Bad Credit

This is the first time I played a game in the visual novel genre and im not sure if it was a good thing - because my standards for VNs have been elevated so high by this game. I am vaguely aware of how other visual novels feel like, mostly by watching them on youtube and a few games that had some elements of VNs (lengthy scenes with dialogues), of them being chiefly simulators of kinds. But Bad Credit is different- so different, from the perspective of somebody who had a preconceived idea of what VN is like and had that idea thoroughly broken by this game. There’s so many things that got me hooked; the lack of needless, irrelevant moments in tht game- the game feels like a smooth, uninterrupted flow of events. I am 2.8 hours in as of now, I didn’t feel there was any scene that felt wasted or unnatural even though technically it might have no affect on the outcome of the game. The reason, imo, for such a great experience would be the writing. It is just that fantastic. The dialogues/subtitles spin a credible, engrossing world of dumb, spiteful characters; you can have pity on homeless guys who get dogs sicced on them on one hand and on the other hand, you can be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and threaten to hurt a man’s children. You get yourself immersed into those moments of cruelty or kindness depending upon your choice despite the game requiring you to do nothing more than point and click. The writing would be something akin to “Another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ night in suck city” by Nick Flynn, if you ever read that book, at least that’s how it appeared to me, a non English speaker. The games I have played so far suck at this sort of thing, writing good, convincing dialogues, in which Bad Credit is spectacular in. Imo, it’s not that particularly hard to write a story with a good plot, if you got just the right amount of imagination. On the other hand, writing believable characters, the kinds you get mad at, feel sorry for immediately, feel a tinge of fear because you actually wonder if they are crazy enough to act out their threats – that requires pure talent and experience. Then you have a game that plays out like something that is more of a book or a script of a movie. That was my experience. The game isn’t without flaws. A good novel concept that I noticed is that the story doesn’t end when you ♥♥♥♥ up. You don’t go back to the beginning and start all over, a weary process if you’re not keen on rereading tons of lines. Instead it just goes on and you live with your bad decisions, like crediting loans to meth-heads and quack doctors until you reach the conclusion of the game; and that’s where it falls apart as there is no conclusion for those decisions. The game restarts at that point. The ending is non existent, atleast for the path I chose, (although I might be wrong about it). The conclusion of the game requires more work, it needs to find a ending for whichever path you may take, at least that’s how I feel. Wow this had been a long review. I look forward to seeing it a sequel of it. Btw, you have a bug in Trisha’s dialogue for the Sterling Silver import, she gets stuck in one of her lines and you are unable to proceed to the next dialogue.