I really wanted to like this game, I really did. Between the shiny, vibrant artwork that I absolutely adore and the option to play as a female for a yuri experience (with an h-patch!), it seemed like the ideal visual novel for me. But, as it turns out, appearances aren't everything and this game is hiding some serious flaws beneath its cutesy exterior. Horrible characters, random, nonsensical plot directions and faulty controls really come together to make this a subpar game that left me feeling more exhausted than anything.
If a game only has three characters to choose from, they better be some pretty damn good ones to make up for it, right? Well not in Our Lovely Escape, because there was not one likeable character among the bunch. They had me fooled for a bit in the prologue and I kept telling myself they seemed alright, but as soon as I got onto Alexis' route it just went downhill from there. Normally you expect with unpleasant characters like these that they would get better the more you get to know them, like they have a soft side to them and aren't really so ♥♥♥♥♥♥ after all. Unfortunately that's not the case here, because for the most part they only seemed to get worse the further along their route you went. Each one of them is controlling, bipolar, selfish, ♥♥♥♥♥♥, and just completely insufferable no matter how nice you are to them. It legit makes me wonder if the developer of this game has some problems with their previous relationships with women or something, because this behavior is largely normalized by everyone else in the game and consistent throughout. Couldn't at least one of these girls been a decent human being? Instead all we get are three unhinged individuals who are clearly not fit for a relationship when all they can think of is themselves and their own needs.
I know I'm psychoanalyzing waifus too deeply right now, but their personalities are actually the worst part of the game and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. The protagonist wasn't much better, either. She was a normal person at least, and whether she was a jerk or not also depended on your choices. But other than that she was bland and seemed to only care about her job with her ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of a boss and moody coworkers that love to cause a scene. The only times I could relate to her were in some of the bad endings or moments of clarity she had where she was like "♥♥♥♥ this girl, why would I want to date someone who acts like this?" My thoughts exactly.
Other than the abysmal character development, the writing is kinda just all over the place too. The grammar and overall vocabulary and sentence flow is good, but the content itself is questionable. Things just kind of happen and the protagonist just goes with it, like, whatever, right? She takes all three of these girls home and beds them in their routes, WHILE they are drunk... Taking advantage much? Then they just decide to get clingy and be like yeah we're totally in love now, also you gotta prove your love for me in some inane way and if you don't I might just kill you. If they had advertised this game as being one for people who actually like these kinds of characters then I might not even give it such a bad review. But it goes under the pretense that this is just your normal cute girl vn, teehee. You can hardly call this romance at all, which is made all the more sad and ironic by the fact that they literally work in an office made to create romance games. Also I mentioned how the controls are faulty - that's because the skip button is garbage. There is no option for skipping read text so no matter what it skips everything, and it's hard to tell if you've already been through a certain scene or not due to this. As well as that, you can use the scroll wheel to advance backwards or forwards through dialogue you've already read, and it's broken as hell too. If you scroll too much it goes turbo speed and it's difficult to get it to stop at all, let alone where you need it to.
It's just disappointing because I really do like the art, even if there are very few CG's in the first place. They are really cute and even animated, so you can tell a lot of effort was put into them. The backgrounds are all very crisp and well-made also. The H-scenes are simplistic, as the protagonist does not have a physical presence whatsoever, so it's just the girl naked and moaning. But I still can appreciate how good they looked, too. The music is nothing special, just some simple tunes that change a bit depending on the atmosphere of the scene, pretty sure there are like 3. Sadly there are no sound effects at all, which kind of just makes the sound design of this game really low effort. It says I have 5 hours on here, but it should really be more like 4, fully completed - and for a game that costs $10, that's not worth the money. 4/10, all points go to the art and the creative writing (as in banter, not plot itself), but that's it. If you want GOOD psycho characters, do yourself a favour and pass this one over.
