Take even the most cursory glance online and you can easily find a torrent of hate for this game, but you won't find it here.
I enjoyed this game very much by taking my time to savour it and really ensure I was following every development closely.
A lot of players fall off the rails with this game because they don't hold on tight enough, or for some reason want it to follow real-world logic rigidly, a strange ask, given that players of this game presumably have at least some experience of the magic-laden Corpse Party universe by now.
I highly recommend immersing oneself deeply in the gory warm bath of [i]Corpse Party (2021), Book of Shadows, and Sweet Sachiko's Hysteric Birthday Bash [/i] before playing this. Yes, you will lose a lot by not having played those games thoroughly beforehand.
I would also encourage you to play this on PC! Wonderful, you're reading this on Steam, so you almost certainly will be.
I say the above because a lot of this game's negative reputation comes from the appalling mess it was released in, and left in, for years on console. Oh console, how heavy your sins!
This isn't to say the game is a flawless masterpiece now—certainly not, but it's a lot better than the cynics and hate–train bandwagoners would have you believe.
It has a fantastic ending and genuinely great story beats all throughout.
This game includes some of the best extra chapters in the whole series and when "Harewataru Sora" begins to play in the Epilogue, it really hits perfectly... like the fragile hope that dares to hint at dawn after the oppressive darkness of Heavenly Host.
Some puzzles are particularly hard… well, that's always been Corpse Party; the infamous bug pit from Game 1 set the standard for that.
Some things are a little finicky to interact with again, that's par for the course.
Maybe the new characters upset you?
Some villains are irredeemable; not everyone needs to be shades of grey.
As for Magari and Kuon, Magari is larger than life but nothing unusual for this series, really.
Kuon is very strange, yes, but remind yourself: she was created by the curse to replace Ms. Yui. Feeling otherworldly and unnatural is deliberate—she was literally written into existence by magic.
Accepting that is table stakes for the story, so complaining about her "weirdness" feels oddly selective. She isn't an ordinary woman.
Perhaps you simply don't like where the story goes and feel strongly that [i] if only [b] you [/b] [/i] had written it, then it would be different and much better in your humble opinion…
Overall, this is a great telling of Kedouin's vision for how the Heavenly Host saga ends, at least for now.
I personally think it tells its story very well.
Yes, this is one of those "do or do not, there is no try" kind of games: either commit to this as a lover, or don't bother with it—as you'll only get hurt if you go in for a quick fling.
[h3] 8/10 [/h3]
