I think once you bring time travel into a story, it can no longer really be called "slice of life" as such. Life is Strange had fantastic, melodramatic elements from the beginning. The presentation of the dark room and Jefferson as an antagonist could've been less corny, but I feel like the concept was strong.
Have you ever played "steins;gate" ? There is plenty dramatic slice of life in it, even with time travel.
I agree with this review, Lis has plotholes and logical issues. The main character hold the idiot ball far more often and suffer from "richard reed is useless" syndrome.
That's not an entirely fair criticism. I mean, there will always be plot holes in any story that has time travel, so I avoid bringing it up.
In Li S, the protagonist can use time travel to prevent fairly mundane issues and potentially save lives, but much of the series is about the perils of screwing around with time, and how the Universe seems to really want things to happen a certain way - thus her powers in many ways are useless, but that's the point.
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The idea that Time Travel plots will always have plotholes regardless of how the idea is used, so it's fair to never criticize them for it, strikes me as lazy and giving a pass on writers telling a bad story.
I feel like Life is Strange would have been much better without Max's powers relating to time travel. DONTNOD was much more interested in using feels to tell their story anyway.
Eh, I think the way the game established time travel as working was mostly solid. Any criticisms I have are reserved for how it was used.
"but much of the series is about the perils of screwing around with time, and how the Universe seems to really want things to happen a certain way - thus her powers in many ways are useless, but that's the point."
Now see, this is what I have a big problem with. Episode 5's resolution made the whole series into an extended Kafka Komedy.
That line there is what I was trying to refer to honestly.
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Life is Blandish
I played the first episode of Life Is Strange a long while back, and after the game asked me to complete a particularly convoluted puzzle in which I had to set up a Rube Goldberg style machine just to get a girl to move off of a step and out my way, I decided this wouldn't be the game for me. But a combination of positive feedback and a hefty steam sale discount was enough for me to give this series another chance.
Li S Has a lot of good ideas and a neat premise, especially in how it encourages players to deal with the protagonist's time reversing mechanic. There is absolutely the opportunity to abuse this power for personal gain, though personally I tried Jessica Jonesing it, in that I avoided using the powers as much as possible. Part of that was because I wanted to see the kind of protagonist who would behave that way, but mostly because I had real difficulty with engaging with the game and this seemed like the quickest way through.
Sadly, a lot of Li S best ideas are marred by opposing design flaws. For instance, its painterly design looks pretty, but it doesn't seem to fit a lot of its more violent situations. The series tries to produce a lot of emotional moments, but the animation is so limited that characters resemble shop window manikins, with flappy mouths that barely move in-sync to their dialogue. The rewind mechanic is cool, but it gets irritating on that one puzzle you can't solve, and have to constantly rewind rewatch the same 15 second scene over and over to figure out a solution.
The biggest missteps though are in the writing. Initially it is the dialogue that's the problem, sounding just like an adult doing a lousy job of emulating teenage slang. But bigger issues emerge over time. Not content with a slice of life drama, the series has to regularly throw the main characters into increasingly absurd perils for you to save the day. It eventually comes across as a little exploitative, when it is also trying to feed directly into teenage issues such as abuse and despair. Even the big ideas are mawkish and explored right on-the-nose. For instance, we are literally shown a butterfly that causes a tornado. References wrapped around anvils.
I really wanted to like Li S as it is s enthusiastic about doing things differently - but the more I played it, the less I enjoyed it.