My Lovely Wife

honestly this game sucks. Which is ironic because I sat down and played this for nearly 4 hours straight without stopping because the loop was captivating. Essentially it's just pimping out demons to locations to gather essence and money for the greater plot. It's simple, easy, and while somewhat uninteresting, there are multiple aspects of the game that reward you with different areas of progress which makes you want to keep going. What you're hoping for throughout this game is for an interesting conclusion. This is mainly why I'm leaving the negative review. I'd recommend this game solely if you don't finish the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game and instead take the happy succ/inc-ubi endings. Those have more to say about moving on, finding love in places you didn't expect. Finding things to care about among the flaws of other people. When it comes to the main route of the game based around resurrecting your wife, this whole premise is kicked off by a mystery in the starting moments. That being, you, the husband, have killed your wife. It's shown as an accident where you try to shoot a robber, but the main character can't recall what they looked like and no one in the game has a mouth. Naturally you can imagine my disappointment when, NO, it totally was an accident, there wasn't anything deeper going on, actually it's super romantic that he's murdering demons we're portraying as people with well written depth, it's actually beautiful the harrowing things he'll do to ressurect this one person. Here's the thing though, you totally 100% by the rules of the premise not kill any demons. However the game locks you off from harvesting more essence until you kill one of them just to show that you can level up from doing so. For some reason you're not supposed to take this into account at all for whatever reason. Plus the cherry on top of this ♥♥♥♥ sundae is that there are two groups you can choose to ask for assistance from, BOTH ARE EXTREMELY SHADY. This isn't something where if you thought of his position, or the circumstances of either reaching out that you could determine which route would be best. NO, instead you can go with suspicious researcher who has an extremely solid backstory, very solid probably cause for wanting to help you and all round makes the most sense for having nothing else going on. He's even introduced as someone our main character knows. Then there's the occult church in the town that suspiciously has notes from your wife, they somehow know about your situation, what you're doing, and the occurrences in the town. Instead of actually just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ telling you the truth, instead of giving you information, instead of literally anything else. They instead just neg you for even acknowledging a well trusted individual and friend and then go "hey he's lying about this thing" and then ♥♥♥♥ off and run away. So naturally when he owns up to it and explains exactly why he finds that group suspicious, why he lied about this specific aspect, why he's doing all of this, and why it doesn't change everything. Yeah, of course I'm going to ask him for help over the weirdos in the corner. So that's the bad ending, and this isn't something where you can quickly just change a dialogue or anything and check the other path either. No. You have to restart the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game to see the other ending. These endings DON'T SAY ANYTHING EITHER. This bad ending literally is just you don't resurrect your wife and you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ die. They make extra sure to not portray this as a moral, ethical or failure of principle. No, in fact you get praised for putting in all this effort and trying this hard, and making sure to say that your actions were totally justified but ♥♥♥♥ you anyway. So of course I'm not going to restart to see the good ending, since if the bad ending isn't actually going to comment on anything other than just tell me that I shouldn't have finished the game, I'm not going to play even more to expect something different. Turns out, the good ending? That ending you do in fact resurrect your wife, BUT, and very crucially, you ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ die while being praised for all your actions and effort for doing so. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE. I'll give it that the good ending is bittersweet, and I think I'd really appreciate and love it, if, and only if the game hadn't fought against this idea from the very start. It's a great ending actually, but when you have it at the end of a game where it constantly tells you that you shouldn't be doing any part of what you've been doing, and constantly gives you clues that "hey, we really need to drill home that these are real individuals with feelings and lives that you are killing and you HAVE to kill them". You would think it wants to say something with that, instead by killing the player, and ALSO not reprimanding the player and treating your actions as something to be idealized, it fails on this front. It's only made worse by the way the bad ending existing at all. I think this game could have worked way better if you removed either the bad, or the good ending, and didn't keep in both, and then left the positive negative individual demon endings. That could have said something. One can acknowledge the effort you put in, but still classify you as failing for not stopping your inherently terrible actions since you both don't resurrect and also die. This is ruined by the good ending, which if you do that, alternatively you could be saying something opposing, where you could have been happy with these demons and not going through with these terrible decisions, however you were pushed on by a church with more information than what you had, and your faith in the words of your dead wife is something to be praised. Except when you leave it up to chance whether you choose to follow the church or not. IT'S NOT because having following your wife or following the stranger is something that should indicate whether your path was good or bad. In fact that might work if you force the player into one path or the other based on their methods of playing the game. It fails because logically the behaviors of the characters in the game should not lead to an answer that is anything other than the good ending or a demon good ending before they kill a demon. So by trying to portray both as suspicious and leaving it to chance, you sabotage what could be trusting in your heart, deep love, and what was left behind for you. This is only made worse by making the dilemma possible, only by forcing the church to not explain anything to the player which only makes the choice feel even more artificial. This felt tailor made to piss me off, not because the ending was bad, but because there are a LOT of great components that are all right here, and the game refused to utilize them properly and didn't make that apparent until the end. God I hate it so much I might actually need to keep this in my favorites ♥♥♥♥ you.