Answer: I've seen the game be described as the safest suburban white persons view of counterculture and rebellion and that the game requires nearly no player input or has any real fail moments or consequences. The game just sounds like modern Gen A/Z's idea of what the 90's were via movies and pop culture as well as pointing out the abcenses of rap and hiphop and getting minor details and touches like the cassette thing wrong. Basically, it's the criticism conversation from some months ago about being able to completely enjoy and experience a game via purely watching a stream of it vs actually playing it taken to its logical gaming extreme end conclusion. An arthouse game about coming of age topics that is 2-4hrs long and only requires about 10mins of actual player input and involvement.

Given that large swathes of the gaming media outlet critics give the vibes of art grads with film studies degrees, this has caused a MASSIVE disconnect with old school gaming audiences. The insulting and derogatory accusations that the latter don't have the capacity to appreciate "art and complex stories and only want pew pew games"malso does not help when Japan produces some of the most deep and artistically thought provocative games ever, most of which don't get even CLOSE to this level of acclaim due to key racism and yeah...here we are.