Esoterica: The Dreamlike

Esoterica: the Dreamlike isn't your usual Rmk2003 game: it's not a jrpg, and it's not even set in a fantasy or sci-fi world, like a tons of other games.
No.
Esoterica is a trippy and short adventure that will entertain you with lots of dialogues, a weird story and some (skippable) real time combat.
As I said in some of the part reviews, Rmk2003 isn't perfect for action parts, due to its own characteristic, by the way I found no problem with them. The game is also short and you can save anywhere if you often will receive the request to save.

So this little game is divided in two main parts: one is the linear flow of dialogues that creates an interesting and bizarre story (that I won't explain here, of course!), and then there is the action section in which you have to avoid to be targeted by the opponents, and at the same time you have to shoot them. These parts aren't perfect, but thankfully they are quite short, so they provide a nice diversion and they are not tedious at all.



Music is ok, unfortunately there are some problems with graphics: while sounds and music is generally fitting, the chipsets and the facesets are mixed, both for quality and style (I know that modern setting resources are hard to find). Some fit perfectly while others are a bit out of place, anyway the worse thing are probaly the trasparency issues and the characters walking through the walls, by the way it's clearly a game made in really short time, so it's ok.
Same goes for mapping, that is simple but adequate. It just is ok, and maybe I can overlook some defects due to the surreal theme.

The game has two endings and also a post game part that explain many of the things happened during the adventure (some were obvious, others aren't, in my opinion, anyway I appreciate this final explanations by the author)

Conclusions
Esoterica: the Dreamlike is probably something different from most of the games you will find here. It's a game of mystery and drama, it's short and it's a pleasant filler, between bigger games. Despite the lack of polishing there are no game-stopping bugs and the addition of real-time combat is a nice diversion to the narrative flow. I know I have a soft spot for modern games with surreal and horror parts, and for these reason I know that it's hard finding good charsets and chipsets that aren't chibi or cute, so I find the game ok despite it's obvious imperfections, that still do not ruin the overall experience.

Ok, that's more or less all, it's a nice little game so there's not much more to say. Play it for the story, if you want something different that won't take much of your time. 3.5!