The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa is an adventure game with no puzzles. It's a beat em up where beating em up isn't the point. It's a life simulator where you simulate the life of a guy whose personality and priorities stay the same regardless of your input. It's full of weird glitches and underdeveloped systems and none of it matters. It's one of my favorite games of all time.

You play Ringo Ishikawa, juvenile delinquent gang leader. It's your senior year of high school and you have to decide how you want to spend it. At the start, a teacher tells you to get your grades up so you can graduate. At the end, graduation is still a couple weeks away and it's left to you to decide what happens after the last scene (which is, crucially, always the same). In between, you're given the run of a small town and can do pretty much anything you want within those confines.

My first run, I went to class every day, got my grades up, read every book in the library, tutored my classmates and got a job at the video store. I neglected combat leveling and most of the gang related story paths to try and become an honest citizen. Ultimately this bit me in the ass when engaging with Ringo's delinquent past and gang obligations stopped being optional right at the end.

My second run, I avoided school entirely to hang out at the pool hall and gamble and train my combat abilities. I met some interesting people this way, but ultimately realized I did have to go to school sometimes to make connections with the friends who would actually push the story forward.

In both runs, the game's one ending was infuriating and perfect. No spoilers, except that we fade to black on Ringo doing something stupid and pointless for a matter of principle no one else cares about. It's the only way Ringo's high school career could have ended. But the way that ending lands for you and what it ultimately says about Ringo will inevitably be colored by how you spent the rest of the game. The same scene means something different to me every time I play.

Whenever I play The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa, I try to smoke on the dock and watch the sun rise over the water every morning. I'm actively disappointed when I oversleep or get knocked out and I miss it. It's just a small peaceful moment at one of the few times a day when there's no external obligations or meaningful decisions to be made. This little ritual is only important because it's important to me. And that's what the game is about, more or less. The way that every moment of our lives, we are defining ourselves to ourselves despite or because of whatever confines we're in. And isn't that beautiful?

If that sounds pretentious to you, fair enough. If all you want is a fun beat em up, you'll find this game slow, wordy, and mechanically shallow. Meanwhile if what you want is a wordy thinky visual novel type experience and resent having to engage with combat systems in a story game, you'll find this game yanks your collar back really hard in the last third.

I don't know who exactly this game's audience is. What is the crossover between people who like slow existential games about the quiet beauty of day to day life and people who like beat em ups?

It might only be for me. But by god, it is squarely and perfectly for me.