Of Tonguç Bodur's games, the Drizzlepath series — especially the original Drizzlepath and Drizzlepath: Genie — are my absolute favorites. I've had the original Drizzlepath's soundtrack, including the accompanying narration, in my iTunes library since I first played it in 2016; and while some may say that Drizzlepath doesn't have much story and that the narration is nonsense (which is pretty uncharitable, but relatively correct), it absolutely [b][i]excels[/i][/b] at creating an [b][i]atmosphere[/i][/b] through the combination of acoustic guitar and incredible narration which offers more than enough room for interpretation of the actual story.
Drizzlepath: Genie is much more structured by comparison and shows the excellence of Tonguç's worldbuilding with the strange, arbitrary society that Lula recounts to the player along the way. Even though I [i]really[/i] do not like the true ending [spoiler]any story that pulls the "what if it was all a dream oooh" trick does nothing but undercut itself, and it's especially obvious in DP:G's case since the worldbuilding is the best part of the game[/spoiler], I can still appreciate what it was going for, as well as the rest of the worldbuilding on its own merits.
When I saw GENIE pop up, I knew I had to play it just to see what it was like. Unfortunately, after playing it for myself, I can say that GENIE is a direct downgrade to Drizzlepath: Genie in every respect except for environments, music, and voice acting. (And the only one of those that I would definitively say is an [i]upgrade[/i] are the environments — while the music and voice acting are good, I'd have to replay DP:G again to say whether they're [i]better[/i].) I'm not really a screenshots person, so my review will be focused on the story, gameplay, and how they work together.
As a few other reviews have said, particularly [url=https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198812162622/recommended/2342210/]Hairy Mary's review[/url], GENIE's gameplay loop is [i]annoying[/i] at best. The first stage of each level with collecting the crystals is basically pointless other than helping you learn the level layout, and the second stage of going around to each of the "sigils" to listen to the narration is not great. Yes, the camera angles and transitions are cool, but they're not worth making the player stop and do nothing for up to a minute at a time while the narration plays (unless you skip it, in which case you're skipping literally all of the story).
Drizzlepath: Genie's gameplay, on the other hand, is a bog-standard walking simulator: merely passable, but inoffensive — which makes the state of GENIE's gameplay by comparison so much worse. DP:G has a few playtime-padding sections where you have to go out of the way for next to no reason to hit switches to open doors, or the occasional aggravating (but thankfully short) jumping puzzle, but otherwise it's just a lot of walking along one of two linear paths until you reach an ending. Simple and sweet.
The fact that GENIE only has one ending compared to Drizzlepath: Genie's two is rather disappointing. Yes, the path choice in DP:G is rather arbitrary until you've played both to realize the difference (namely, the blue path is longer but more relaxed for Lula, while the red path is shorter but stressful), and the non-true ending isn't interesting enough to be worth implementing, but still. Yes, I understand [i]and agree[/i] with the reasons why it was changed to only have one ending, but it would've been [i]cool[/i] if the option still existed.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in any other review, though, is that GENIE's structure as having 15 levels instead of Drizzlepath: Genie's long, continuous walk results in it having a worse ludonarrative and actually makes the story even less comprehensible as a result. If I had not already played DP:G several times, I would not have understood what was going on in GENIE other than that it's just random stories about stuff vaguely relating to the particular level environment — e.g. "this level is a fishing village, so here's a story about the Fisher!".
On the other hand, Drizzlepath: Genie's just-walk-forward gameplay cooperates very nicely its narration; it's much clearer that the reason most of the narration consists of random anecdotes about Lula's childhood is because Lula is traveling on the Drizzlepath to the Mountain of Fire to find the Genie. She's traveling alone, and the traveling by itself is boring, so her mind is wandering to stories about her family, friends, and hometown.
By splitting the story into entirely disconnected levels with hard loading screens in between, GENIE loses this cue that these anecdotes are what Lula is thinking about while traveling (or even that Lula is traveling at all, if you forget the narration from Part 1), and the story ends up feeling disjointed and random as a result. This is also why I find the interesting camera angles and so on that you're forced to watch during the poem sections to be more distracting than anything. The worst example is Lula's dream about the carnival: in Drizzlepath: Genie, you're listening to Lula as she describes a strange dream she had while on the road, but in GENIE, you're staring at an actual steampunk carnival the whole time.
GENIE's story is incredibly poorly served by its narration in other ways as well, and the fact that the poetry it consists of is, to be charitable, "not impressive" is the least of its issues. The fact of the matter is that the decision to tell the story via poetry adds very little and takes away a [i]lot[/i] compared to Drizzlepath: Genie. The poetry can't be as specific about things — the fantastical description of the bottle shop in DP:G is drastically cut down, for instance — and the amount of phrase-twisting it does to force the ideas down into short rhymes (where it even does "short rhymes" instead of just "short") makes everything a lot less clear.
The switch to poetry also hurts the ludonarrative in another way — one of Drizzlepath: Genie's strong points is that its narration is essentially Lula's stream-of-consciousness in the moment and allows the player to feel like they're traveling with her as she tells them her story. GENIE's poetic style, on the other hand, makes it feel like Lula is trying to tell a story to you about what it was like back in her day — it's much more disconnected, impersonal, and overall just falls flat. All of this makes GENIE overall seem very disjointed and unnatural where Drizzlepath: Genie is flowing and conversational.
As for the environments you're wandering around in, GENIE wins in terms of screenshot potential by a mile. The lighting is beautiful, the environments are picturesque, the variety is fantastic. Comparing the two games in terms of graphical fidelity is night and day, though Drizzlepath: Genie doesn't look bad. GENIE is a feast for both the eyes and your screenshot keybind should you choose to use it. Also, the music was really good, as is standard for Tonguç's games. And as much as I don't really like the narration's [i]script[/i], the narration's [i]voice acting[/i] was excellent.
Overall, GENIE is a game that I would've loved to love more, but its flaws drag it too far down for me to recommend it to players not already familiar with Drizzlepath: Genie — unless they're interested in it for screenshots and nothing else. It's an okay game by itself, but the fact that it's an only-okay remake of one of my favorites of Tonguç's games forces me not to recommend it. There's a lot of love and care put into this game, from the environment design to the music, but the bad parts of GENIE's execution vastly outweigh the good, and Drizzlepath: Genie already exists.
[b]TL;DR:[/b] Unless you're just here for screenshots, play Drizzlepath: Genie first or instead. If you have played DP:G already, though, it's an interesting point of comparison and made me appreciate DP:G's narration and ludonarrative harmony a lot more.
