[h1]Wasted Letters and Potential[/h1]
That's the thought that consistently occurred to me after completing my first playthrough; The Letter is nothing if an utter waste of potential. The entire premise is solid and it starts out strong, hitting you in the face early in with the antagonist; She's not just a myth, she's very real and wasting no time trying to kill the cast. Unfortunately, it simply takes a glorious swan dive off a cliff and unceremoniously splatters itself on the ground. The VN is rife with issues that on their own might be tolerable, but pile up quickly and become quite problematic.
[h2]Illusion of Choice[/h2]
What choice? Your actions don't chantge much, killing characters off changes very little since most branches on the path converge into a single point. Even with 3 of 7 characters dead by Chapter 6, the story simply continues as though they didn't exist, only a sporadic comment about dead characters. For all the choices the game offers you, it all feels remarkably pointless and guided towards the exact same ending every time, even at 57 hours I've only managed to fully complete Chapters 1-5. Chapters 6-7 are unbelievably convoluted with the path branching off at the beginning, then branches forming from the branch, with those branches having branches of their own. All this, with no notation on the already-read nodes to tell you about the route, leaving you to guess or simply utilise a guide to know what arbitrary decision you had to make as far back as Chapter 1. For a novel like this, notation is a requirement to make repeated playthroughs not only enjoyable but actually viable. After reaching 85% completion on Chapter 6, I simply gave up after seeing that the node I was going for was inaccessible because I hadn't made one pointless choice several chapters earlier. I also won't be able to attain the True Ending since it requires you to obtain all Memory Fragments, but I refused to waste several more hours mindlessly skipping text for what will likely amount to the equivalent of being gifted deodorant.
As an extra note: The store page claims it has 700k words, yet there's a branch for each possible character combination during the finale, all of which share the exact same set of base lines and some extra sprinkled in depending on who's present. One can't help but wonder if most are simply duplicates from various branches that get counted as unique text. Food for thought.
[h2]Visuals & Audio[/h2]
For a genre known as "visual novels", you'd think there would've been a little more care put into the art to ensure it's actually consistent. At a first glance, you'll see these well-drawn backgrounds with quite a lot of detail and care put into them. Each area is visually distinct and conveys the atmosphere each should have. The only backgrounds which were a miss were the hideous bloody ones; it's the same background but now it looks like a drunkard chugged red food dye then vomited all over it. The character sprites though?
[b]Like acid to the eyes[/b]
Not only does do the character sprites have a completely different artstyle from both background art [i]and[/i] dialogue sprites, but they're absolutely hideous. It attempts this strange blend of anime/cartoon artstyles and semi-realism, only to completely fail on both fronts and create this lobotomised monstrosity of an artstyle. The only saving grace is that they didn't use this same artstyle throughout, because I genuinely believe most people would rather gouge their eyes out than have to look at that artstyle on a broader scale. It's quite a shame too, as the detailed scenes they have of the characters actually look fantastic (usually) and really give them that pop of personality they're so desperately lacking in their other depictions.
Now, I do understand that to voice an entire visual novel is no small endeavour and is quite a costly one at that, with skilled voice actors requiring a significantly higher budget. However, with how poor the voice work here is? They may as well have not bothered voicing the characters at all, as once again five of seven are just lifeless and lack any personality. The delivery of the lines is, put simply, flat and lifeless. It sounds like the characters are often reading off a script rather than conversation between actual people. Lines feel stiff and forced, inorganic and directed into the microphone rather than the character being spoken to. Tense moments feel overly dramatised due to how characters sounds almost as though they're shouting, when the tone of the conversation is a heated argument at best. Emotional moments feel overly forced and unnatural, as though the characters are simply reacting how they [i]think[/i] they should be reacting to whatever tragic or horrific event has occurred. A character who just saw his childhood best friend reduced to a splattered corpse should should sound devastated, instead he sounds like someone pissed in his cornflakes. Even ignoring the poor delivery of lines, there's a glaring issue with the voices themselves; they simply don't match the characters very well. Why does a Scottish woman sound British 99% of the time, then decide out of nowhere she's going to do a poor imitation of a Scottish accent? Why does a Filipina who's spent five years in Britain sound like she's lived in America most of her life? Minor details, but minor details like this add up and can detract from the readers immersion. All this with some bizarre audio issues to boot: Some lines sound like the VA is too far from the microphone, some lines sound like the VA is too close to the microphone, conversations that are being held over the phone will randomly lose the audio filter, some lines have the incorrect audio file attached.
[h2]Relationships?[/h2]
That's right, there's one last criticism for this novel and it's the atrocious relationship system. Why does a horror novel need a relationship system, you may be asking?
[b]It ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ doesn't.[/b]
The inclusion of this abysmal system is mind boggling and the purpose of it escapes me entirely, yet it's a part of this so I'll give my scathing opinion of it. This is singlehandedly the worst thing in the entirety of the novel, being a complete and utter waste of time designed to do nothing more than pad out your playtime and add to the bragged-about Epilogue count. There's only one character which suffers consequence for getting the relationship status with a specific character to critical levels, but to attain that state requires a specific string of choices you're not likely to achieve on your first playthrough, alongside killing every other character prior to Chapter 7 to attain the associated ending. The rest of the cast suffer no actual consequences if a relationship reaches a negative/critical status beyond "Oh no, friendship fell apart" as an Epilogue scene. Getting relationships to a high enough status between certain pairings can get you a relationship ending, but that's it. Otherwise, the system has no impact at all beyond potentially giving you a few extra lines on some minor branch, but I stopped caring after my fourth playthrough. If only I had the sense to stop caring earlier on.
[h2]The Literary Failure[/h2]
I feel that would be an apt name for this novel, as everything here is a failure and a testament to how difficult it can be to successfully create a good visual novel. Throughout my 57 hours playing this, I couldn't help but find myself thinking I'd rather go read a different visual novel. I can appreciate the attempt here, but ultimately this one fails to be a compelling novel, much less a compelling horror experience. If you want a horror visual novel with branching paths, just go play Raging Loop; it achieves everything The Letter sets out to do, without all the shortcomings.
