This is definitely the worst Visual Novel I've read in my life (so far, at least). I really think that Punch Line is an utter piece of garbage that one should only read to see the train wreck.
Things I hate about it:
The visuals and presentation look like trash and are extremely inconsistent. The 3D models of both the characters and the environment look bad, there are "fake" cutscenes that are just screenshots of the anime but they have the characters moving every few lines, and there's the anime. The actual anime scenes are the only good things about the presentation; everything looks cheap and illmade. I've seen VNs with shoestring budgets that look so much better than this does. (If you want to see an actual good looking (and good quality) 3D VN, look at Robotics;Notes, and that game came out multiple years before this did.)
The music is Bad. I can't name a single song I liked in this game, and some songs that played are genuinely horrible or terribly boring. The worst one has to be the one that plays when they're doing the happymancy nonsense. That song makes me want to do horrible things.
Why did they need to have to show the OP and ED that many times? It's a huge waste of time and gets extremely irritating by the end. (unless you know how to skip it; i will get to this later, it is tied up in another complaint). It doesn't do anything for the immersion, it's just bad design.
The sound design is lackluster. The sound balancing between the music and the voice acting is bad for quite a few songs. This is a relatively minor complaint since it can be fixed in the settings but I personally think that an attempt should be made to make the default settings normal.
The port job is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible in regards to the controls. In the sections where you have to leave a room and go back to the room select, I literally couldn't find a button combination that allowed me to do that on mouse and keyboard. I HAD to plug in a controller to do this. Controller also is probably the only way to skip the OPs and EDs and they don't TELL YOU ABOUT THIS ANYWHERE. (Hold the face buttons down for a while, I believe this works consistently). I really shouldn't have to plug in a controller to a game that says that it works on Mouse/Keyboard. THE ACHIEVEMENTS ARE BROKEN TOO! HOW DO YOU ♥♥♥♥ THAT UP???
The gameplay is boring and completely uninteresting. It's just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ghost trick.; It's completely brainless (just picking whatever's there) for the most of the game, but near the end it just becomes blind guesswork. I guess that's what they think difficulty is like: being forced to read the minds of the developers or you lose.
All of the characters are either annoying or uninteresting, and none of them get any good arcs. I was given no good reasons to care about them whatsoever. And this leads to the fact that...
The plot is nonsense and the twists are completely impact-less and barely affect the plot at all. The worst one is probably the gender twist. It literally does not matter whatsoever and is a complete nothingburger. It didn't need to exist, so why? I could go into depth on some of these but I won't. It's just not worth it. I don't want a game this bad to take up more space than it needs to in my brain.
The panties stuff is just bland and obnoxious too. If they were going to do something like that, why not go all the way? The way it is, it pleases neither normal people, nor degenerates; it works for nobody.
I think Punch Line's worst sin is that it isn't even funny. I could find it in my heart to forgive it a bit if it made me laugh a few times, but I didn't laugh a single time playing this game. It tries so hard to be funny and miserably fails.
There's ONE thing I like about this, and it's the fact that the ACTUAL anime cutscenes look good. I watched the anime myself after this (to punish myself) and, while it's still bad, is a superior way to experience the story and it made me laugh at least twice. This is why I won't personally give it a 1/10.
If you for some reason want to buy this game, for the love of god do not buy it at full price (I bought it for like 10). There are so many other Visual Novels that are so much better than this mess even just on Steam that cost around the same or significantly less. Umineko, The House in Fata Morgana (+A Requiem for Innocence), Chaos;Head Noah + Chaos;Child, 2236 AD, Seabed, Root Double, Little Busters, Clannad, Robotics;Notes (skip DaSH), SubaHibi (not for everyone), BALDR SKY, Steins;Gate (original), ATRi -My Dear Moments-, Planetarian, Muv Luv Alternative, 428: Shibuya Scramble, all of the Ace Attorney collections (including the upcoming one), Higurashi is also good but it's more pricey, the list goes on and on and on. Please read literally anything else.
