I'm a bit mixed about this one, but generally I would recommend it, especially if you want more position choice and like stories about messy characters who face the consequences of their arrogance, systemically enabled abuse, along with some fluff, and some decentish CGs. The opening section is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, especially folks obsessed with "one true love" stories, where a lead is only ever with one person, but I think that's fine because those folks have so much else to read, and that's not the sole way romance is meant to be written. Polyamory exists, open marriages exist, folks experiment, folks have multiple relationships in their lives, and this VN has [spoiler]two threesomes[/spoiler]. That's not the case in plenty of other VNs you can try if it really bothers you.
As others have noted, you have to engage in one character's romance if you want to romance either of the other two. Even outside OTL obsessives, folks who just dislike that character will be understandably irritated. That being said, having to go through certain character relationships in and out of VNs is not unusual: if I recall correctly, there is an unskippable scene for one love interest in "Drammatical Murder" that you have to go through to get to the rest of the LIs, and there are many VNs with secret characters and endings you only get by playing others first, like "Requiescence", "Hashihime of the Old Book Town", and, again, "Drammatical Murder". But I also think people getting upset the VN here is not a very bland choose your own adventure have not read many VNs. Because most do have a specific narrative they want to tell despite letting players have a lot of freedom, and this one is no different, while still leaving much to player choice. The kind of plot the devs are setting up with [spoiler]Marc's power abuses and how systems enable this kind of abuse[/spoiler] is decently common, popular, and one I actually enjoy a lot, with some of my favorite romance tropes, so it works well enough for me.
This is all on top of the protagonist being overly naive, rude, at least vaguely sexist and kind of anti-sex worker, selfish, and arrogant. And that's also not going to be everyone's cup of tea. Tirs is very much not a blank slate. He's an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. And from a narrative standpoint, that's fine: he either gets a bad ending for his train of bad choices, or learns from his mistakes and improves. His decisions don't always make sense, but they often make sense for who he is as a person.
That being said, the writing is not good on most every level. On a basic level, this needed more edits: there are tons of typos and grammar issues, and the text often doesn’t match what the voice actors are saying. There’s a lot of awkward phrasing, too, and for some reason the characters use a lot of UK English despite largely speaking with American English accents. There’s a lot of narrative inconsistency, too, and it feels like the story was written in spurts, with plots being dropped suddenly and no attempt being made to go back and see if the changed narrative makes sense. For instance, at the start of the game, [spoiler]Pol says Nils was driven away because of Tirs’ obsession with his career. But Tirs doesn’t have a job until he starts working at the lab. Nils is a professional musician, and Tirs is going to university for work. Yes, it’s understandable Nils is upset that Tirs made Nils feel at fault for Tirs missing out on an opportunity, but otherwise… why is Nils shocked that Tirs is working on his career? They’re both working adults who don’t share a home. Tirs also doesn't seem to understand most anything about his desired profession other than computer programming, but is seemingly ready to be put in charge of a city filled with people. And you can have a story about that - and the story does emphasize he is very naive and this can be dangerous - but the narrative doesn't really interrogate this specific naivete with his desired career. It doesn't have to, but it's just weird[/spoiler]. There are lots of inconsistencies like that.
It’s fine to elide in writing. And it’s fine to not research every aspect of your story. But having a bad ending be [spoiler]Tirs, seemingly fresh out of university, end up managing, “some desert area in Africa”, is so incredibly bizarre and at least mildly racist. We don’t get a country or a city or even a region of Africa, which is full of many different kinds of ecosystems and tons of people whom I imagine are happy to manage their own land. Just… the entire continent. Somewhere. Africa has over 10 deserts, which one are you talking about? And why is someone with no experience being put in charge of one, especially when he doesn’t seemingly understand the value of studying flora and fauna in ecosystem management[/spoiler]? This is just really lazy. And given the story often feels like it's trying to tackle topics too big for it, it's kind of just a trend. There’s some anarchist stuff here as a brief aside that doesn’t get explored much. There’s a bit about [spoiler]the struggles veterans and the disabled face (briefly). There’s a thread about racism in immigration. It’s fine that Tirs is naive and hasn’t thought a lot about big political topics. And it even, on some level, is fine that he doesn’t really grow as a person or get better understanding. Some folks just have basic beliefs about things and go along with the status quo. I think it’s unfortunate the game clearly wants to tackle these topics on some level without getting to some greater understanding, though. Tirs thinks the immigration stuff will sort itself out because colonization, I guess? And Tirs’… I’m not sure if it’s sexism, exactly, but it’s not entirely NOT sexism, is kind of frustrating. Lila truly should have never spoken to him again after a very early point in this story. She deserves better[/spoiler].
The steampunk stuff is also entirely wasted on this. It seems like the devs just wanted to draw the characters in some generic steampunk outfits and briefly handwave some steampunk tropes, without tackling it at all. The most we see of the steampunk elements are those rather uninteresting outfits and maybe a couple background objects (and a blimp is a setting once).
This is also, frankly, "Stardew Valley" fanfiction. [spoiler]Sebastian is Biel. Pol is Sam. Akira is Abigail. I think Marc and Quim are two versions of Harvey. I don't know that Tirs is Alex, but I'm not entirely sure he's not. It's more unavoidably obvious with Biel, who has the same interests and personality as Sebastian. And I'm pretty sure the Tirs/Biel/Pol threesome partly came out of Sam/Sebastian fanfiction. It's very distracting. Though this is better Stardew fanfic than "Requiescence" is "Dragon Age" fanfic[/spoiler].
The art is okay. Some character designs are quite frankly, bad (Nils, Lila, Nur, Bru, Ren, and Roy in particular). The environments range from maybe original to at least heavily referenced but drawn over to just photographs, but there is at least variety and it's not just photographs, and none of them are particularly ugly. The CGs are generally decent to even kind of nice, and I appreciate that the options for positions, all of which seem to have different CGs (I only tried one of Marc's options, so I don't know with him). The voice acting is amateurish, but honestly better than most of the other VN VA I've heard. Understandably, the best actor seems to be Biel, since I'm pretty sure the premise of this was [spoiler]self-insert Sebastian[/spoiler] fanfic. The music is fine.
All in all, it's quick and okay, with a decent plotline with messy characters getting into messes. It's very indie and is mostly just tropey nonsense, and if that's your kind of thing, give it a shot. It's pretty inexpensive and there are worse uses of your time.
