I’ll just get to the point: I do not recommend purchasing this game until all of the major bugs are fixed and the general mechanics of the game are optimized. While I appreciate a lot of the beautiful artwork as well as most of the characters’ arcs, I found playing the game to be extremely tedious.
Let’s start with the bugs. I do not mind small bugs that don’t interfere with the gameplay much ( e.g. sprites missing, text boxes not being where they should be, repeated lines, jumbled text, etc., all of which are bugs that I’ve encountered). However, I do mind major bugs, such as being stuck on a gray screen, unable to proceed through the game at all. This happened to me, and as I was moving my save files, deleting my steam cloud data, and trying to figure out which save file was corrupted, it occurred to me that I was having to do a LOT of work to fix a game that I paid money for. If the game costs money, shouldn’t it be…ready to play? Am I asking for too much here?
Anyway, the frozen gray screen thing doesn’t seem to be a common issue, but one that might be a bit more common are CGs not appearing in the CG gallery, even when the CG has already popped up in the game. I spent way too much time chasing down these elusive CGs because I genuinely thought there must’ve been some diverging path that I missed somehow. But, lo and behold, it was a waste of time because I didn’t actually miss the CGs. (Word of advice: if you already have the game, you might need to use the wishing function to get a few of those CGs because that’s how I managed it.)
Bugs aside, the mechanics of the game are lacking. The game really relies on replaying routes (which is not a bad thing), especially because there are times when you’re really likely to get a bad ending first. Despite replaying routes to get multiple endings being such a key part of the gaming experience, the actual process of replaying is time-consuming and frustrating. There is no real skip/fast-forward button, so the only options to skip text you’ve already seen are to either 1. put your text speed on 100% and hit autoplay (which is still annoyingly slow) or 2. use the “Skip to good/bad ending” function (which can be convenient after you’ve finished the game but otherwise defeats the point of trying to find the endings yourself). And, after every ending, you are thrown back to the second character selection menu, where you cannot access the menu or save files until you progress to the next screen. This wouldn’t normally be a problem, but sometimes the loading screens can be up to 30-40 seconds long. So, sometimes I’d finish an ending, have to select another character to date, sit through 30-40 seconds of loading, and THEN access my save files, load one of them up, and then wait ANOTHER 30-40 seconds. Just to rinse and repeat after I get another ending. It’s not exactly convenient, to say the least.
Now, in terms of the story, characters, and art, I adore all of that (to varying degrees). It sucks that all of it gets overshadowed by the harrowing gameplay experience, but hopefully that’ll change as bugs are fixed and other game functions are added. Like I mentioned earlier in the review, though, I like MOST, not all, of the playable character’s arcs. There is only one route wherein the writing feels genuinely solid, and most of the other routes have writing that is… okay. Honestly, it can be heavy-handed at times, unclear at other times, and there’s one route in particular where the writing is messy enough to affect the character’s arc. In that route, the very sudden revelations and subsequent growth the character goes through feel forced, and it was only when playing the bad endings of the route that I could grasp what was really going on.
That being said, there is a lot of potential for this game. I imagine that there’s something for every 20-something year old to relate to in this game, whether it’s struggling to build a career as a creative, the process of raising kids, the confrontation of the reality that your life isn’t where you thought it would be, or, of course, love troubles.
With that in mind, I think it’s important to note that the game is very much focused on each playable character’s growth. It is not a typical romance visual novel wherein you pick a character to romance and choose the dialogue options that would appeal to them. You may already know this, but the game progresses in a linear fashion, wherein you date one person to unlock the next person to date and so on until you eventually unlock the ending. If you’re looking for meaningful progression of the romantic dynamic between two specific characters, you will likely be disappointed. But, if you know what you’re getting into, then I think it can still be enjoyable and perhaps even refreshing to play.
Each date, you get to see how the pair interacts with each other, and some of the character dynamics have genuinely surprised me. Some characters clash while others have a type of chemistry that I did not see coming. Whether the date ends in heartbreak, friendship, romance, and/or sex, no two dynamics are quite the same. I hope that, as the game gets cleaned up over time, I can fully appreciate all of the good qualities it has to offer.
TLDR; The story and art are great, the quality of the writing varies but is generally alright, but the bugs and game mechanics are not up to par. If I had known, I would’ve waited at least a few more months to buy the game, and I’d recommend you do the same. Or, buy the game now while it’s still on sale and wait to play until it hopefully functions better? I don’t know, that one’s up to you. If you do buy it or if you have already, maybe save your global data in a folder somewhere every once in a while just in case…
