I thought the 'visual novel' part of the game was good, personally, I think the panels look amazing, but there are some other gameplay elements that have the potential to be frustrating, mainly because it's easy to reset the chapters with an 'honest mistake'. Sometimes it got so confusing I replayed the same part up to 5 times, just because it was not clear where I had to stand, or picked the wrong dialogue choice. Now, I don't care what anyone thinks of the themes in this game, I take games for what they are - I just saw a game with nice art and some creative ideas, so I wanted to try it.
The game is around 3 to 5 hours, it kinda depends because there are silly things that could make it longer than it should be. Strangely I felt like I got the bad ending, but the achievements say 13/14, and apparently, I got the good one, so I am not sure if I missed anything or if the ending to this game is actually anticlimactic, I can't say that it had a good closure. It does have a little bit of replay value with the character events, it looks like they don't have the achievements for all of the optional things that you can do, I would highly recommend going back and adding those because it's not clear how much you actually missed.
For better or worse, I have a surprising amount of experience with visual novels despite not being a huge fan of the genre, but this game avoids a lot of the things that I hate about these games. First of all, I like that this game does not follow the generic 'slide show' format, for me a good visual novel is a playful and interactive experience, not a wall of serviceable narrative. Most of the panels in this game are shown with a unique perspective, and it really helps that just about every location is given character-specific details, I mean in general, the game just looks very good. I thought the chemistry between the characters was infectious, everyone is kinda funky, and if you don't mind the themes I think the narrative is enjoyable enough.
Ahh, yes, the "Roller Derby" minigame. To give you a short answer, I thought it was unpredictable with the AI, and yes you can win on average if you know what you doing, but sometimes it does not work as you expect. It's not very complicated, the game pretty much plays itself, you just have to press the correct action at the appropriate situation, and you also have to keep an eye on your resources because you have to stretch them for 3 rounds. The game does offer some difficulty settings and "auto-battle", however, I would not recommend doing it auto because it can put you behind much further than it would be possible manually (guess who replayed the same fight like 3 times because I gambled it).
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) I think the artwork in this game was fantastic, regardless of how anyone feels about the characters, these panels are really good, not just the design of the characters, but also the way the game presents the visual novel aspect of the experience. Especially the expressions on the faces and even just the coloring, visually it works very well.
(+) For me, the worst thing you can do with a visual novel is a ****** slide show, and I like that you avoided that. And I am not even talking about the stat management and the minigame, I am just talking about the formatting of the panels, the way you experience the narrative is not just a linear progression of text walls. To me a visual novel is not about a text, it's about the experience of how I consume that text, and for the most part, I think you got it right.
(+) As far as the whole "stat management", I mean I like that you went there, but I thought it was just okay, I rarely felt that I was making any hard choices, the whole system didn't feel that relevant, with the exception where it was between 2 characters, you could always use a bit more of "someone will not be happy" no matter what you do.
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
[u] Checkpoints [/u] - most of the checkpoints in this game are at the start of the chapter, and I actually don't mind it, the problem is that this game has a lot of opportunities to accidentally reset it, maybe you were standing at the wrong spot and didn't know what the game wanted from you, maybe you lost the gamble on the minigame, maybe you picked the wrong line. It just feels unnecessary, I played some sections like 5 times, like I already read that dialogue once, I don't need to read it 5 times.
[u] Minigame [/u] - honestly I thought it was mostly a waste of my time. The AI has the potential to hard carry the game for you or your opponent, there is always that chance it will get stuck for 45 seconds. One thing I will say, for the auto thing, it really should never be 20-60 or something, the manual game is usually 4 point difference but if the auto battle puts you 40 points behind you might as well reset the chapter.
[u] Nitpicks [/u] - I already said this in the forum but this is a big one for me, why is there an extra animation at the house after you already selected the door, it just adds so much extra time for no reason, even kinda hurts the immersion. It was not always clear how exactly you interact with the events, sometimes you just stand next to people, and sometimes it's something else, felt like trial and error sometimes. I do think the game didn't have enough hard choices, I like the parts where I had to pick one of the 2 characters, but there wasn't enough there overall.
[b] Overall Thoughts: 7/10 [/b]
I like visual novels that try to do something different, and sadly it's actually the visual novel by itself that is the best part of this experience, the way you formatted the panels is better than most games that I play. The gameplay was not that intuitive, and the team management was okay, just not that deep. The artwork and the overall presentation of the panels were the highlights of the game for me, in terms of just aesthetics, it was almost perfect. I see this happen a lot, you make a game and you have a very solid core visual novel, but you add other creative elements and they dilute the experience with strange vibes instead of making it better, I felt the game was not a smooth experience overall.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
