![]() It adds the kind of depth needed to support the dialogue-heavy moments that build up to what feels like a genuine recreation of the Stranger Things world. Still, on a broad level, roaming around, looking for chests, and finding locked doors you'll return to once you have the right character is fun in a nostalgic way. While they’re useful, I found that putting a lot of energy into making and upgrading trinkets, which are the only equipment or customization options you find, bogged down the experience more than it improved it. You spend a lot of time finding materials to build "trinkets" that you equip to gain bonuses for some or all of your characters. The crafting and equipment system is very thin as well. There are a lot of fetch-quests and some tedious legwork as you are asked to run back and forth across Hawkins, earning you money and crafting materials that you don’t really need. Stranger Things 3: The Game does its best to reward curious minds with sidequests and areas that are only accessible using specific characters, but I wouldn't necessarily say any of those non-essential missions and their rewards feel especially meaningful. ![]() ![]() You can complete these missions on your own time, in any order, which gives you an excuse to explore the town and revel in the experience of being inside the Stranger Things universe. The story is broken into chapters, each of which features a set of missions that roughly but faithfully follow the plots of various groups of characters from the show. At any given time, your party of two characters (the second of which is either controlled by AI or another player in local co-op) can roam free around familiar areas in and around a carefully pixelated version of Hawkins, Indiana. ![]() Since Stranger Things repurposes language and characters from Dungeons & Dragons, it's fitting that Stranger Things 3: The Game broadly mimics a 16-bit-era action RPG. Similarly, its structure and mechanics feel designed to remind you of "old games" generally without taking too heavily from any one, while also borrowing ideas from more modern games. While it sometimes seems scattershot, it all blends together surprisingly well, evoking the nostalgic warm-and-fuzzies you want from something designed to match Stranger Things' blanket "retro" vibe. Longer stretches of dialogue come in text boxes with so-so hand-drawn character portraits, evoking 8- and 16-bit era RPGs, but you'll also see a fair amount of floating pixelated flavor text a la Monkey Island. Though there is a uniform style, it's derived from a hodgepodge of influences. Ironically, it reminds me of a fake video game that might be made for a TV show: Its art style resembles 16-bit consoles, but is clearly more detailed than any SNES or Sega Genesis game could have been. There's an uncanny quality to Stranger Things 3: The Game's look. Stranger Things 3: The Game sticks close enough to the story of the show, but unsurprisingly lacks the same emotional punch. However, it does stick close enough to that script that I would strongly urge people to watch the new season before even turning it on. Though its roughly 8-hour campaign has more detail than you'd get watching a recap or reading a well-written wiki summary, it should surprise no one to hear that this version lacks the same emotional punch as the show. Without going into spoiler territory, the story in Stranger Things 3: The Game feels like an abridged version of the story told throughout season 3. ![]()
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