Last Day of June Review

You know what? I don’t care that this review is way overdue. Issues such as this, are unacceptable, especially when the community has reported them back in 2017 and nothing has been done about it…

Okay, okay, let’s take a step back and chill for a moment.

Last day of June is a story-driven adventure game where you play as different characters (primarily Carl), trying to prevent June’s death.

The story goes that you are a happy couple with June and everything is s*its and giggles before one day, while returning from the pier, where apparently it’s a really happy place for both of you, there is a car crash and June dies, while Carl is left in a wheelchair. Then in a desperate attempt to get her back he tries to rewrite history in order to prevent the car crash and by doing so you get to play with the rest of the characters involved – the kid, the hunter, the best friend and the old man. Each one of them is the cause of the car crash when Carl tinkers with time, and in the end it’s June herself. This is what ticked me off a bit, they never showed how June caused the crash or what was in that present that the old man gave June to give to Carl. In the end, Carl goes back in time once more and decides to switch seats with June, so that he can die and she can stay safe, which it happens and we see June visiting his grave, pregnant. In the epilogue, she is on the same pier, the game started, with mini Carl, a.k.a their son.

Okay, so the story is all nice and touching and everything is cool, but I have a few problems with this game. I really did enjoy the story and the game itself and the mystery it presented, but from the point of view of gameplay, there wasn’t really that much to do, beside go around and click (in my case) X or square on my controller. And you know what? That would have been fine, if I had spent the intended time of this game and not triple of that amount. The way it plays out is that you find each person’s portrait one by one and try to prevent the crash, only to unlock a new way for it to happen and the cool thing here, I think, is that it’s not straightforward, rather than like a puzzle. You have to go back in portraits and rearrange stuff, so that new paths are open for the other ones, or even reversed. By unlocking new things in the further portraits, you can go back and get to the places you haven’t been in previous or do things you couldn’t. The way they play out is the kid, the best friend, the hunter and the old man and once you complete the hunter’s portrait, it’s considered the point of no return, and if you have missed any collectibles, you cannot get them anymore. Each combination of portraits nets you a different car crash and to be fair, I had enough of June dying. It would have been interesting if Carl didn’t end up in a wheelchair every time. Maybe with each car crash, something different could have happened to both.

So what’s the problem with this game?

One of the things, which should never be desecrated – the divine save file. It appears that the game cannot load its own saves and every time it tries to do so, it ends up crashing on the loading screen. Now remember when I said I spent triple the amount of normal time on this game. Typically, one can complete The Last Day of June in 3 hours (let’s put it 4 if you collect all memories), which is completely fine. I played it for 10 hours … 10 hours of my beautiful Sunday were gone just in this game. Why? Because I had to restart it 3 times, just cause of this issue. The first time I just had to turn off the game and go do something only to return and find this mess. After like half an hour of research and trying to find solutions, I came across a topic in the stream forums, where people were getting the same problem as me … in 2017 … it’s 2019 people. Why has this not been fixed? So I started the second time, all determined to swing this game in one go, and a little pissed off, until boom, about half way through, it crashed. And guess what. Upon start, it couldn’t read its save, so I had to start all over again. Oh, and do you know what the best part is? You can’t skip cutscenes, so if you’ve already watched them, kudos to you, because you’re gonna have to sit and watch them all over again, every single time. Does the game allow you to minimize it while they are going on and do other things? Of course not … just like an overly attached girlfriend, all of your attention has to be in it, or else it just automatically pauses. I remember when I was nearing the end of this game, I almost had an anxiety attack, so that it doesn’t crash anymore.

Another technical issue is that you cannot stream this game, because guess what happens when you try? Oh, nope, sorry, it’s too shy and it crashes. And how helpful of you to save all the crash reports into my saves folder. How very useful… you get my point. Also, controller reading was kind of wonky. I couldn’t walk properly with my joystick, since it, for some reason, didn’t read the input of me pressing the sticks diagonally and the characters would spasm out and stop. At least on cable it was fine, because at that point, I was getting pretty frustrated.

You know what? I was really enjoying the game and even at the very end, I managed to enjoy it once more, but my entire experience was tainted because of these issues and a lot of the times I was just wishing I got it over with, hence why I pulled up a guide to cheat and solve the puzzles faster, lest it crashed again and I was not starting over for the fourth time. I remember effing around with the game slightly, just to get my mood up. It’s funny how when you start rotating Carl really fast, it triggers a dizzy animation.

Other than that, we have a pretty neat and unique art style, some nice and chilling soundtrack and I found it funny, how the dialogue in the game reminded me of the one in the Sims. It was adorable and sometimes really funny gibberish.

Alas, I’m not very happy with this game. I mean, the game was great, if I abstract myself from all those technical issues, however, it’s one thing for me to play it 3 hours and another to waste 10 hours of my day, in regard to having to keep this game open for 10 hours straight. If I was on my old laptop, it would have surely overheated.

Last Day of June is available on PC, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. The game was developed by Ovosonico and published by 505Games