Earlier this year, I played about an hour and a half of RE:CALL, and though I found the initial gameplay loop to be intriguing, due to factors outside of my control, I had to shelve the game for another time. Well, seven months later, that time has come. And here’s a quick spoiler about my reviews for you: if I sit down to review a game that I didn’t originally plan on reviewing, it’s because I liked it and I want to talk about it. After roughly seven hours in RE:CALL, I am really glad I went back and rolled credits because, despite its shortcomings, it hit home for me in ways I simply wasn’t expecting.
RE:CALL is a narrative puzzle game that mainly follows Bruce Gallagher, a chubby kid with no friends who suddenly feels a presence watching over him. After a brief intro that neatly explains the game’s core gameplay mechanics, you take control of Bruce as he deciphers the mystery of the “them” that’s following him and the powers they possess. Those powers are at the heart of RE:CALL and they allow Bruce to reshape memories as they’re being recalled. By changing details as he retells a story, he actively changes the reality of that moment. And doing so alters everyone else’s memory of it too.
This concept is cleverly baked into the gameplay loop. The puzzles you’ll play across the seven main chapters of the game are mostly centered around altering memories in just the right way to get what you need. Need to stop a bomb from going off in the present? Try swapping the bomb out with something else in memory. Well, it’s not quite that simple. Solving RE:CALL‘s puzzles requires trial and error but it is cool to see how changing the past impacts the present. And if you’re ever stuck in the past trying to think of what to do next, the present can often have the answers you need. As someone who’s not the best at puzzle games, I expected to hit a wall where I would no longer feel smart enough to solve a scenario but I was able to finish the game on my own merit. And it gave me an excuse to scribble codes and patterns in a notebook like a detective solving a case and that’s almost always a plus for me.
There are a few things that I need to bring up in this review that you need to understand before you decide to pick it up. The first thing is that RE:CALL can be very “video gamey” in its design. This means that some of the puzzles are surface level, and are meant to present a challenge to the player, more than making functional sense in the game world. In other words, the puzzles will be cool but don’t think too much about why something in the game is the way it is. This “gamification” also has its benefits, however, as the game cuts out non-essential scenes you’ve already experienced as you retell a memory to avoid getting too repetitive. The second thing is that while I keep referring to the game’s memory puzzles being the highlight, there does come a point in the latter half of the game, where those mechanics take the backseat. There are still puzzles of sorts but it’s more based on traversal through an area by activating buttons and using certain abilities at your disposal than manipulating memories.
That being said, while the puzzles will undoubtedly be what makes the game cool to a lot of people, I was very surprised at the poignancy of some of the game’s themes. I played the game by myself, in bed, recovering from a torn ACL, and I decided it would be fun to read each character’s dialogue out loud, giving them a different voice and personality based on the great character art in the game. Needless to say, I was not expecting my silly voices to get quite as serious as they did towards the end of the game. What starts off as a running gag during the opening chapters as you play as Bruno turns into a deep revelation that really accentuates the game’s penultimate chapter. I will admit that the game’s writing can be a bit melodramatic but that didn’t bother me too much personally.
I have a few more things I want to touch on as I wrap up this quick review. RE:CALL is confident in its presentation, which is a weird descriptor but it’s how I felt playing the game. The graphics are good but it’s the combination of great character art, the strong narrative themes I mentioned earlier, and well-timed Lofi music that brings the package together. There are a few grammar/spelling mistakes but the game is translated from a different language (Spanish I believe) and the errors are infrequent enough that it wasn’t a big deal. It really is impressive how, once you settle in for the ride, the game is able to deliver interesting twists and turns toward a conclusion that feels well-earned and bittersweet at the same time.
I really enjoyed RE:CALL and it’s a game that I can recommend despite its shortcomings. Bruno Gallagher’s journey was a surprisingly personal one. Seeing him tackle concepts and come to realizations that I myself had to grapple with growing up was unexpected and poignant. While the game does ignore the memory manipulation puzzles that make it so unique in the beginning in favor of Pokémon Gym Leader puzzles towards the end, that didn’t take much away from the overall experience for me. If you can look past some minor grammar and pacing issues, RE:CALL is a game worth remembering. RE:CALL is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
