[b]Note:[/b] I updated this review although it doesn't include screenshots since I didn't upload screenshots at the time I first wrote this review.
[h1]The competition for love begins. XD[/h1]
[h2]Introduction[/h2]
[i]Game of Love[/i] is a visual novel developed and published by Golden Castle Studio. You take on the role of Alice, a high school sophomore on the school's volleyball team. Basically, Alice is living the "typical" high school life, dealing with obnoxious teachers, an overbearing mother, and a high school diva. However, that all changes one day when a member of the boys' volleyball team, Raphael, a junior, starts to take an interest in Alice. Alice ends up becoming popular, attracting the attention of lots of guys, including her childhood friend Mark, who had never taken an interest in Alice until Raphael started paying attention to her. However, she also ends up inciting envy and jealousy from other females, including her best friend Emily. On top of that, Alice starts getting threatening text messages. Can Alice handle all this newfound attention and not succumb to threats? I'll end my story synopsis here to avoid spoilers and all that.
As for the gameplay, [i]Game of Love[/i] is advertised as a kinetic novel and it pretty much is since you end up getting the same ending. However, many choices are presented throughout the story (which is a bit unusual in kinetic novels since they follow one story path from beginning to end). While some of the choices simply affect the flavor of the text, others are tied to Steam achievements. There are a few CGs as well as a few music tracks and sound effects. However, at the time of this review, no Steam trading cards are available and Steam achievements won't count towards a user's global total until the game is out of "Steam is learning about this game."
[h2]Review[/h2]
Now that I've gone over the story and gameplay, I'll move onto my critique. Upon first opening the game, I immediately noticed that the default language is French even though I have English as my default language. I had to go into the game's preferences area to change the language to English. Aside from that, I'll talk about the story. I was interested in this visual novel because I liked the story premise - the idea of an ordinary high school student becoming popular and then having to deal with the problems associated with it. However, as I got into the story, I found certain aspects which personally irked me. First off, I found Alice to be kind of annoying as the main character. I believe she was depicted to be the typical high school teenager, but I didn't like how she would swear a lot. (I know it's normal to swear at times but not to the extent that Alice does. lol) Also, she has a terrible relationship with her mother, but I feel like the story doesn't really justify Alice being mean to her. Yes, the mother is overbearing and perhaps worries too much about Alice, but I don't think that justifies Alice yelling at her mother and accusing her and such. (On this point, I kind of know what I'm talking about since I don't have a good relationship with my mother. However, I have very justifiable reasons, way more than someone being annoying.) Typically, I like empathizing with main characters, but Alice was a bit of a difficult pill to swallow, even when she was later bullied and such. As to the rest of the characters, I found most of them to be ok or to my liking. I'd say that Jessica, the popular, beautiful diva, was my favorite because it turns out [spoiler]that she's very much misunderstood[/spoiler]. On the story itself, it's your typical high school drama story and then some. I felt that the drama was a bit overdone at times although I liked how the writer tackled the issues of bullying, same sex relationships, etc. The only complaint I have about the story is [spoiler]that after Alice finds out the true culprit behind the threatening texts, she never gets things resolved with the person whom she accused. It's like Alice and the accused were both too proud to talk to the other about what happened and try to work things out[/spoiler].
On the writing, I felt that it was paced ok. I noticed a couple of typos as well as a few grammatical errors that bothered me as an editor. The errors are probably a result of the translation from French to English. On the art style, it's ok. It's not the most polished and I found a couple of sprites a little rough-looking. However, the backgrounds were fine although the art is nothing spectacular. On the soundtrack, like the art, it's ok although nothing outstanding. With one track, it sounded way too dramatic to me. I know the story is supposed to depict high school drama and perhaps it's just my personal preference, but I felt like it was a bit overdone. Then again, I tend to like a bit more realism when it comes to reading stories.
[h2]Conclusion[/h2]
Overall, would I recommend [i]Game of Love[/i]? For Golden Castle Studio's debut visual novel, I think it's a fine visual novel. It has its flaws, but generally, I'd say that I enjoyed it. The developers teased that another chapter is planned, so I hope that it'll improve upon the flaws of this chapter. For the asking price, I'd say it's worth getting, as it took me about 5 hours to get all of the achievements and CGs. However, you can wait for a sale to pick it up then. ^^
On an additional note, I've posted an achievement guide [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2567397117]here[/url], so if you're struggling to get those one or two pesky achievements, hopefully, it'll help.
[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44702020/]The Introverted Gamer[/url] and [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7593237/]Otome Rakuen[/url] team up to give readers highly detailed, thorough reviews of hot romance games.[/quote]
