Angels With Scaly Wings is interesting, being one of the bigger VNs on Steam that wasn't the terrible Nekopara, pre-"Steam allowing anything and everything on the store"-era.

I was drawn to this because I was going through a massive dragon phase at the time, and because it reminded me a lot of the Cringe I'd surf around online for; people's OCs, their elaborate (but not really good) backstories, different hyper-focused art groups and the drama that'd ensue over things like closed species vs open species. (look up: Protogen drama)

Unfortunately a lot of the writing in AWSW is rather dry, and as Luna has pointed out in their review, has jarring tonal shifts scene to scene. All said, it didn't really bother me at all on my playthrough, I was enjoying what I can only describe as comfort food to me.

It probably IS cringe, but it's my kind of cringe.

Trying to delve into this is a lot of insecurity because I have two besties where this is an allll time fav for them, which is difficult because I have such kneejerk rejections to this writing and character dialogue. It's a fine definitely amateur charming dating sim/CYOA hybrid wrapped around murder mystery, but progressively everything about it is a major turn-off. The writing is what I kept looping around to, it's just really dry, and generally nonsensical. Not in the sort of "plot hole" but in sort of how tone/attitude/character motivations can really just shift within the given context and things feel vastly more immature versus the conceit's expectation. Emphasis on tone shifts, within a serious conversation discussing a dragon's corpse right in front of you there'll be meme humor drops that, albeit small, add up. It never quite feels like things are ever settling on how a scene is supposed to feel and while some of the unnerving nature of it is intended this makes things feel more detached and constantly wavy when it very clearly doesn't want to intend such sometimes.

The characters are at least ok, definitely take time to get somewhere and a lot of them do not have what I feel is requisite character voice (delivery is too muted for my tastes it's certainly not personable enough). A lot of the story is backloaded and the first route requiring you to get a bad ending before you can really get to anyone's good ending and true ending is enough to really ice this because it's asking for upfront patience I no longer have for something that is, unfortunately, anti-my-shit. Would I say it's bad? Kind of. I certainly don't like it but it's very glaringly obvious the sort of first work it constantly feels like which is why this entire... rant feels a little sour to type. Like I need to vent my thoughts on this because fuck the dichotomy between me and said besties here hurts and I doubt my perception of this work is alone but it definitely doesn't Deserve much scrutiny. It doesn't ask for it. The writing's just kind of mostly whatever! It's not even interesting for being problematic for something!!