INTRO
Road to Guangdong is a 3rd-person dialogue-based, 1st-person car driving simulator. It released in August of last year for Nintendo Switch and PS4. It also went on to Xbox One at some point. It was developed y Just Add Oil, and published by Excalibur Games.
With the basic info out of the way, is this game any good? Let’s find out!
STORY
After the death of Ba Ba, Sunny and Ma Ma have to go on a country-wide trip to 6 different locations to convince her remaining relatives (and a few friends) to join a family reunion dinner at her restaurant. Convincing them to attend, however, is easier said then done. . .
The dialogue in Road to Guangdong is absolutely beautiful, for starters. The game is brimming with beautiful characters and wonderful dialogues that showcase the character’s personalities. The character designs are interesting, their struggles and the ways to solve them make going through the game worthwhile, and that’s all I got.
GAMEPLAY
The goal in Road to Guangdong is to reunite the whole family (and friends), and subsequently get all of the family recipes in the process. The game is part dialogue-based, and mainly a Zen driving-Car maintenance hybrid experience.
The game’s dialogue has several choices, and choosing the right/wrong option at the wrong time is very well the difference between getting more people to attend the reunion, and missing out on the best ending. Speaking of endings…
When I first played the game last week, I took up too much time and gas and money in game to make it to my first destination (Si Fu’s dojo). They were the only ones who made it to the family reunion in my ending that I got as a result. The game was only made by 5 people, and it shows. The driving is boring, since you need to do it at a slow-enough speed to get to the next garage or destination. And also, it’s easy to accidentally guess the wrong options, ruining your chance at getting one or more people in a location to join the reunion and making the ending less satisfactory as a result.
Thankfully, the Asian-inspired soundtrack and music is beautiful to listen to, aside from one or two punk songs that would actually fit in a rock-based game or Rocket League.
Maintaining your car requires a good amount of Petrol and Oil. Getting to locations you can get them at is where
CONCLUSION
Road to Guangdong is a decent game IF you’re just driving around listening to the music. Getting the parts needed to get the car running, and keep it running is where the game falls just short.
Decent enough to warrant a buy, for sure.
