Ressya no tabi - The Train Travel - is a relaxing set of vignettes which make heavy use of custom scripting and some very appealing textures and models to create a vacation train tour. Throughout the adventure the players partake in multiple vacation-like activities, such as visiting a scenic overlook by a shopping district, climbing a castle under renovation, performing community service at a lake, making pottery, and visiting two temples. At each location there is some kind of activity to be performed, and often a run-in with some NPCs. I don't want to spoil too much of what is in each stop, so I'll be very vague as I review the map in its entirety:

First off, the game works like this: A train takes you from stop to stop. At each stop, you can use a smart phone to interact with the scenery for points and then solve a puzzle of some sort to complete the scenario and go back to the train. Between stops, the players can run freely on the train, finding secrets and playing with a bunch of really, really cute toys scripted as pick-up weapons.

Cute is how I would describe the entire map. Cute, charming, creative, and often quite impressive in its execution. Brushwork is beautiful, new textures are used very tastefully and with much consideration and tender love and care. There's lots of little atmospheric details, witty inclusions, and activities to keep things interesting. Many of the weapons are just superfluous toys like dice or balls to play catch with, and the map's relaxed and indulgent approach to these meld with the background music to create an atmosphere of pure… well, to echo the beginning of this paragraph: cute, charming, creative, and often quite impressive execution.

The stops throughout include a few types of puzzles and obstacles. They usually fall into one of these categories:

1. Fight a bunch of guys: There are a couple times in this map where you have to fight a bunch of guys. It's usually not terribly difficult, and the weapons the map gives you make things a little clunkier than they need to be, but it never got frustrating. That said, I don't think I can quite say that I liked the combat, so much as that I felt it came in at appropriate times for pacing's sake.

2. Push-shove-pickup blocks. There's a few points in this map where you have to carry the janky-ass Sven Co-op pushblocks a ways. I think these areas are probably the ones that would benefit the most from having a lot of players on at once, speeding things along. Dragging any object in Sven Co-op always takes a while and is super-duper clunky, with the object occasionally flying far in an unintended direction and undoing tedious progress. I think that at least 2 out of 3 of these didn't put me in a situation where that would happen very often, but at least one of those 2 also required moving I think 24 of those objects, and sincerely: to heck with that. These puzzles are cute with lots of people, but annoying the fewer people you have.

3. Platforming puzzles where you need to jump all over some bullshit. There's often secrets all over each vignette if you attempt to platform to get on top of buildings and such. These can be pretty challenging platforming puzzles, so be ready for that. I didn't have much trouble with any of the platforming, though I had tons of trouble with one part in the second stop where the ground kept crumbling, sending me falling down to waste time repeating platforming sections. A lot of the platforming feels somewhat optional, too, only leading to more impressive score areas.

There were a couple standalone puzzles as well, such as a really clever puzzle with a giant Buddha. I enjoyed figuring that one out, though that is one I imagine can become hell on a server with lots of people if those people aren't necessarily willing to coordinate.

As an American with a pretty limited understanding of Japanese culture, I found that everything in this map was presented in a very understandable and relatable manner. Conventions of vacation fun and sight-seeing certainly cross cultural barriers and this map is a prime example of this.

Overall, I had lots of fun with this map. It's pretty grand- I can't believe it all fit on one map! All of the new content is cute and fun, the map looks fantastic and is a joy to be inside of, and the activities are kind of tedious but are thematic and lots of fun with friends.

If you're looking for a map to play with friends, definitely give this one a go and play it sometime. If you're looking for a map in a server rotation, I think you'd need to have a very specific kind of server rotation, but if you can fit it you should try to.

Pros:

• I'm drowning in how cute the atmosphere is here
• Fantastic, detailed work put into brushes, textures, and new models
• Every aspect of this map is infused with some level of fun, including some superfluous weapons
• Combat is often a brief respite from the calming activities
• Tons of environmental interaction in the train and tourist spots
• Map felt like a very good length for what it does

Cons:

• Some of the puzzles are tedious, often because they rely on tedious engine features
• The newly scripted weapons feel a bit clunky in the combat
• The scripted phone tool doesn't always work very well, sometimes locking itself into certain use modes
• One of the platforming challenges was, admittedly, full of the most annoying platforming gimmicks