Flower, Sun, and Rain
This sucks.
Goichi Suda is a director who I've come to admire - Killer7, beneath its quirky veneer, had really unique and fun elements. No More Heroes was a treat, despite a few rough spots. Flower, Sun, and Rain was one of his earlier works for the PS2, previously exclusive to Japan; and while Killer7 mixed some solid game mechanics with absurd scenarios, FSR is almost 100% nonsense.
The top-level description of FSR is a Groundhog Day-esque mystery adventure, which is an awesome enough concept. The game's main character, Sumio Mondo, is called to Lospass Island to find something (he's a "searcher" by trade); he quickly comes to learn that this something is a bomb, planted by a terrorist, which will blow up a plane shortly after takeoff later that day. And the next day, and the day after. The plane explodes every day, presumably until you unravel the mystery.
Promising, right?
Unfortunately, the game proper barely has anything to do with the plane disaster. On day one, Sumio woke up to a call from the hotel manager, drank a coffee, and found himself locked in his room; I had to solve a puzzle (regarding cameras) to unlock the door, at which point the plane exploded and the day ended. On day two, Sumio woke up to another call from the hotel manager, drank another coffee, went out into the hall, and was blocked by a laundry cart. I went up to the roof, talked to another man in the hotel, solved a puzzle about soccer formations, and then the plane exploded, ending the day.
This incremental progress toward the real point of the game would at least be not-terrible if A) the puzzle solving added depth to the story, or B) the puzzles themselves were fun. Unfortunately, the puzzle themes have nothing to do with anything (soccer?), and even calling them "puzzles" is a bit misleading, as the answer to every one of them is a number. Some are math-based, like figuring out how many cubes will fit into a bigger cube. Some are reading-based - not Da Vinci Code reading, more like Encyclopaeda Britannica reading - requiring you to pore through a lengthy and flavorless in-game Guidebook for the answer. The rest of the puzzles are abstract riddles, like Professor Layton's goddamned matchsticks.
There are side-puzzles, too, in case you aren't having enough fun with each day's main riddle. The depressing thing is that figuring out these side-puzzles is the only variety in an otherwise mundane day - most of it is spent walking from one point to another, engaging NPCs in insipid dialog, until finally being told what you need to solve the main puzzle.
With utterly antiquated graphics (textures feature unreadable text!), downright irritating sound effects, and a glut of completely irrelevant abstract-art cinematics - I get the feeling this was a showcase for Full-Motion Video on the PS2 - Flower, Sun, and Rain has basically nothing going for it. The game certainly has a unique style, but with no substance to speak of, it's... well, insubstantial.
I continue to play it, because it's short, and from where I'm at, there's really nowhere to go but up.
Progress: Day 3