A Foretold Affair

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Beautiful

It's nicer than I expected.

A fine visual novel, kind of missing the mark on that romance tag though. Genuinely started to enjoy the entire cast by the end of Kea's route, but I did feel like after the story actually started getting good the entire future marriage partner stopped mattering in any capacity. And while the ending bit was cute, it was a bit of a bad epilogue. I think the game needs a *Three years later* or a *How the Buffalo Seer actually ends up getting married* type thing, because having none of either despite it being the main thing talked about on the game's description is weird. As other reviewers mentioned, the Buffalo Seer can be annoying for the first half(?) of the game, but they come around, so don't worry about that. Overall, if you can get it on sale like I did, it's a lovely time.

At first i was really off-putted by MC. Loved realising that this is precisely the point. Im sure like half the plot is a metaphor for autism.

I really enjoyed reading this story~

Tl;dr watch a romance unfold through the eyes of someone who acts like a middle schooler having their first crush while simultaneously being on NG+, with all the (over)confidence of knowing how their story ends. An intriguing and largely light-hearted read with a happy ending, though not without a few darker moments. The amount of work that has gone into the character writing is outstanding. The trio of love interests, as well as Buffalo Seer themself, are allowed to have both flaws and endearing moments, even when you're not romancing them. While in conflict at first, the ordeal they endure together allows them to become closer in a way that feels genuine. Even Kea, who irritated me at first, eventually grew on me. If a romantic read is what you're looking for, this story might not be the right fit. Amorous interactions are on the tamer side, from hand-holding, naive declarations of love, to pet names. The romance was not spicy or full of drama, with most of the tension arising from misunderstandings and the mission at hand. However, if you like stories of a ragtag bunch becoming friends, it succeeds in delivering on that premise. The prose (including dialogue and descriptions) was competently written. It's not particularly vivid or poetic, but it does have a keen eye for minute details in character interactions that would usually go unnoticed in other stories. I noticed only a few typos, many of them towards the end. There's a strong tendency of showing over telling when it comes to the cast and plot. You are thrown into the narrative right away with little in the way of setups or exposition dumps. It expects you to draw conclusions yourself and not have to be explicitly told everything, which I personally appreciated. The music was pleasant to listen to, though there aren't many tracks so the experience felt repetitive after a time. I think it could have been used more sparingly to emphasise emotional beats instead of playing all the time. The art is also mostly good, though you'll notice that backgrounds are not rendered with the same amount of detail as the characters. It would've been nice to get some artwork for the gadabout since I don't recall getting a detailed description about it. Note about the sprites: the palms of darker-skinned characters should be lighter than the rest of their body. Regarding the worldbuilding, using Normal/Abnormal as terms was rather heavy-handed. It felt a little generic dystopian YA to me. Why wouldn't the Abnormals have their own endonym? These concepts do have some interesting developments, with each having their own culture and norms. Still, I would have liked to see the subject be treated with more gravitas, given the many parallels to real-world issues that the treatment of Abnormals draws from. I was actually a little sad about the story ending where it did; I would have liked to see the reunion/wedding of Buffalo Seer and their partner. Also, there was no closure about whether the police manages to catch whoever [spoiler]put the bounty on January's head. Who was it, and what do they want? Felicity said he would be taken to someplace in Ellon. The only other time that place was mentioned was to point out that January's father came from there.[/spoiler] That was too significant a plot point to not wrap up properly, in my opinion.

恋爱内容不多，但我主要把这当成冒险游戏玩的，顺便谈个恋爱这样。 游戏开始并没有介绍世界观，导致我玩得很懵，我是按顺序玩的，一开始选了Kea，但是我一直搞不懂什么正常异常，直到旅途的第一天都结束了我还是不太懂，然后我退回去先玩了公爵线，因为第一天的事情，可以知道公爵身份不一般，果不其然呢这条线确实会对世界观进行一些解释，所以我推荐先玩公爵线。 玩Kea线的时候觉得公爵有点烦人，玩公爵线的时候觉得Kea有点烦人，但最后无论作为同伴还是伴侣我都会喜欢上他们，他们很可爱O(∩_∩)O~ 但是三条线里，Piper都是如此迷人🌹 MC也很可爱。ta受伤的时候我真情实感地为ta哭了o(╥﹏╥)o疑似无性恋？从一开始的因为一个未来幻象就对那个可能是人生伴侣的人报之以全部热情，除了Ta之外的人都是不完美的，但在相处过程中，也会产生问题，经过冷处理、避而不谈、沟通、妥协等等方式来让这段关系走向更好的方向，我喜欢这样的故事走向。故事结局也并不是确定的happyending，而是能让人向往的未来，我很喜欢这种结局。 除了恋爱，这个游戏里也讨论了一些别的内容，不同的人孤立地分开生活，还要把属于少数的那一部分人叫做“异常”，不允许他们出现在“正常”社会，否则就是罪犯；还有整个社会居然是依靠衣着来体现性别的。这些内容让我联想到一些别的吧，自己和社会。

I primarily played this on Itch but I wanted to buy it here to support the dev. This is a great game. The game is pretty funny, and I really like how the characters are written. This is quite an interesting world that was written.