Side Quests: Harmony: The Fall of Reverie Review
Having a glimpse at the future would solve so many conundrums… right?
In Harmony: The Fall of Reverie , you play as Polly—or Harmony, as she’s known in the parallel world of Reverie, where human values take form as Aspirations. Her powers as Oracle allow you to peer into the near future as you make your decisions, and through her Augural, an actual game board viewable by the player, you can craft a path based on desired outcomes. But as her life collides with the Aspirations’ world, is this power enough to shape the future you want?
Dev studio Dontnod has treaded the territory of empathy-driven games since its inception, starting with the beloved high school fantasy drama Life Is Strange . Harmony continues that legacy, this time in a pure visual novel form that permits the studio to tackle its narrative strength. So how does this approach, and its experimental branching-narrative gameplay feature, work out—has Dontnod created another deeply-engaging experience, or does its intentions get stuck in high fantasy?
From the outside, there are two major draws to the game: the Augural, which is Harmony’s core gameplay system, and working to appeal to “Aspirations,” which plays out similarly to other visual novels. These intertwine well with the story of Harmony as its science fiction and fantasy story plays out for Polly and her community.
The “Aspirations” are demigod-like figures that exist in the parallel universe called Reverie and represent core drives of humanity—Chaos and Power, Bond and Glory, Bliss and Truth—while subtly influencing Brittle, the human world. Each has fitting personality and motives, strengths and flaws that are easy to parse without giving too much away all at once.
In short, to get
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