canedaddy wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 11:41 am
That's interesting coming from someone who is so articulate and expresses himself so well via the written word (see this entire thread).
Anyway, that looks like a cool game.
That's very sweet of you to say, but life is so full of irony, isn't it?!? At the risk of going off on a philosophical tangent, I, at some point, realized that I was becoming lost in language in a search for truth, as strange as that may sound. I had this blind spot that perhaps many also share, a blind spot that believed that I could find the depths of truth within language. But language is, of course, symbolic. And symbols can never be what they represent. To put it another way, all language is "false", even if it can be a useful pointer helping direct to what is real..."real"?. All abstraction, whether mental imagery or concepts derived of other symbols... of words, is "untrue", if that makes any sense to anyone. So all the mental noise ultimately leads nowhere and only circles back on itself, and it took me a long time to really absorb this fact, being slow to digest this thing. But in the process I became intimately familiar with language, my own given at birth, as well as Germanic etymology and also especially the study of Latin. While it's not the only influence of Western symbolism, it's tentacles are found throughout. And I also had the "advantage" of learning Swedish fluently when I was young. So, my nature, was to immerse myself within these symbols used for communication only to find that ultimately nothing comes of it, lol. The absurdity of life. Maybe I need a padded cell and straight jacket.
#10 Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 (PS2 - 2002) 4/5 (Playtime 19+ hours)
Being a gamer of fairly broad tastes, I'm always on the lookout for oddities and obscurities that may have missed mainstream, or even enthusiast, attention. My radar is always on, scanning and hoping to find such treasures, and when I come across something that seems like it will tickle my fancy, I always put it on my back burner with the intention of hopefully playing it one day. One such game caught my attention years ago in the form of a Japanese-only series called Boku no Natsuyasumi (My Summer Vacation) or, more specifically, the second entry released for the PS2 (and later the PSP) in 2002. Sadly, this game was never brought to the west and no translation was available, that is, until late 2023, when Canadian YouTuber Hilltop completed work on this project, making it available to any who were interested. I thought this would be a game that would forever remain outside my ability to properly appreciate, but thankfully, with this translation, I finally got to experience it in 2024.
So what is Boku exactly? Well, you take on the role of a child named, Boku - meaning “I" in Japanese. (There's even a joke about his name in-game referencing the saying “me, myself and I” where another character makes fun of his strange name.) This is intended to be your (the player's) adventure, after all, and the name is a reflection of that ideology. Your family has sent you away to your aunt and uncle's boarding house - they run an airbnb of sorts - in the rural, coastal fishing village of Tomifumi. It's 1975, and you're a 9-year-old kid, sent away over the holiday while your mom and dad make preparations for a new arrival back home in the form of a soon-to-be-born sibling. You'll be here for one month - the entirety of August, and will have the opportunity to meet new people, explore the region, and simply enjoy your vacation as you learn a little more about life and, maybe, grow up a little in the process.
The visuals are of a pre-rendered style, like PS1 Resident Evil or Final Fantasy, and they're full of detail and charm. Of course, the resolution, being from this era of gaming, isn't as high, but taken as a package, the world was full of color and variety, and exploring was always satisfying in terms of the presentation of an interesting world. The voice acting was also well-done, although, like with other games I've played with Japanese voice, it's hard for me to accurately assess the quality, given my unfamiliarity with the language. But there was a nice variety of emotive expression and vibrancy to the deliveries, and I appreciated that aspect, whatever the quality may have ultimately been to a native speaker. There are some nice musical pieces that are sprinkled about as well. One is played on a record player of one of the villagers in the evenings. Another couple are played on guitar by one of the visitors, and finally there's a really beautiful piece played over the credits. In terms of sound and visuals, I was very pleased with Boku. There aren't many games depicting “normal” modern life, and here things were a beautiful translation of that setting.
The practical structure of Boku is an open world where you'll roam about the handful of village buildings as well as the surrounding natural areas. As things progress, you will unlock new routes to new areas and shortcuts that allow you to traverse things more efficiently. Your day is structured around a consistent routine. You awaken and have morning communal exercises at the park (if you didn't exhaust yourself and get sent to bed because you overdid it the day before), breakfast with your aunt, uncle and two boy cousins, daytime free time, dinner and then finally evening free time. During your free time you can partake in many different activities. You can collect a variety of bugs, including different types of beetles for “bug wars” where these critters battle it out for superiority against your cousins. (You can also preserve and mount them, if you wish.) You can go swimming in numerous (and interconnected) bodies of water where you may find some treasures worth holding onto. You can fish with a variety of tackle and bait, both in fresh water and the sea, and if you catch something particularly noteworthy, it will be the family dinner that evening, which was a nice touch. You can go biking, look for bottle caps - the more you find, the longer you can hold your breath underwater, which was one of the “gamiest” elements in Boku. (I only found 13 of 25 when I'd finished.) You can play at the local park - swing, slide, see saw with another girl from a local family. You can and will meet the town locals and follow along with all of their own personal narratives as the days progress. You'll meet some curious new strangers that are boarding at the families business during your stay. You can buy yourself a treat (if you've earned the money). There are simply so many little things to distract yourself with. And the beauty of it all, as it should be with a summer vacation, is that *none* of it is mandatory. From the time you arrive at the village until the day you go back home, you choose exactly what you wish to do. The way things were so open really facilitated that sensation we all (hopefully) remember when we were kids on summer break. It's your time and you while away the hours and days however you please. If you are seeking a little more guidance and structure, there is a wonderfully organic integration of a “hint” system where you play that paper fortune teller game with flaps and numbers that most everyone has probably experienced as a kid. While consulting the little girl who you play this with, she'll point you in areas you may want to focus your next day upon. And I did usually use this to my advantage to make sure I didn't miss any important story beats. Even if you don't do this, however, there is enough time every day to see every area, especially if you set the passage of time to “slow”. There are three degrees for time movement, and time moves are only measured by screen transitions, so you could theoretically spend an eternal day on one screen. If you set time movement to quick, though, you'll struggle to see every area each day. I kept mine set on slow for almost the entire game. It was only after I knew I had done everything that I wanted for a given day that I'd change it to go ahead and wrap things up or, alternatively, simply go to bed. To the point, there are so many things you can do and see each day, and there's a variety of narrative threads that persist throughout, as well as ones that crop up and resolve within a shorter span within these summer days.
Speaking of the narrative and characters, they were a real highlight of Boku. Everyday, you'll learn more and more about your relatives and the local villagers, and they are far more in-depth than I was expecting. There's not tons of bloat, with each character interaction only having two things to say each day, however short or long. But these people all felt real and their struggles and joys were wonderfully portrayed, with both comedy and sincerity. There's a grandfather who's a widower coping with the loss of his wife along with hoping for his grandchildren's’ future well-being. A nerdy, scientific boy who's estranged from his father, who also lives on the island in an isolated hut on the mountain top. An absentee mother that comes to briefly visit who knows she's not a good mom for having abandoned her children to care by relatives - a woman who wishes she were different, but has come to accept herself as she is. Your uncle used to be a carpenter but was afraid of heights and is now stuck running the boarding-house business, and he's clearly (mostly silently) tortured by his fear-induced prison of sorts. And many others - those are just a few of the threads. And Boku himself, oh my, what to say about Boku?!? Boku, well he's a lovable (and incorrigible) rascal. He just is who he is without any trace of self-awareness or pretense. Because of his pure and guileless nature, he simply says what he thinks...AT ALL TIMES. Some of the things the come out of his mouth stun the adults he interacts with, and they simply do not know how to respond to such socially unaware utterances. Boku is such an unintentional little devil. I really love him! He's pure through and through, and reason enough to play the game all on his own. All in all, BnN2, despite the cartoonish NPC appearances and relatively brief daily interactions, managed to cultivate believable and poignant profiles of people who were living their lives, both in hardship and victory. Everyone felt genuine and I cared about this group of fictional beings I came to know.
There are some things to note for any would-be players that may be worth mentioning. This is more “experience” than “game”. There's plenty to do, but it's all very simple. There are no deep mechanics, systems or strategy involved - no real demands upon you whatsoever. It's just about exploring, enjoying the narrative and characters and simply *being*. There are also instances of awkward navigation due to fixed camera angles in a few spots. Not only due to perspective, but in a few cases, it wasn't obvious that there was, in fact, a new way and/or direction to interact with the world unless you were really paying attention to little changes in the scenery. But since it's pre-rendered, it was kind of natural to *not* look for or expect differences. I think, at least for me, you don't expect changes in this sort of graphical style, even though it's obviously possible. The control scheme is also a pretty antiquated, if functional. You turn Boku with the d-pad and make him move in the direction he's facing with “X”. It works fine, especially given the pre-rendered scenes, but yeah, it's a little clunky at first. Also the typical differences between Japanese and Western button layouts are awkward with “O” to execute instead of “X" being the primary offender. The open world is also not particularly huge. It's big enough, and it takes some time to remember how to navigate from one area to another once things have fully opened up, but it's far more intimate, both in terms of content and size than most “open-world” games most people are probably used to. It's also probably not possible to see everything on one run in the game. I think you could see most things, but the days don't last long enough to experience it all.
But the essence of Boku hit me pretty hard. I was also a young child in 1975, and my family would send me (and my brother) off every summer to my grandmother's house hundreds of miles away for a couple of weeks to a month. Those memories are some of the best of my entire life. I wasn't particularly happy with some elements of my home life, but my grandmother was an angel - a teacher who also had her summers free, a woman who was intelligent and warm and was, herself, a personal sort of vacation for me. And during those summers I lived a life very much like Boku in this game. She lived in a rural area abutting the woods, and I would run about and explore just like Boku. There were also, at the time, neighborhood children of a similar age to whom I formed bonds and enjoyed those carefree days. Those summers seemed endless and the joys of simply being free and young in a personal sanctuary of sorts were profound. This game felt like a personal parallel on so many levels for me, and as Boku's summer started to wind down, I had flashbacks of my own childhood summers of similar nature, and started to feel a real sadness as his time was drawing short. It was a really bittersweet experience that mirrored my own memories in many ways, and I was more engaged than I might have otherwise been, had those parallels not been present. There's a lot more I could say about this game, but I'll just say that it was wonderfully charming and full of personality along with both a poignant sweetness *and* melancholy in ways that you don't often see. It was engaging from beginning to end, and I was sad to see things come to a close after my 19 hours with the game. I was surprised to feel the return of those sensations of my own summer adventures brought back to the front of my awareness, and that feeling alone was worth the time I invested. It's a shame knowing how many wonderful titles remain forever hidden from many gamers due to lack of localization, but I'm very thankful that at least this one, which I had hoped to play for so long, finally became available for me to enjoy. Solid 4/5.
