Review: To a T Would Work Better as a Show

Keita Takahashi games have a habit of spreading joy and positivity. Wattam emphasized friendship and working together. Crankin’s Time Travel Adventure toyed with the concept of time management. Katamari Damacy made tidying up a little more silly and embraced chaos. To a T is the developer’s unique look at coming of age and growing up while dealing with unexpected challenges, all while overcoming them throughout the game. The story and soundtrack are fantastic, as you’d expect, but some of the execution isn’t exactly on-point. 

Teen is a young adult who is not only dealing with growing up, as they just turned 13, but with being shaped like a T. Their arms are perpetually extended at their sides. While this means certain accommodations need to be made in their everyday life, such as a service animal that assists with some tasks and special tools for accomplishing daily tasks, it presents a sudden unexpected advantage. On our avatar’s birthday, they discover they can fly by spinning quickly and moving about. What follows feels like an anime series, right down to segments being broken down into episodes prefaced by the PREP’s “Perfect Shape” main theme and punctuated by the Rebecca Sugar track “Giraffe Song.”  

The story and its execution are perfect. Even though we can completely customize Teen’s appearance, they still feel like a defined character with fourth wall-breaking moments of exposition, identifiable struggles, and a kind heart. The narrative isn’t preachy, even though it emphasizes inclusion, accessibility, acceptance, and individuality. It’s just plain pleasant. I do wish that some narrative segments didn’t only offer set outcomes, even if you managed to perfectly execute inputs. Also, the repeated use of the opening and closing themes, while designed to mimic an episodic show, can break up the flow of the story. I loved both tracks, and I’m still hearing PREP’s tune in my head at random moments throughout my day even after not playing in quite some time, but it accentuates exactly how short some of these story segments can be in a negative way. Once I started skipping them, which is an option, I found it helped with the pacing.

The aesthetic in To a T is also great, though this is common for Keita Takahashi games. It resembles titles like Katamari Damacy and Wattam, with similar facial features on characters, unexpected anthropomorphic NPCs, occasional weirdness, and vibrant color palettes. It’s a very distinct, poppy look. So as usual, everything stands out. Likewise, the music is lovely, with the songs with vocals being ridiculously catchy.

It’s the To a T gameplay that can sometimes feel like it isn’t on par with the game’s story and appearance. There are no tutorials in the To a T, beyond actual inputs shared to show how to make Teen fly. I can appreciate why Uvula made this decision. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and it accentuates the struggle a person in a T-pose would face. But it means flailing through situations as you work out what each button should do, and even a few episodes in you might find yourself experimenting to figure out how to accomplish a thing. While you can send Teen around town to collect coins and play minigames so you can get things like more clothing, I honestly had more fun following the narrative than exploring.

While these may be patched out of the game by the time you’re reading this, I did notice a few bugs in To a T too. The biggest one involved segments when I’d need to adjust Teen’s positioning to go through doors or narrow gaps. You’re supposed to turn the right analog stick slightly on the PS5, then press with left one at the same time. Except more than a few times, after getting into the new room or area, Teen would immediately turn back around and go into the last spot. I even stopped holding the right analog stick once the animation started, in case it was my own doing somehow, and nope! I tried using a different controller. It kept happening. (I found disconnecting the DualSense, then reconnecting, helped.) There would be times when I felt like actions should have triggered, based on my input, but they wouldn’t register. (This especially happened with the face washing minigame.) 

Of course, some of the issues came down to the controls and execution just being poorly handled and unexplained. The TV is the best example of this. On the PS5 at least, managing to aim the remote at the proper spot to make it spin, especially as it rises up, proved quite frustrating. There’s also a minigame involving catching ice cream that is more annoying than fulfilling. In general, I think I’d suggest that sometimes these moments can last a bit too long. I’ll admit being flummoxed at how long the first interactive activity on the first moments with Teen carried on. 

What does work well are the accessibility option. The input to fly in To a T can be a bit tricky. It involves using the analog sticks to spin. However, it can be shortened and tied to triggers instead. It’s really encouraging! Especially since the game as a whole works to spread a message about inclusion and acceptance. 

To a T looks gorgeous and I found the game’s story charming, but the gameplay isn’t always entertaining due to certain design choices. Dropping us into Teen’s world with no explanation about controls can get confusing. The episodic nature is also fine, but can breaks up the pace in an unpleasant way. Fans of Keita Takahashi will be pleased, but others may want to try the demo before they hop onto T’s unicycle.

To a T is available on the PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.