I'm never really sure what I think of Suda51's games. The story is usually odd for the sake of being odd, the gameplay itself is never really that impressive, sometimes intentionally bad, and there's often a lot of subtext that's hidden away which can be a major part of understanding what's going on. Usually, these either turn me away from a game. With Suda, I find myself drawn to them. So, along comes Flower, Sun & Rain on the DS. First time available in English, ported from the PS2 to the DS, and my second Suda game, the first being Killer7.
First off, the game itself features a great deal of walking. You'll often spend time walking down a motorway or a beach for up to five minutes at a time, sometimes more. You'll also have characters happily tell you how much you'll be walking more and more as the game progresses, and as the pedometer in the top corner steadily increases, you'll find you get better abilities. It's a bit like an RPG where you improve your character by walking. There are no shortcuts or modes of transport beyond walking and running, which does feel a bit like padding at times, but thankfully the lead character, Sumio Mondo, shows some annoyance about what he has to do. It's nice to have someone share the pain in a sense. The other major mechanic in the game is puzzle solving, which is entirely number based. Now, I've never been that great with numbers, but this is a game that features puzzles such as: lospass = 0445644; lunatics = ?, so I knew I was going to struggle.
However, I found my enjoyment doesn't come from actually doing those things. There are a lot of puzzles in this, all number based with some really obscure solutions (for example, the one I listed above is solved by counting the right angles in the letters), but I found myself enjoying how the solution to a puzzle is discovered along with interacting with the characters. For a lot of puzzles, you will receive a somewhat vague hint, and then you'll have to look in the hotel's guidebook (where else would you find a solution but in a guidebook, after all) and find a subtle reference to the vague hint, and then work the puzzle out from there. The other thing I enjoyed was how good the script is and how the characters are defined.
The story itself is centered about Sumio's latest job, where he's been called to Lospass Island to stop a terrorist planting a bomb on a plane. Upon arriving at the Hotel Flower, Sun & Rain and reaching his hotel room, he glances out the window to see the plane explode. Then he has a dream about a young girl trying to find her pink crocodile. Waking up the next morning due to a phone call from the front desk, he's told that breakfast is ready. Then he stumbles out of bed, quite literally, and reflects on what a strange dream he just had, and that he'd better stop the terrorist blowing up the plane.
From then on, the game is determined to prevent you from reaching your goal, with a resident of the hotel asking you to find something for them, followed by the plane exploding and you waking up back in your room the next day, determined to stop that plane exploding. You may have realised already, but this is a rather surreal game. But as it's by Suda51, that is to be expected. Music wise, it's also a bit of an oddity. Masafumi Takada, who usually seems to work with Suda has kind of done most of the music this time. I say most of, as the music generally consists of remixes of works by famous composers such as Debussy and Bach, with there being very few original songs in it. The game makes sure to point out that this is a pretty cheap decision by the designers.
I do kind of feel like I'm neglecting to mention something about Flower, Sun & Rain, but I also don't want to go too much into it, as a game focused on such a confusing mystery like this really needs to be experienced first hand to get the most out of it. That, and I can often go on endlessly about a game I'm really taken with. It's an odd one, but it's also an experience that I don't think I'd find anywhere else.
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