I'd been following [i]Your Story[/i] ever since it first came to my attention several months before release, and had been looking forward to it with some enthusiasm... which makes the below all the more difficult to write.
[h1]Story[/h1]
Normally, I'd do a quick synopsis of the story at this point, but honestly, I'm not altogether sure what it's meant to be. The store page quotes a “Growing of age” story; whether that's meant to be “Coming of age” or “Growing up” is one to work out for yourselves; though I suspect the latter as there is no evidence of a special age occasion for the MC. What seeing that did do for me was raise concerns about the English quality that I'd find inside the game itself.
[h1]Positives[/h1]
- There are two types of graphical style in the game, and the primary one is [u]great[/u]. The characters look like they've been hand drawn with pastels, and if so, that was an awesome decision; the colours and textures look fantastic. Lia's (our MC) daytime clothing actually looks woven, I was very impressed. Here's one of many high quality pictures I found during my run throughs.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924887598
- All characters are drawn at a slight side-on angle, so instead of sliding them off screen quickly as per the standard Ren'py VN process when one is no longer in the scene, these are “moved” off screen, giving the impression that they are walking away. By simply mirror-imaging, they are made to walk off in either direction. Nice.
- Lia herself gets a full sprite instead of only a facial portrait. I'd only come across this previously in [i]Enigmarella[/i], and I'm pleased to see it used here. Definite step up from the old standard.
- Characters have subtle expression changes, comparable to those in the original [i]Cinderella Phenomenon[/i] (though these are higher quality drawings) and they also blink.
- For those who love cats, yes, there's one you can pet.
- The general musical accompaniment is pretty good, though it does start to become a little repetitive after a while. However, the score used for ramping up the tension when the finale approaches (certainly for the bad end, at least) does an excellent job of achieving that aim. If it was written specifically for this game, kudos to the composer. You nailed it.
- The user interface is quality. Everything you're likely to want, and well presented, too. It's always so much nicer to have well designed “buttons” than a mere word list along the bottom.
- The text box, one of the first things you see in game, is delightful. Beautifully designed and very attractive, and does not block out the background.
[h1]Negatives[/h1]
- You knew I'd return to this! For an each-caption-on-its-own-merit basis, someone has made a decent fist of the English translation, although it is [i]very[/i] obvious that it was not done by a native speaker. Early doors, it's only some transposed letters (“Strenght” is a repeat offender) and the occasional misplaced word (“the” breakfast) which act as giveaways, but it slips further from there. The translator does not appear to understand that he/she and his/her are [b]not[/b] interchangeable, and in many of the conversations, one character's reply to another simply does not flow properly due to incorrect word selection. This is jarring.
- The story itself. It's not very clear .. well, I say “very”.. it isn't clear at all what the objective is, despite the 3-way choice given after an entry chapter which appears to be setting things up quite nicely. This leads the player to wander blindly into the bad end, which is unpleasant/upsetting, unexpected/generally horrible and completely ruins the experience.
- This is made even worse, after getting the bad end (which you [b]will[/b]) by a cut to a live video sequence where (presumably a developer) tells you that it's all your fault. I'm having to forcibly withhold my desire to point out that it wasn't the readers who created this ending and made it so that it's the most likely finale to reach first time out. Doing this is a truly [b]awful[/b] decision.
- I took a chance to go sailing away from the island where the story is based with one of the LIs. The result of this was that the very next scene had me back inside the tavern continuing as though I had never left.
- As mentioned, there are two graphical styles. One is beautiful, the other just plain nasty. The store page describes it as a comic-book style, but decide for yourselves:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2924887259
It's undoubtedly skilful, but it's also harsh, unattractively coloured, and singularly unappealing.
These sequences occur every so often (usually in action scenes), and during these, the back-step does not work normally. If you try to step back once, you are returned to a point during “normal” presentation which may have been several captions prior.
[h1]Experience and verdict[/h1]
I started off the game, on my first run, very positively and settled in expecting to have a good time. I finished my second full run, with a third of the achievements still pending, not wanting to play it any more. I was put off by the “comic-book” sequences, the lack of conversational fluency between the characters, some of the early exchanges which are painfully banal and seem to serve as nothing but padding (I refer to those of the type “How are you?” “All is good. How are you?” “All is good here too.” “That's great.” “Take care. See you later?” “See you.”) and the plain distressing bad end (for which you can almost certainly read “common end”). I'm flabbergasted that there is not even a hint of the nature of what is to come anywhere on the store page. This is an unforgivable omission. Had I known, I would not have been interested in looking at this game, it really is as simple as that.
So, I expect you have reacted, “how on earth can she give this a recommendation, having said the above?” Good question.
Honestly, there are a lot of good things in this game as it stands, and [i]most[/i] of the negative points I have made, are a consequence of my personal tastes and preferences. If you know that you reflect my own tastes closely, then this offering is not for you. But there are many people who like dark/upsetting endings, will appreciate the comic-book graphics, don't mind a “part 2” (there should have been mention of that, too – another dreadful omission) and will find the “point and click” feature which allows you to choose which conversations to have when, and which to skip altogether (to a degree) an attractive feature.
So much so, that I suspect this category of reader will be well over half of those who choose to play, and I don't feel it is fair to discourage those people with a negative group curator review when the game has enough of a solid base to yet build something potentially rather special out of it. The developers have expressed an intent to continue to develop and expand; so if you are not put off at this point, you should certainly continue to keep your eye on it.
[quote] Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote]
[b]Notes to developers:[/b]
1. When translating your text to another language, you should always, [u]always[/u] use a native speaker to cast an eye over your final translation, [i]even if you [b]think[/b] you can speak it fluently yourself.[/i] There are loads of Steam users who would do this for you for a small fee or even for free. All it would take is a request in your game's community hub. There really is no good excuse.
2. Remove that live video sequence after the bad end. Blaming your customers for the unpleasant scenes they've just ploughed through might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it's a disaster. [b]Get rid.[/b] This isn't so much a request as an absolute necessity.
