analyze them, all trying to unravel the pretty interesting and very convoluted story. (I won't spoil it here... suffice to say it's a good, paranoid delusion of a story.)

So really, this game is meant to be about the journey -- the story, the characters -- certainly NOT the gameplay. The gameplay, such that it is, is merely a way to emphasize certain people, objects, and moments in the game.

Technically the game is fine -- it uses a 3d third-person view that's reasonably well animated. Sound is minimal, aside from a good variety of music throughout. There is no spoken dialog, aside from the standard "weird almost-human fake-speak" you get as the text of the person speaking is drawn on screen.

That all said, about 8 hours in, wanting to continue, I decided I was done... As I said, I'm sure some will find this game fascinating and latch on -- they will have a good time playing, and have far more patience than me! Now to go back to Phoenix Wright -- the "popcorn movie" of adventure gaming on the DS...