Backstage Pass

++ Amazing voice actors ++ the writing is just sooo good! All the characters are well built, the interactions are funny and meaningful and you just get the feeling that our MC is a very wholesome character; this is rare for an otome and I loved this game the most because of the good relationships - not only the romances but all the side chars as well ++ handling dark and difficult moments was done sooo well; I really was impressed with the author when an actress handled a mental ill girl in a moment of delusion. This was actually really helpful information and worked well while not dramaticising about the potential danger too much, like other media do. +the CGs are insanely well done; there are so much of them that I don't know how the artworkers did this. But I love them and may add - for me as a player it's totally okay if you cannot custom name, hair or outfit at all; I would rather see 1 good cg than 44 times the same kiss with diffrent clothes on (like you did in the end of Benitos route - that must have been rough to paint) +the achievements you have to actually plan and work for because a simple play through will not give you one; I liked that a lot it feels like you actually achieved something ;D +the LIs are so diffrent that it made every playthrough really nice, because you learned a lot about them and it didn't feel horribly repetetive; the skip mode worked nicely here and there are enough hints in the dialogues with them to figure out what they like and dislike; that was actually great bc I romanced them without a walkthrough and it was obvious what clothing they preferred for example; o random events are difficult for me; I do play the first time with no walkthrough and had two events with Adam and Benito that I cannot reproduce now that I'm actively romancing them; I don't know what to do to trigger them and this is kinda weird o the stat building system itself depend too much on exhaustion; if you have something over 30 you collapse and miss a day at school; if you go to sleep your stats will go down (why?) and if you eat noodles all day at Pho you will have no money and no time for stat building. In the end I gave up on the 'maxing out' achievement because it just didn't work out for me; an option to toggle this 'failure' possibility off would be really nice; I think I crashed 80% of all my work bc of the exhaustion ._.' -the endings depend on seeing all little scenes with your LI; I couldn't romance or befriend Adam in my first run with him because I missed the guitar-playing scene before christmas with him. This scene only shows up when you are doing something special in the week and the conditions are right - so my typical week for him with 2x Pho, 2x Sport and 1x Work didn't work out here and I lost 4h of progress because of that. This was rough. -when appointments overlap you have to reload an older save, you cannot cancel the one that you don't want to do; that wasn't feeling right and I would love to have an option to do that -"hidden stats" there are chars like Lloyd that have a hidden friendship stat; I didn't really understand what the hearts and stars meant in the first place or how to raise them (just reloaded so long until something happened there) but not knowing if an action has actually any effect is frustrating; I would recommend the game if you do want to put an effort into it and are ok with the age of the LIs. Benito actually was 15-16 ys old and the route felt for me more like a "little brother / friend" route. Mat is just shy as hell so there is no romance here but a lot of cringy moments. Adam was the route with the most cuddling and I really enjoyed that MC is the active part here going in for the kiss. John was my first route and I really was happy to finally get an LI that I would be interested in rl agewise; him being a workaholic was difficult to handle and I actually couldn't bring myself to befriend him in the other routes again because he seems unaware of how his words actually hurt the people around him