---The good---
This game borrows from Return of the Obra Dinn in the sense that you as a player need to fill out data for every character. It was name and fate in Obra Dinn, but here it's birth name, photo, and most recent profession. After you deduce three identities correctly (more as the game progresses), the game verifies them for you. The formula was simple but engaging, and still is in The Roottrees Are Dead. As a little plus, you have optional information like additional photos and spouse names, so that's something else to keep you occupied.
Despite not being a murder mystery, this game still manages to suck you in with the myriad of unknowns that stare at you from your corkboard: a massive family tree that looks daunting but intriguing at the same time. "This should be a fun rabbit hole", I thought, and I was right. Your most valuable tool is the internet, which will provide you with the vast majority of information you need to ID the 50 characters. It's a rudimentary system with scarce data; you can't get easy answers by just typing "Person X grandfather". You have to be specific and put in the effort to narrow down your search in this version of the internet that was in its infancy. It's realistic and provides a challenge. A couple of times, the search engine will thankfully accept an alternative word or group of words that is very closely related to the thing it actually stores.
Through photos, articles, diaries, and gossip websites, you gradually learn about the complex web that is the Roottree family. It's very close to the real feeling you get in real life when you investigate something or someone famous. Those rabbit holes are replicated well in this game, and the fun is felt through progress (often in small bursts), plot twists and eureka moments. Other times, you reach dead ends just like in the real thing. Even that is portrayed accurately, frustration and disappointment included.
In this huge tree of the Roottree family, you find all kinds of people: good, bad, flawed, kind, cruel, some who attempt redemption and some who don't... and some LGBT characters, too. It's interesting to see how the 20th century USA reacts to them (in broad terms, with bigotry early on and tolerance later on) and how this shapes their lives. Very compelling too is how the earlier generations see the later ones, and how the game handles and explores the concepts of legacy and duty, all within the framing of a 90-year-old candy company that has dark secrets and success in equal measure.
And if you feel hungry after finishing the main campaign, you have Roottreemania, which continues the story eight months later. You get to see the consequences of your actions all across the US, and that's pretty cool. The new investigation has a much wider scope, encompassing countries as varied as Brazil, China, France, and Australia.
Finally, I have to give props to the developers for the sheer amount of foreshadowing and hints to twists there are in this game, and most of them are brilliant in hindsight. Foreshadowing is an art form and something I value a lot when I consume and analyze works of fiction. Some revelations are absolutely MINDBLOWING.
---The bad---
* Selecting text has a high chance of not producing the options to highlight, copy, etc. As a result, time is wasted across the entire game reselecting key words and sentences. It may sound small, but it adds up.
* The game is extremely picky about the keywords you input. It could benefit from a slightly more lenient search filter.
* You can't add or remove persons and connections from the family tree as you please, most probably because that freedom runs the risk of being extremely daunting for most players. But do you know the positives of such a game? It would have been far more immersive and actually feel like detective work. Instead, it feels like you're Watson being tested by Sherlock: someone else has done the work and they're seeing if you can fill in the gaps they left for you. Nowhere does this strike more true than in your client's summation at the end of both campaigns. Your client knows everything and tells you all the hints that were there all along, some of which you are guaranteed to not notice because they were placed among a sea of information, both relevant and irrelevant (especially in Roottreemania, good lord). Being able to separate signal from noise is a very good skill to have in real life, but it can feel unfair in a game if done poorly.
* You need to revisit an old wesbite related to a piece of evidence in Roottreemania even though there is zero reason to at first glance. This situation left me wanting to strangle my monitor because I had spent a good chunk of time rereading the multiple pages of the evidence carefully, searching for clues in vain.
* The surname hunting game is too convoluted at times, especially in Roottreemania. It mostly works, but there are a couple of times where you're like "oh, come on!" (looking at you, Peter).
* The confidential company records in Roottreemania could really use more precision. It would be nice to have the exact date of when people were hired, fired, or moved to another section of the company. Clear, simple, unambiguous, and lets the player map out the exact timeline and duration of the secretaries' time at Roottree.
* There's a mathematical error in a piece of evidence that left me wondering if it was a mistake made by the developers or a clue that the report's writer is acting in bad faith and has an agenda.
* Some clues can be easily misinterpreted by the player and cost a lot of time.
* Roottreemania expects you to arrive at some conclusions that aren't sufficiently backed up. The "evidence" supporting those conclusions isn't very solid and would not fly in court, and some are straight up cherry-picking.
---Conclusion---
Warts and all, The Roottrees Are Dead is a recommended game if you enjoy detective games that require a lot of reading and inference. Don't expect the visual spectacle of Return of the Obra Dinn or The Case of the Golden Idol, but do expect intense sleuthing and deduction through many rabbit holes.
