A lovely visual novel, kinetic - in the sense that you won't be required to make fundamental decisions in the story, but rather you'll be dragged into a strange and particular kind of romance.
The whole setting is steampunk, and I've always had a love-hate relationship with steampunk in general. But here, well, everything works greatly. And the soundtrack is simple, piano-driven (with many strings parts), but really awesome and soothing.
You'll have at your disposal many setting options for what concerns graphics, sound effects, text speed and so on.
The artwork compartment is quite strange - the backgrounds seem all taken from comic books, while the main characters are way more into a standard "anime-like" style, or manga, whatever you prefer, I mean, the classic Japanese characters xD
Although as I said, there's nothing from the East here.
There will be some really astonishing scenes with voice acting, although a small downside is that the game is available only in English and the voice, which is perfect, has no subtitles - at least, I have found no way to put subtitles in those scenes.. so that if you're not that into English like me, you can have some difficulties in understanding everything the voice actor says.
Anyways, not a major issue :)
As you may have noticed, the chapter 2 of this game has been released just as I'm writing, some days ago I think, in March, 2018 so.. well, it's an episodic novel and we'll have to wait for all the episodes to unfold but still, it's great to play as it is!
The game also will feature some mini-games, easy puzzles that are anyways a very nice addition in my opinion and make the whole story even longer :)
I don't really think that you must be a puzzle/logic games lover and not only a visual novel lover to enjoy this one.. they're rather simple in my opinion and they don't annoy the player at all.
And if you take your time, I think that probably more than 2 hours will be needed to read through all the game and to get into the story proper, which is very well-written and it can also help you bolden your English XD I don't even know if that verb exists.
Even if the few choices you'll be prompted to make have no impact on the story as I was saying, it's still a great Western visual novel that blends mystery themes to a steampunk settings - you'll have to deal with suspects, stolen objects, crimes.. in fact, the whole world setting is something that comes after a war as you'll see in the first part of the game, so well.. there'll be a lot to discover, and I'm happy to know that this is only the first chapter and I still have to play the second one!
I just maybe didn't like that much the few characters available, but still.. as the first chapter of a potentially big story and as a kinetic visual novel I think that it's still enjoyable, even if you can't relate that much to inspector Beckwith, who will be your main character and narrator.
And I found that the whole mystery - you're a private investigator after all! - is just strengthened by the breakups of the dialogues, made up by nice puzzles that of course aren't there just for fun, but they will be important in order to solve the cases and so on - although of course as I was saying, there's no chance to "change" the endings or the routes, since you're going through an already-written visual novel apart from some minor changes through your choices.
So, overall, this is a really good visual novel to check out and wait for the next chapters - artwork and music are great, voice acting's definitely good and the whole story and setting are very particular and interesting. The mini-games are funny and the whole game is a pleasure to read - definitely recommended if you're into visual novels in general (and if you want something which doesn't revolve at all around sex and naked anime girls XD).
Oh, and feel free to keep the game full-screen since it's better even on a big screen in my experience, especially for what concerns appreciating the artwork of puzzles and cutscenes :)
