While it’s quite a number of years in the rearview mirror at this point, somewhat buried in a pile of other reasonably-good adventure titles, I actually still remember the impression NAIRI: Tower of Shirin left on me. There was no question that it had a unique art style, interesting characters, and generally well-made puzzles, but it just felt like something was missing to take it to the next level. Now, approaching what is hopefully the twilight of the Switch lifecycle, we have its sequel, and it appears that the developers have made excellent use of the time since that original. Rising Tide feels like it runs with everything that made the original a good time and injects even more to make it feel quite memorable.

If you never played the original (or are simply hazy on the details at this point), you’ll absolutely want to check out the option on the bottom right of the title screen to get yourself up to speed, since the game picks up from that point and doesn’t look back. Starting out you’ll actually play through a sort of tutorial mission without Nairi, but it does work as a sensible means of making sure you’re set for what’s coming up, and feels like a smart design. Even better, when you find yourself a bit stuck the in-game hint system is both inspired and adorable, offering up cute illustrations that generally do a fine job of giving you direction without necessarily revealing everything you need to know.

In terms of the overall play experience, it somewhat has a feel of its own. While it mostly resembles an adventure, there’s an artistic and common sense flair to things that feels unique. It doesn’t take too much effort to go through a room and find what you need, conversations are generally handled in an efficient manner, and working with your inventory to combine elements or use them to solve puzzles tends to all go quite smoothly. There’s absolutely polish in how most of this works that I haven’t tended to see in competitors in the space, and the extra effort is appreciated. 

All in all it’s hard not to walk away thinking that NAIRI: Rising Tide is firing on all cylinders. The gameplay itself is well conceived and smooth, but what’s really impressive is how much care the developers have put into pretty much every aspect of the game, even down to small details. The result is a great adventure full of heart, that has some firm but generally fair challenges, and is simply a satisfying experience through and through.