Game Review: Time Hollow
Time Hollow tells the story of Ethan Kairos (or Horou Tokio in the JP version), a boy who is displaced in time on his 17th birthday.. thanks to a pen.
Weird premise, right? Well, it doesn’t get much better.
The idea is every 17 year old in this family inherits a pen on their birthday and somehow becomes displaced in time and has to fix things using said object. The pen opens “portals” into the past where you find notes and junk from your parents/some random girl. You have to go back and save your parents from dying in a fire while you were a child and seemingly everything gets in your way.
The story is ridiculous. Going from murdering your BFFs to saving dead dogs at random. I can only assume this game was trying to feed off of the popularity of games like Phoenix Wright. Although for something that is supposed to be an exploration game, everything is very linear and you aren’t really left on your own too often. There are only a handful of locations to visit and check out anyways, so even when you’re only given a tiny hint it’s still really easy to figure out. which I guess is a good thing in some cases, or for people like me who just use FAQs anyway.
The game is horribly short–about 4-5 hours–which doesn’t help it’s case. Nothing is really explained because of it, it’s all “well I guess this works” plot-wise. The game is pretty enough but lackluster in every other area. There’s only one cute girl and she gets the smallest amount of screentime.
I was really disappointed because I love the quirky games the DS brings, and I had hopes that this would be one of them. It wasn’t even close; I really regret spending even as little time as 5 hours on it. How terrible it is can be summed up like this: no fanart exists for this game that I can find. Anywhere. (except for one hideous picture on pixiv, but that doesn’t count because it’s ugly).
Hi there Ashleigh, I also posted a very short review on this. I agree with you that it’s a bit short and simplistic. I still love the storyline, though, and actually had fun playing it ^^
I had nothing against the gameplay and length, but the story was simply stupid at times and it really lacked impact. Be it emotional or simply suspenseful, the game’s plot didn’t do very much for me, and the only part of it that I found to be slightly appealing was the conclusion with the guy’s uncle. I won’t spoil it, but you know what happens: it appealed to the romance fan in me.
But that’s about it. It’s a mediocre game, and I enjoyed Hotel Dusk and the Pheonix Wright series much more.