Really wonderful little puzzle-platformeresque game with a pretty simple core mechanic that left me more impressed the more I played. The game continually expands on the different kinds of waves the player is stuck to and has to maneuver around the world on, and the way these waves enable movement. It takes about 3 hours, but jams a lot of variety in that runtime—from the mechanics to the vibe of each level, it makes for a very tight and cohesive experience. I played it in two sessions and left feeling like the game's flow matched that of an album, consistent but flowing naturally.

 Just wish the soundtrack was available!

 2019. I'm deep in the Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled trenches, a few months into playing the game yet freshly pissed off that Acti-Blizz forced future murder victim Beenox to rescind their promise to avoid microtransactions. Perhaps we should have seen that one coming, since the tells were obvious. The frustration, however, doesn't stop me from traveling to every gas station and corner store in town trying to find C-tier candy with the Crash Bandicoot logo on it—two flavors each of Trident gum and Sour Patch Kids, which all hold unique codes for kart parts.

 I wanted them.

 I didn't have a car.

 The walks were perilous. By this point I had seen at least six car accidents while living in this shithole college town and I'd almost been struck by careless drivers myself three times—once love-tapped by the front bumper belonging to a professor I recognized only after flipping him off. There was no Crash candy at the Circle K, the Marathon, or any "party store" in town. In desperation, I sought out the subreddit, and saw a bit of advice: "Check your Speedway." Of course. Who better to have digital kart parts for a racing game than a Speedway.

 I hadn't checked the Speedway yet because, frankly, it was the least accessible gas station within anything a reasonable person could suspect of being "within walking distance," at maybe a thirty-five minute walk there, and a thirty-five minute walk back, on top of being at the busy end of a four-lane highway right next to an off-ramp. I figured a call would be in order. I, an adult man, asked the almost certainly underpaid Speedway cashier if they had Crash Bandicoot candy.

 They said yes.

 The scorching September sun beat down upon my shaved head, black clothes absorbing essentially all of the summer heat as I trudged my way to the most out-of-the-way gas station in town, but the real challenge reared its ugly head once the Speedway was in sight—across the highway. The average college-age Ohioan and/or Michigander driver sees red lights as mere suggestions and yellow lights as "floor it" signals; they see "points" attached to your driving permit as treasures to accrue. I desperately Froggered my way across the concrete ravine, my powerwalk barely carrying me to the other side before the bloodlustful hunting instincts of the drivers could fully kick in.

 I purchased all four Crash candies.

 I would have to make my way back the same way I arrived.

 Anyway, the Cove Cruiser Kart Body is the best kart body in the game, with its sleek and tasteful convertiblesque shape making it stand out from the frequently more wacky and twisted kart bodies. The Tropic Swirl Decal's nothing to sneeze at, either, though I usually opted not to use it. The other candy rewards range from "kinda bad" to "just okay," but pretty much all of it stands as a testament to the evil of companies like Activision-Blizzard and the state of gaming as a whole.

 Firstly, flowers to the fan translation team for doing such a good job with The Series of Haruhi Suzumiya. The characters feel very much like themselves, and the narration and dialog feel like they're straight out of an episode of the dub—which is my personal preference for the Haruhi anime, due to the rapid-fire character speech leaving very little breathing room for subs. If there were any errors in characterization or even grammar and spelling, I personally didn't see them. It's a remarkable task to translate such a word-dense game like this out of passion, and to do it so well makes it apparent that the team are dedicated fans.

 It does make me wish I liked this more, though. Playing The Series of Haruhi Suzumiya feels like watching a less-important episode of the anime at 0.25x speed, and this is primarily an unavoidable fault of the story sections being a visual novel. To briefly summarize the plot: Haruhi Suzumiya drags the SOS Brigade into staying overnight at the school for "summer camp" as they investigate paranormal leads given to them by a visibly shaken Computer Club. As the power of Haruhi's desire for something spooky makes those urban legends come true, the rest of the Brigade have to stop her from noticing and "deal with" the supernatural occurrences before she sees. It sounds like it's straight out of the anime, and mostly feels like it too.

 So... about that "speed" issue. Haruhi is, as I mentioned before, a fast-paced show. Even its slow and atmospheric moments can be loaded with heavy and quick dialog (think of the first time Kyon meets Yuki at her apartment), but the average reading speed is much slower. That doesn't account for the occasional moment where you might have to go back into the history to re-read something or catch an accidentally-skipped line. The result is that lines that feel like they should be delivered quickly—like they would in the show—are delivered much slower. It's hampered even more greatly by Kyon being kind of a moron, regularly asking other characters to repeat what they've said to him but in a dumbed-down fashion. The result is a barrage of lines that are essentially repeat information—a character will explain something to Kyon, Kyon expresses his confusion, the character will state it again, and then Kyon will be like "oh, I see, what you're saying is _____." Maybe some of the most skippable dialog I've ever read in a visual novel, and this deep into the timeline of Haruhi, Kyon has no real excuse for it. Ultimately, this comes down to the dialogue and narration feeling more adapted for the anime than a visual novel that will be read at a slower pace—and I'm a decently fast reader!

 And ultimately, it's not a very special story for the Haruhi universe. And how could it? If it was a really good plotline, they'd have used it in the anime instead of confining it to a "side content" NDS game, right? So the story here is pretty self-contained, and doesn't really reveal anything particularly interesting or special about any of the characters or the world they're living in. It's very inessential, and despite a few gestures at helping potential newcomers get acquainted, it's not a great starting point for the Haruhi series and has a lot of references to events from the anime that would go over the heads of the uninitiated. Very much a "fans only" experience, and even then, I think you'd have to be pretty desperate for new material.

 There are a few pieces of gameplay that feel underutilized, but that I can imagine being implemented in an interesting way. The best of these is managing your party members—when the SOS Brigade has to split up, Kyon can dole out specific tasks to each member, which can result in different dialog unlocks... but not really any different results. What you do get out of this is different "Topics," which are like little cards you can use during the "Puzzle Phase" sections to extend your time by distracting Haruhi. Not that you'll really need them—the "Puzzle Phase" is laughably easy and not very interesting, a mini-game of sorts that takes place in the moments where the team is getting rid of the distortions in reality caused by Haruhi. You search for spots on a grid that will tell you if a target is nearby, and when you find your target, you clean it into non-existence by rubbing it on the touch screen. You need to find a specific amount of targets to win, and can get a perfect clear by finding all of them. In the meantime, Haruhi will close in on your location and get into "Accidents" that cut into your time. These Accidents can be negated entirely with the strongest Topics. I held onto all of my powerful Topics until the very last chapter, and even then only used them because I knew I wouldn't need them again. I got perfect clears every time.

 Oh yeah, there's also chess puzzles. Well, just one chess puzzle near the very end of the game, if you aren't interested in optional bonus content. It was very strange to me that Cavia programmed a whole chess minigame to only use it once and then confine the rest to post-game bonus content.

 It wasn't really a bad experience or anything, maybe just underwhelming. It very much feels like an episode of Haruhi that you kind of forget about until you go in for another re-watch, and neither the visual novel's presentation nor the puzzle elements feel like they suit the story or world very well. If you're really hungry for more Haruhi, maybe give it a shot. People worked hard on this, and then more people worked hard on translating it. But there's nothing really Earth-shattering hiding in this one.