3 Hours for me. Brilliant, brilliant little game. Quite a bit of stuff to reflect on. Spoilers below, I guess.
Technically, very, very well executed. Lovely art style, crisp textures, beautiful and sometimes surreal world-building. One thing I have not seen mentioned is how effective the camera is. As you control the brothers with both thumb-sticks, the camera for the most part is automated and I thought it did a fantastic job, often panning and zooming at just the right moment to capture a particular vista or game moment.
The control gimmick itself I thought was very well done. In a longer game, it might wear out its welcome, but this is just the right length and as mentioned, the controls are essential to the experience. But for me, the payoff actually came before the L2 moment. For basically the whole game, I moved both brothers in unison. It was not until the younger brother first arrived home via owlgriffin that I realised I was still using both thumbsticks to move the only character. This means that I played through the burial sequence subconsciously with both thumb-sticks, when one of them was doing nothing!
When I realised this and only used one stick, it immediately felt odd, like something was missing - which drove home the loss the younger brother had just experienced. It actually made me put the controller down for a moment.
The growth in the younger brother was reflected in another way as well. When you first make your way into the town at the beginning of the game, there is a flower pot. If you approach it with the older brother, he wafts the flower’s perfume and smells it. The younger brother, however, carelessly smashes the pot and laughs childishly. During the epilogue, as you make your way up the house and gravestones, there is another conveniently placed flower pot by the front door. This time, rather than smash it, the younger brother instead mimics the older bother’s action. I thought this was a nice detail and probably easily missed.
On a darker note, I was not entirely sure what to make of the closing scene. One thing that stood out to me was that the younger brother is now burdened with being unable to save both his mother and his brother from their respective deaths. For some reason my impression was that the closing scene tried to convey this burden through the tightened shot of the brother in the final frames, rather than keeping a wide shot of both of them. It was like the developers were trying emphasise the effect of the ordeal on the younger brother alone, rather than the remaining family unit.