Manhattan, 2003. The Strokes are the city’s undisputed royalty, and the tastemakers at Pitchfork wield more cultural influence than any elected official. It is a peculiar moment in history: a generation paralyzed by the specter of Middle Eastern conflict while simultaneously obsessing over whether the Matrix sequels could possibly capture lightning twice. In this era, the internet still felt like an intimate sanctuary rather than an infinite void.
It was a localized, tactile reality. Your social circle was defined by a curated AOL Buddy List, and your intellectual home was found in the dusty corners of niche message boards where you debated indie bands with a dozen strangers. There was no sense of the global scale we know today; loving a piece of art felt like a private, sacred act. The world was small enough to hold in your hands.
Meredith Gran captures this fleeting atmosphere with surgical precision. Her newest title, Perfect Tides: Station to Station, transcends mere nostalgia for the early aughts. It operates with the same raw, unshielded sincerity that defined 2003. This is a coming-of-age narrative that listens to the specific cadence of a heart beating before the noise of social media drowned everything out—a time when a late-night chat and a lo-fi record were the only things that mattered.
Following the events of 2022’s Perfect Tides, the game continues the journey of Mara Whitefish. We previously saw her as a frustrated aspiring writer on a sleepy island at the turn of the millennium. Now, three years later, Mara has found her “larger pond”: she is a university student in a reimagined New York City. The quiet shores have been replaced by the roar of yellow cabs and the looming shadows of skyscrapers. On the surface, she has finally escaped.
Yet, the past is never quite finished with her. She remains tethered to her former life by a demanding high-school boyfriend who haunts her via cellphone, a digital umbilical cord that prevents her from fully immersing herself in the present.
Gran maintains the point-and-click mechanics of the first game, though the retro 90s aesthetic creates a fascinating friction against the 2003 setting. Navigation is deliberate and occasionally claustrophobic. Despite the vastness of New York, Mara’s world is strikingly small. There is minimal inventory management; instead, the game focuses on the boundaries of her new life, highlighting that even in the big city, existence can feel remarkably contained.
It is a masterful tribute to millennial earnestness, unabashed in its emotional vulnerability.
The game excels at portraying the reality of student life—far from the glamorous lofts of television. Mara is an interloper in a gritty railroad apartment, sleeping on a friend’s sofa. Her world revolves around a single city block: the library, a local cinema, and an Eastern European diner that evokes the spirit of the East Village’s legendary Veselka. Her “celebrities” are not movie stars, but obscure bloggers and zine-makers who hold readings for audiences of five. To Mara, these are the true titans of the world.
This contrast is the engine of the game. Mara is a transplant struggling to take root, expanding rapidly within the confines of a single year. She is absorbing everything—new relationships, radical theories, and foreign experiences—trying to synthesize a personality from the debris of pop culture and intellectual discovery.
Image: Three Bees
The game introduces a clever RPG-lite mechanic to represent this intellectual growth. Mara tracks “mental stats” like music, anarchism, and intimacy. By engaging with literature, film, and deep conversation, she “levels up” these concepts to fuel her academic essays. It perfectly mirrors that specific age where a single album or a foreign film doesn’t just entertain you—it fundamentally rewrites your identity.
In 2003, this was the peak of identity-building. Personalities were forged in the fires of the New York rock revival. The Matrix was treated as a philosophical manifesto. Mara is a classic aughts intellectual, prone to repeating the opinions of her favorite blogs with absolute certainty. The game reclaims this era before it became a punchline, portraying the genuine passion behind the “cool” facade.
We are reminded of a digital landscape that no longer exists. Before social media homogenized discovery, the internet was a series of tunnels. Turning on Mara’s clunky PC to use a primitive search engine feels like peering through a keyhole. Information was scarce, and finding it felt like a victory.
Image: Three Bees
This scarcity bred a fierce territoriality. To love an underground band was to own a piece of a secret world. When Mara experiences a new romance, it carries the same weight as discovering a rare 7-inch record. While the game is undeniably a love letter to aging hipsters, filled with specific cultural touchstones, it manages to find something universal beneath the references. Mara’s angst might be localized to 2003, but the vulnerability of becoming yourself is timeless.
Image: Three Bees
The emotional zenith of the game occurs in a quiet, domestic setting. During a visit home, Mara interacts with her aging grandmother, who is struggling with the loss of her independence. Mara finds an old sheet music book and begins to play an forgotten melody on a piano. In that moment, the generational gap vanishes. The music serves as a bridge, proving that while cultural trends fade, the underlying human connection remains constant.
One can imagine a future where Mara herself is the grandmother, her own memories triggered by the opening notes of a Death Cab for Cutie song. It wouldn’t matter that the music was once considered “cringe” or niche. The rhythm would still pump life into her veins, bringing back the sunsets and the revolutionary theories of her youth. Station to Station reminds us that while we all eventually grow out of our eras, we never truly grow out of the songs that made us.
Perfect Tides: Station to Station launches on Jan. 22 for Windows PC. This review was conducted on Steam Deck via a prerelease code provided by Three Bees. For more on our editorial standards, please refer to Polygon’s ethics policy.
Source: Polygon
