On Your Tail is a charming adventure title for the Nintendo Switch. Set by the Italian seaside, it mixes point-and-click elements with third-person exploration to create an investigative story. It would totally work, too, if it wasn’t marred by performance issues. Let’s dig in to see how it fares overall.
You play the role of Diana, a writing student who’s feeling a little lost. She lacks inspiration in her work. Hey, it happens to the best of us (this review itself is quite late). After meeting with her professor, Diana decides to sneak away to a quaint seaside town that her grandmother once visited. Soon after she arrives, a terrible storm hits, leaving her stranded with a damaged moped. While she awaits repairs, Diana seeks out some much-needed R&R. Turns out this is the perfect opportunity for her to explore, getting to know the quirky locals and embroiling herself in a series of mysteries just begging to be solved. Let the adventure begin!
Most of the game involves third-person exploration. Along the way, Diana meets and interacts with various members of the community, learning about the town and its ins and outs. There are restaurants, shops, a beach, a town square, and various residences to explore.
It’s a fun premise with plenty of interesting characters to bump into. Each interaction is transformed into a collectible card, popping up on the screen before being added to your stockpile. With 100s of cards to find, it adds an element of engagement that encourages continued play so you can complete the collection. They also look really neat.
In fact, the graphics are lovely. There’s a colorful vibe that compliments the seaside setting. It exudes a peaceful atmosphere that makes the town a pleasure to explore, and you can tell a lot of love was put into the design. It’s a shame, then, that this charming outing is marred by severe performance issues.
Stuttering, for one, is prevalent throughout the experience. I often say framerates don’t overly bother me, but it’s very noticeable here. Load times are also far too frequent and long. It’s not just between scenes, either. While exploring the town, you’ll be wandering around a corner one minute only to be suddenly stopped in your tracks. After the screen freezes to load the next area, you can continue, but it’s disruptive. It’s not a huge area that’s being loaded (we’re not exploring Hyrule here), so I’m not sure what’s happening or why it’s not better optimized.
The worst loading issue I experienced was with the collectible cards I mentioned earlier. Sometimes these wouldn’t even load on the screen. They were simply displayed as blank white cards, which detracts from the enjoyment of discovering them. It’s a little disappointing.
To be fair, this review of On Your Tail was finished two months after the game’s initial release, and some improvements have been made since then. It’s still far from perfect, but I’ve bumped the score up half a point to reflect these minor improvements.
Back to the gameplay, though! Along the way, you’ll come across several mysteries to solve. These are a great alternative to the exploration component. Typically, you’ll find yourself in a room or series of rooms looking for clues to help someone solve a mystery, such as a break-in at the local cafe. The added benefit of these closed environments is that the performance issues are much less noticeable here.
Diana sports the unique ability to investigate the past using a special relic handed down by her grandmother. This is where the investigative element comes into play as she wanders around the room searching for items that may have moved in the past. Once you unlock all the clues, you get to deduce what happened in something reminiscent of Ace Attorney.
I actually love the way the deductions play out once you think you’ve solved the puzzle. It’s formatted in an isometric perspective, with little paper versions of each character moving about like a boardgame. It’s super cute.
Overall, On Your Tail is a charming title that suffers from some of the worst performance issues I’ve ever experienced on the Switch. It’s a shame because there’s a lovely tale, interesting characters, and fun gameplay that would be almost irresistible if not for the performance. On the plus side, you can hopefully play it on the Switch 2 and experience something closer to what the developers wanted to deliver.
