The Roottrees Are Dead

Overall more enjoyable than other games in the genre such as Return of the Obra Dinn, the main deduction points here feel generally reasonable and I found I could keep up with the overall plot without too much effort; more focus was required on narrowing down specific details, especially the non-required trivia.

With that said, towards the mid point of the game it did often result that I was just repeatedly talking to the 'Hint Duck' until it basically just told me which obscure article/tidbit in the sea of proffered information I was supposed to be paying attention to in order to progress the story further. Although many reviewers will allow post-reveal hindsight to let the game 'justify' the old Sherlock quote of "you saw, but did you observe"; in practice it felt like you are just expected to read and re-read most of the games (gratuitous and unorganised) text without direction until you spot the tiny details that conceal clues. I'm sure this is delightful for some but I found it ruined the 'detective' experience by turning it into more of a direct puzzle, crafted deliberately for you and refined so that every aspect was challenging, as opposed to a more natural mystery where some parts would be more easily revealed than others since some info would be easily obtained as common knowledge, and others would require leaps of logic.

Although I did end up finishing with all details solved, and enjoyed the time overall, it felt more like I'd completed a cerebral puzzle chamber crafted for the player themselves than actually sleuthed out an in-universe answer to the storyline.