Heaven Will Be Mine

there are many criticisms of this game's writing. i vehemently disagree. i adore how little heaven will be mine holds your hand. the game never, truly, directly speaks to the player and it does not insult your intelligence by explaining things plainly. its refreshing to have a narrative be this boldly obtuse and metaphorical without really cluing the reader in directly. its not the sort of game that will hit you like an emotional truck, nor is it a game so listless that you cant parse it; it hits a very exceptional middle ground where the main themes are front and centre, but you have to work to find your own perspective. throughout the game, you have this niggling feeling that the dialogue is childish. the reason? it is. its meant to be. its a visual novel steeped in queer broken women trying to communicate desperately and failing, with a backdrop of beautifully written (almost poetry) that serves as narration, and dry emails and letters: this mishmash of elements contextualises the more "cringey" lines from the characters- because it is intentional, because the writing in other areas is very elegant. these girls were sent to space because they didnt fit in, raised to pilot mechs in an academy that was ran by competing ideologues, made to fight in a war against humanity's shadow that doesnt truly exist. they are the gifted daughters of humanity, tossed aside once they are no longer useful. of course they will talk like broken caricatures- its all theyve ever known. its why broken queer women talk like that sometimes in the real world (even if i also find it cringey on occasion). once you realise how intentional the writing is, the ways the characters speak goes from annoying to endearing to "well duh!". my criticisms of the game are along a more technical/game elements line than the writing, themes,, story, etc. i find the faction system being so plain a little bit annoying- the decisions become "which ending do i want" and not "what do i think x character should do/what would be the most interesting", and i think the game would have been, strangely, much stronger with more ambiguity and less quality of life here. i recommend just ignoring it entirely and just playing the game one path at a time (saturn-luna-pluto) and just chosing the loyal option every time; you miss out on nothing and there is very little betrayal dialogue. additionally, the lack of a true fast forward feature is rough, even if it was just on second playthroughs, and some of the scenes could have used MORE illustration; i found the scenes with those unique hand drawn abstract paintings to be way more compelling! but at the end of the day i just think the game is clever, and it grows on you. the fact the "existential threat" is never truly explained in more than a metaphor is so genius- because that is all it is, a metaphor. its the parts of ourselves we do not want to confront, the aspects of humanity that we are not proud of, our own reflection that the big wigs on earth want to immortalise as an alien enemy. the story relishes in this ambiguity. it allows a lot of space for the reader to reflect upon where SHE stands on this, what she would do, the ways she is broken and beaten by the world, the ways she is still expected to fight for it. i dont think it truly clicked until the final ending with pluto's faction, but i had to sit down and just... reflect for a while. if the dialogue is something that will push you away you probably wont get much out of this, but if the reflective nature of the game and the themes of space, love, hate, war, sex, failure, anger, sadness, expectations and the philosophical ways theyre all kind of the same thing is interesting, id give a wholehearted recommendation. 4/5 (highly recommend)

Oh to be a gay transgender woman in space causing mayhem

god, i wish women were real

if you've ever questioned yourself before if you've ever wondered who you might be when you aren't pinned down by the pressure of society if you've ever dreamed of being someone else, in a context where that wasn't an offense to everyone around you then this game is for you

This game is frustrating. It very clearly wants to be a character focused piece that touches on humanity and philosophy while using a brutal amount of symbolism. Instead all it really accomplished is pure frustration. Everything is vague and obtuse to a fault. This isn't bigger ideas in terms you don't understand until later. It's outright using words that already have meaning that mean something completely different in the story, that then ALSO will be written in a stream of consciousness way. By that I mean they'll say a lot without saying anything just for the sake of saying something. Gravity, culture, human, theoretical, real. These are all words that you understand, in the game being almost nonsense. They'll speak using gravity, but gravity will be the same as in the real world so you're left just not knowing what it even means by that, further still gravity wells, event horizons, other gravitational concepts will be treated as a spiritual or philosophical term instead of what they actually mean. They use the word real and term reality to coincide with "culture" and it won't ever clarify if it's talking about feeling real, something actually being real, or both at the same time while also extending this to existence. This happens a lot throughout the writing in a way that's very clearly meant to deliver an energy and feel to things, but not understanding with things you interpret underneath the understanding. All in all it ultimately just frustrates me to try to follow a narrative that's composed of nothing of substance other than vibes. They give lore and background explanations for the situation things are in, but this rffort of worldbuilding also falls into the same issue. Things like we were in a cold war with an existential threat that we can't fight with anything but technology which thinking about it is really easy so it was a stupid war so we decided to go back to earth. THIS BOTH IS METAPHORICAL AND ISN'T. Characters will refer to this very real war and how they resolved it and how some are veterans of this war. Rxcept whenever referring to the actual occurrences of the war it falls back onto metaphors because they don't actually describe what they were fighting or what even happened. At best you can self-insert the concept of neon genesis evangelion and how the mechs are becoming more of themselves to be more powerful, but that doesn't actually explain what this backdrop is. Ultimately it collapsed onto you realizing it didn't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ matter. This concept doesn't mstter at all it's just a vehicle for the character interaction whoch just upsets me. Like at the end of the day if you want to have a setting and sci fi concepts touching on existence, maybe MAKE A SETTING ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ EXIST OR ELSE THIS MIGHT AS WELL ALL HAPPEN IN A VACCUUM. Like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hold up sock puppets of your toxic yuri characters just rubbing eachoters head and write the conversations and present that to me over what is at it's core performative ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

The game is very very very good and everyone should play it! In more detailed words: the game has a lot of very interesting philosophical discussion, doesn't overstay its welcome, and is very very gay. --- Just a little info on what order to do things in... [spoiler] Play as Saturn first, then a loyal LT, then Pluto, then aim for the Easter Egg ending with LT, IMO. [/spoiler]

i am convinced big lesbian lab-engineered this game to perfectly fit me.

I'm glad stories like this can exist.

Luna-Terra should call me

Absolutely beautiful game. Amazing writing. Its abstract painterly words will suck you in like gravity. I've never played any game like this. If you're even slightly interested please pick this up