Ughhhh god fucking damnit i'm gonna have to read the rest of these aren't I

Let me get this straight, I went in this game really hoping to enjoy it. Isn't it supposed to, like, be one of the best VNs or something? Needless to say, after sitting through 5 hours of these characters repeating the same verbose dialogue over and over again, with literally nothing happening basically the entire time (aside from the adults just bickering about money shit I could not care less about, and the kids spending all of their time with the world's most annoying 4th grader) I was very unimpressed. Extremely unimpressed. It was fucking grueling getting through those first 5 hours. There isn't a single likeable character or interesting plot beat throughout the entire fucking thing. It fucking sucks dick and there is no sugar coating that. I just wanted to finish it so I could give it a rating and move on with my life.

But the last half is interesting enough to make me kind of want to read the second episode. Definitely not anytime soon, god no, I've got other things I'd much rather tackle right now, but there's a greater than 0 chance I read the next part, something I really wasn't anticipating by the halfway mark. Shit happens, info gets revealed, you know, the works. Stuff that actually develops some characters past the cookie cutter tropes they're made out to be in the beginning. There's a couple really good moments in here, but they're all drowned out by how miserable the first half is (and honestly, the first couple chapters of the second half aren't any better either, aside from like, one scene).

I just wish Ryukishi07 had hired a damn editor, jesus christ. I don't care that seemingly random topics get brought up and conversations are wandering (for reference I am on very good terms with the Zero Escape series) but it's a major problem when you can't just shrug it off as normal conversation, and you definitely can not in this game. A character will say something, someone else will restate part of it, in a message containing like 5 instances of ".............", a third character will restate it again, and then Battler will restate it again in his mind a couple more times for good measure. Add onto that the fact that the translation seems like it must have just been done sentence for sentence, with no consideration as to how neighboring sentences could have been condensed or rewritten into a way that reads like how someone would actually talk in English, and it results in some pretty dogshit prose.

That being said, I might be willing to give the second episode a try, but not anywhere in the immediate future. Definitely gonna go play/read some other stuff that is immediately good instead of utterly joyless for the first 5 hours first.

Que sono.
Que hype.
Que sono.
Que sono.
Que sono.
Que sono.
Puta que pariu que final foi esse ?

VN & Manga:
Liveblog - https://anilist.co/activity/487171184
Ratings - https://anilist.co/activity/487188028

I love this series.

it was fucking great, i love all the characters even when some took their time to show their true colors, but they're all interesting with distinct personalities. The mystery itself is really well executed that i was doubting the main conflict, are there 18 or 19 people on this island? Even with the first half being slow it helped me get accustomed to the setting and characters. The music was great too, it has some basic background tracks but when it wants to shine it fucking nails it. My only issue is that the first day has some really boring padding like George talking about war or few characters talking about gold on the beach that could easily be changed to something much interesting.