I was wondering why this game has a mixed reputation. I enjoyed the original [b]Find Love or Die Trying[/b]. It was a fun visual novel, with some good humor, lovely characters and interesting story. How does the sequel stack up?
The game has a VERY strong beginning. The plot picks up right after the first game, where the main character and all the women escape the murder show island. Despite all the cheering, the protagonist and his/her/their fiancé are struggling, thinking on how they are gonna keep going and if they are able to stay together. This is a pretty serious matter, depressing even, and I like it. It gives the dynamic more weight and meaning, not everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows, and there’s value in that.
After a life-threatening event on board of the ship, the game introduces two new characters, Vio and Nera, the former is a mysterious Resistance leader, and Nera is… Nera. I don’t want to spoil the story, but she is tied to one major event in the story, and a point of contention. She is a new waifu, but unfortunately, the game doesn’t spend too much time on developing your relationship with her. Not to say there’s none, but compared to how it was handled in the previous game, where you had separate “episodes” where you pick different girls to hang out with them, this is breadcrumbs. And I do agree, the game forces her a bit much, but especially since you already proposed to one of the girls from the previous game, so pursuing her feels wrong. There’s one choice to refuse her, which you can’t. Despite the game being advertised as having “branching choices, consequences”, there’s barely any. TO BE FAIR, the first game didn’t have much either and also had that false advertisement. But still, it sucked.
…but then that ending where you get rescued by your chosen one and others (provided you stick to them and don’t pick Nera). I will admit, I got baited. It [i]almost[/i] cancels out the forced narrative. Almost.
There are some technical issues I want to point out. I noticed there were a few typos. I think the first one also had some, and they are not frequent enough to be a bother. The UI is in absolute shambles. The first game had a custom UI design, and this game has what looks like default RenPy UI elements. And for some reason, it lacks a prompt for a normal save loading, there’s only a quick save loading one. To load a normal save, you have to press ESC and use Load option from there. Also, I think the credits cinematic is straight up from the first game. It mentions credits for Korean and Japanese translations as well as aforementioned UI design, which aren’t in this game. By extracting the game’s files, the UI elements are actually intact, and other leftovers from the first game, which isn’t surprising, since this game seems to be built on top of the previous one (or at least has almost all of the resources ported over). Still, makes you wonder what happened?
Despite some grievances, it’s the kind of game I can’t bring myself to hate, as I did enjoy it overall. I don’t think it’s as bad as the mixed reception suggests, but it is not as good as the first game, due to uneven tone, short run time, some questionable writing and a few technical blemishes. But there is also some fun writing, decent jokes, exploration of serious matters… and I did get to see the best girl in a wedding dress. That girl being Terra of course, the gamer gremlin girl. She is literally me fr (she is a gamer and a programmer). I did buy the appreciation pack, and it had some context on why the game turned out to be this way, and I think it’s understandable. So yeah, I think the game’s at least decent, and I wish the developer all the luck in the world for their future endeavors.
