"This fish is useless"
"So is this conversation".
That summarizes Stories of Mara.
Getting a technical question out of the way:
[b][i]Do four buttons (LMB, Space, Enter, Numpad Enter) forward text?[/i][/b]
Shockingly, yes. Many visual novels fail this test.
However, there's no autoskip, and the game expects you to replay it.
Within the first 9 minutes of dialogue, the first text that is in bold font is [b]"She is a strong girl"[/b], regarding Koa. This conveys to me that the writer is not confident in their storytelling skills.
If the adjective applies at all, it would be patently obvious from experiencing the story, but instead, it was used as some sort of social signal.
The alternative interpretation is that the town is comedically despondent, which is not better.
The second and third usages of bold are less weird, but still weird; for example, the third is an entire sentence.
These are meant to highlight goals for the player, that they ought to remember, but...
[b]A.[/b] there isn't mechanical freedom for you to possibly lose yourself, and...
[b]B.[/b] if you could lose yourself, Akaji should instead tell you, "I should be doing X". In fact, she already does that when visiting unimportant places, except instead of a specific goal X, she merely says "something".
Regarding the places, a map is available, allowing you to pick and go to one of many places. As if the storepage and developer messages weren't enough, this hints at the game's intended scope.
It also kinda seems like the backgrounds are repurposed concept art, since they don't fit perspective-wise with the characters, but it could just be a misdesign.
When Litio first enters Akaji's workship, the BGM changes, and it is unfitting. This musical strangeness didn't recur in the rest of the game.
Litio introduces Akaji to the modelmaking of boats as a calming hobby, who soon transforms it into a nagsome duty to be done for others, practiced by her with maximum strategy intended for maximum gain.
Akaji makes the most stereotypical boat models for the characters, which you as the player are encouraged to make because of low-information, and... they like them. This reflects the depth of interest to be found in these characters. Even Aquila, who superficially complains about this, likes it, so his complaint doesn't work.
It would've been cool if symbolic analogy had been made between the type of boat and the characters, so you learn about boats, and the story.
The senile shipmaker guy with as many tall-tales as he has area on the surface of his skin, he could have seen your models and gotten inspired to explain a local islander the player knew little about.
[b]BUG:[/b] There's a part where the game shows Akaji as asking Akaji about whether so-and-so is a joke to herself. Contextually, this is meant to have been said by Mayo, but a bug shows it as Akaji.
Aquila and Saimi were the most interestingly written characters, but frankly, it would've been better if they were as bad as everyone else.
The characters around Akaji respond to her worries, to the injured Napopo, and to the missing Koa, in a way that is NOT believable. The way this is written, everyone in the island is inexplicably despondent and uncaring. They simply are like that.
You, the player, are expected to wash the foot of these characters to get the best ending, with little to zero incentive for doing so, except Akaji's strange rumination.
As another reviewer wrote: "If they don't care, why should I?"
Speaking of rumination, there's a lot of repeating the same information.
I thought this story would be about Akaji searching for Koa, but it really is about how she doesn't give herself a break from work, is envious of Koa's enlightened freedom, and wants to leave this allegedly narcissistic island of small differences.
What Akaji most loves to do - besides being miserable about overworking herself in her own toil without break for no known reason - is to tell herself, every character she meets, you the player, the wall of her smithy, and the blueness of the sky, that Koa is missing and that she wants validation to be concerned about her missingness.
It's so repetitive and drab, you're better off just thinking about your own past, or ruminating on the death of the messiah.
On top of that, most of the game is loading in and out of places irrelevant to progressing the story, as you look for where this or that character might currently be at.
According to the credits, as well as developer statements from 2021 and 2022, a second chapter is said to be forthcoming. Seeing as it is 2026, the only thing that came were four years.
[b]NOTE[/b]: Addressing a misleading statement by "Obey the Fist", there is no content in this game that is unlockable via paying.
I hold Chibig at a very high and positive regard, but not this game.
It isn't even on their website, though it [url=http://web.archive.org/web/20230519072014/https://chibig.com/stories-of-mara/]used to be[/url], which forces you to wonder whether they are ashamed/unproud of a work viewed by themselves as lesser (due to various unworkable constraints), whether the hiding was a strategic omission tactic to control the impression of visitors, or both.
Koa, the one that motivated Akaji, and the only reason I bothered to play this, is seen nowhere in this game, except for the title menu.
If you care about the world and characters by Chibig, you will get something out of this, but nowhere close to what the game's premise makes it seem.
