Tales of the Neon Sea doesn’t take any risks with its narrative, but presents a beautiful story and even more beautiful world to the player. Immersive cyberpunk surroundings and interesting puzzles can be captivating, even in the light of the unfinished story that should be continued in a few months.

Tales of the Neon Sea makes the cyberpunk arguments of Blade Runner its own, embedding them in a valuable work in pixel art, and managing to give us back some of that sound old 1980s science fiction that, for one reason or another, continues to fascinate us. The gameplay, however, is plagued by repetitive mechanics and some puzzles suffer from a bad translation from Chinese into English.

Overall Tales of the Neon Sea looks (and sounds) good and packs a considerable amount of playtime, but the lack of an original take on the genre and the truly annoying puzzles blocking progress can’t be ignored, as the latter takes away much of the atmosphere and immersion.

This is not a Chinese Blade Runner. You might be forgiven for thinking so after the brilliant beginning, but it goes downhill rapidly, folding under the weight of boredom and frustration. Regardless, fans of cyberpunk and absurd humor might find something to like here.

An interesting adventure that draws us to a distopical (an pixelated) future in the veins of classic sci-fi movies like Blade Runner, but it becomes less and less interesting the more you play it.

A positive late-game change in design ethos and cute atmospheric graphics can’t save Tales of the Neon Sea from a lack of story coherency, tedious gameplay, and poor writing.