Highway Blossoms Reviews

This story is unbelievable. And sadly I mean that in the literal sense here. None of the characters feel like actual people. Everyone's just a bit too exaggerated to be believable. Every single characters core trait is exaggerated to a point where they don't feel like characters, they feel like vessels for drama and excuses for sh*t happening just to progress the story or create more drama. While yes, obviously people are never perfect, I think the constant setups in this VN about the way people interact with each other is so far removed from reality that it becomes difficult for me to actually root for anyone. It's so difficult to believe that Marina would be that stupid and that forgetful. (Also, really? "Nickel" being corrected to Quarter by Amber because she doesn't understand what 1/4th of something is??) The scene where she screams to not be treated "like a f*cking child" is not even believable because she's done nothing but ACT like a child for the entire game. It has no weight because she has genuinely not given me reason to believe she is anything but a child who could never take care of herself. Mariah is a difficult case to express in simple words but her entire character feels like a joke, it feels like a mcguffin for the protag duo to have someone to bump heads with. Her animosity is dialed so high up that it's comedic but once again, it disconnects from reality. Joe and Tess both being completely passive towards it and putting up with it makes it all the worse cause it feels like the game itself doesn't even realize how silly it is. Also making her a raging alcoholic that goes as far as throwing bottles at them when she's hungover? She's abusive as hell and they just... don't seem to care? It's difficult to believe how absolutely self absorbed Amber is for someone who's supposed to have dedicated herself to care for her Grampa (and then Marina), and yes I understand that she's a 19 year old girl who lost her only parental figure but the way she acts is still hard to believe sometimes. She's always right, she's always in charge. She's also abusive, in a much lesser degree, and it feels like the story completely skims over these aspects of the characters because they're just traits being used to forward a story that ends up feeling hollow. The game was about a treasure hunt. That treasure hunt ends like halfway through the story. Two 19 year old girls have found A FORTUNE in gold and they just... don't seem to even care about it until it becomes relevant when Marina BETS THE ENTIRE THING AWAY (again, why the writers thought this would be good narrative I have no idea) The treasure itself, the thing the game builds up around for the entire first half, becomes completely sidelined in the 2nd half, by interpersonal drama and convenient f*ck-ups that force the characters to be real people for brief moments. By the ending, it's hard for me to feel for any of the characters, when none of them feel like real people to me. This feels like a bad comedy without a punchline. It's already insane to me that these events even transpire like a 19 year old girl is suddenly away from home with no car and no phone and her immediate instinct is to beg the girl who rescued her to go treasure hunting with her instead of calling home? I can excuse this as a forced plot progression for the sake of telling a story but just... Nothing that happens in this game feels believable. (The fact that's also completely okay with A CAR being stolen and HER PHONE being sold is also just extremely weird.) And Amber just conveniently doesn't own a phone either... Despite living on the road in a motorhome, which is old and like on the verge of breaking down? The fact that she doesn't even own an emergency prepaid phone is, again, insane to me. The writers just really needed to invent reasons for things to be complicated or create tension, huh. I'm disappointed.