I really wanted to like this game and at first thought it was a real evolution of the choice game genre (shout out to the Infinity series). On my first playthrough I was greeted with an amazing hook, a beautiful world and compelling characters that engaged me. Tet the ludonarrative of the game goes too far into its purpose of suffering; gameplay and story decisions in Chapter IV constantly clash with the purpose of a choice game, with there being far too many hard or downright illogical up-to-that-moment decisions you are railroaded into.
I thought at first this was because I was playing on ironman mode; but upon replaying the game in standard mode I got to see how baffling the stat rewards, and in the case of the priest, skill priorities are. Why, when you are a priest, is divinity not rewarded so much as eloquence and cunning? I believe this a narrative decision to make commentary on the church, that priests are using their interpretations of faith to manipulate people for their own end (in much the same way as we saw during the reformation). Yet that makes no sense to me, as we are shown that "They" are real in TLSSB, there are numerous times where They directly interfere, why not positive interference for a max rank priest who is only level 10 at speeches?
This led me to assume that the game was just poorly developed on the religious path, so I then began a Noble run, suspecting it as the intended route. Indeed I think it's definitely better fleshed out, gameplay wise, than priest; there is an easier and more logical way to raise your skills, and the skills you require make more sense.
The problem is the game makes no interesting comments about the nobility at all besides mirroring the trend of feudal revolts of old; namely that while nobility is bad, if you remove it forthwith then the radicalism that replaces it turns out to be no better. Chapter IV is also even more psychotically min-maxed and difficult; again the ludonarrative is too extreme here. Why are you told the chapter is nearly at an end when you have 2+ hours of the game throwing misery and suffering at you even though you could end the arc then and there? It's utterly illogical from a narrative perspective (outside of, again, masochistic difficulty due to the name of the game).
Even then I still really see a future for this game with some changes, please learn from more kinetic VNs for example and give us dialogue skips if we must go through an entire chapter again. Additionally, please learn from other choice games; the skill locks and punishing difficult should be at the start, not the end. The entire joy of the final chapters of choice games is to reward your stat blocking in early game brute force to actually enact your own *choice*, as it is the game is far too difficult, even moreso than Sabres of Infinity (which the author recognises is far too difficult and as such has toned down in later editions).
Unfortunately, without those changes and as much artistic merit as the game does poses, it simply is an exercise in misery to engage with and try to explore. Would, sadly, not recommend.
