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Denshattack! is about commuter trains doing skateboard tricks, and it takes many of its stylistic and narrative cues from the likes of Jet Set Radio.

Wax Heads ultimately shares the same central conflict as Empire Records, in which an independent shop is at risk of being bought up by a soulless corporation, but the interactive elements of this game really emphasize just how much there is to lose beyond one’s job. Music conjures powerful, immediate emotions, but it’s the game’s masterful story about how that music brings audiences together that produces all the lingering, magical feels.

The main story’s baseline difficulty is quite measured, but each stage offers optional challenges for you to complete—say, slay a certain number of spectral samurai, or avoid every pit of spikes along the way.

Simply put, this game seems almost perversely hell-bent on gating you off from any kind of enjoyment. Ultimately, there’s too much work involved for not nearly enough reward from the world or the narrative, despite the occasional interesting twist and turn. Players are expected to care for every single weapon that Aran crafts in the course of his journey, which is a Herculean task given just how little care Blades of Fire gives to its players in return.

Maybe it’s intended as a joke that you only get the trophy for “completing the tutorial” once you’re 80% done with the game—there seem to be multiple “ending” scenes—or maybe that’s a tacit acknowledgement of the game’s refrain: “It Never Ends in Everhood.” Perhaps the base game is just the tutorial and the real game is what awaits players after they return to the main hub and are reminded of the weekly battle arena challenges and the levels that can be accessed inside the Hillbert Hotel created by other players. So for those predisposed to wanting to see everything all at once, maybe that will be transcendent enough.

Characters are even treated differently upon being discovered: Alfredo gets the fewest chances before he’s thrown back in the cell, and gun-toting soldiers will chase after Amelia rather than open fire on her like the other inmates. Thus, it can be worthwhile for Eduardo to push a block into place even if he’s going to be caught right afterwards, or for Amelia to run interference. Sometimes the most valuable progress you’ll make is simply to unlock a door for another character to use later. In an impressive feat of adapting an established format for a unique setting, The Stone of Madness is cleverly attuned to perseverance through incremental progress.

The themes here are painted with a broad brush, but their refusal to get down to specifics doesn’t mean that they don’t still ring true. The game bittersweetly fixates on parenthood, as you watch Neva herself grow and outpace Alba as the seasons pass, and on the destruction of the natural world, which in turn makes it more hostile and violent. And then there’s the connective thread between the two—that even when it feels like everything is falling apart, because sometimes it literally is, the only thing you can do is keep moving.

While the plot is occasionally predictable and the voice acting is a bit of a letdown, none of this takes away from the overall charm and mystery of Eden Genesis. Even when the final area, Node Zero, strips away all of the glamor of Eden’s districts, reducing things to a wireframe orange, it’s never anything less than exhilarating to find ways around obstacles, running along the safe underbelly of a fiery platform in order to double-jump up and slash through an enemy on the other side of it before finding another safe ceiling. If this is mental degeneration, then Disturbed had it right back in 2000: “Get up, come on get down with the sickness.”

It’s indicative of the game’s clear messaging that despite multiple car crashes, a delirious dream sequence, a high-stakes infiltration, and more, the moment that most stands out is a relatively quiet one: Trevor sitting at a piano, playing an original piece that he’s composed. For all the time spent controlling him up to that point, this is the first time where Angela, and by extension the player, can see him as an independent person, one capable of making his own decisions (in this case, his art). That glimpse of his humanity is a moving little flourish that attests to American Arcadia’s belief that we all deserve freedom from coercion and an unreal life.

It’s indicative of the game’s clear messaging that despite multiple car crashes, a delirious dream sequence, a high-stakes infiltration, and more, the moment that most stands out is a relatively quiet one: Trevor sitting at a piano, playing an original piece that he’s composed. For all the time spent controlling him up to that point, this is the first time where Angela, and by extension the player, can see him as an independent person, one capable of making his own decisions (in this case, his art). That glimpse of his humanity is a moving little flourish that attests to American Arcadia’s belief that we all deserve freedom from coercion and an unreal life.