I’m always one to give things more than a fair chance. When it comes to games, even those that are utterly dreadful I try to find the good in and persevere with. Someone went to the time and effort to create these experiences, so the least I can do is check them out, right? Well, that patience has been severely tested recently, with both Déjà vu:Drizzlepath and Lucid Cycle stretching even my generous limits. More fool me I guess, but I figured that old saying – third times the charm – might come into effect here as The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna comes from that same developer. I can safely say I’ve learned my lesson: somehow this is even worse than those last two titles.
Let’s start off on a positive shall we? The music is once again the highlight, all orchestral scores that are, if not amazing, pleasant enough to have in the background.
Right. Now that’s out of the way I can say there is almost zero other reason anyone should waste their time with this title. Walking sims get a bad rap (I feel like I’ve said this everytime) but at least the better examples showcase an engaging story or beautifully crafted world to look at for an hour or so. Here, we get a frankly dull, grey, repetitive set of areas that are not only boring to look at, but also somehow run like absolute shit even on the Series X. I’m not sure how they have done it, but getting such a bland game to run so terribly is actually quite an achievement.
And the story is utter guff too, all overly dramatic prose that not only manages to fail to be interesting, but also tries so hard to be deep and meaningful that it comes off as gibberish. Voice acting is laughably bad, as is the audio mix that sees one characters dialogue ultra-loud while the other I could barely hear. Again, the music props up all of these scenes (barely) but in between we’re left just wandering around identikit natural landscapes just hoping we’re heading in the right direction – made even worse when for some unknown reason the music stops playing.
Despite it being – I imagine based on previous titles – a short game, I just could not bring myself to finish it. I would have persevered were it not for one section in which I found myself going round and round those identikit areas with no hint as to whether I was on the right track. I ended up back where I started several times, and at this point I took a look at myself and realised that I have a backlog a mile long so why am I wasting any more time on this?
Conclusion
I’ve tried to see the good in The Dead Tree of Ranchiuna, but it just does everything in such a boring, bland, obtuse fashion that I cannot recommend anyone bother wasting their time with it. Outside of some passable music the game is just tedious and dull, and somehow even worse than the developers previous efforts. Avoid at all costs.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
