Bustafellows is an excellent game, for longtime otome game players and people who had to google what an otome game is before reading the rest of this review.

You get an intense thriller, a heart melting romance, and an easy breezy slice of life all in one game!

The love interests are extremely endearing, even in routes besides their own, and their deep bonds with each other permeate the entire game. It's ruminations on grief, justice, and the nature of a true self are deeply compelling. It gets surprisingly dark and violent, for anyone who likes their romances with a little more stakes.

There is some issues. Such as the noticeable typos through out every route, text going outside of the textbox a few times, the game not wanting to decide how to spell a couple names (Zora/Zola for example) and the lack of subtitles for the videos is kind of an egregious oversight. There's also some pacing issues, as the common route is extremely long and a lot of the big endgame twists and turns are run through as fast as possible. But even with all of that, it's not enough to make me hate this game.

I think everyone who is even mildly interested should give it a try. And, the more money they get for the first one, the more likely they'll be to localize the sequel!

WOWZA this one really surprised me!!! I LOVED it. I have a quite a few small gripes with it (mostly about the story structure/writing, localization/language barrier issues, and the lackluster extra content), but those aren’t enough to take away from the fact that this game seriously has the BEST characters. First, the voice acting is incredible. This game gave me some serious laughs and awwwwws, AND it gets extra points cause it’s the first Otome game to ever make me cry!!! And I mean CRY, not just tear up. It was towards the end of Mozu’s route which for me was extremely personal, and I think that’s one of the great things about this game is that I think most people can find something they relate to in at least one of the routes. This game tackles SO many issues: past regrets, revenge, being unsure of one’s identity, the importance of family, body image, shame, drug addiction and recovery, death of loved ones, trauma, deception, you name it. With that said, I would definitely offer a trigger warning if you are highly sensitive to any of these topics, particularly violence. I also have to give a lot of credit to the devs and writers for the protagonist, Teuta. She is seriously one of the best protagonists I’ve encountered so far. First of all, she’s VOICED!! Which is amazing, I didn’t know how much a voiced protagonist REALLY ups the immersion and I really hope that becomes the norm in the future. But more importantly, this woman is no pushover. To me she’s the epitome of a “modern” 21st century woman. She knows what she wants for the most part, she views herself as equal to men, and she’s confident, silly, and perfectly imperfect. I loved her.
Lastly, it wouldn’t be a great Otome game without great romance. I do think that BUSTAFELLOWS intentionally leans more into story than romance, but the romance it did have was really nice and felt VERY natural. This game was also a first for me in that I actually liked ALL of the routes. Normally there’s at least one I don’t like or am at least indifferent to; not the case here, they really were all great. My #1 ended up being Shu which shocked me cause he’s definitely not your typical sweetheart. However, I think he really made me fall for him because he is probably one of the most straightforward LIs I’ve ever seen in Japanese media, and if you know anything about [romantic] Japanese media, you know these types of guys are one in a million, or more like a billion lmao. It was so refreshing and just straight up satisfying. Like, “I love you, you love me, let’s kiss and date, also yes I’d like to have sex with you eventually” chef’s kiss
ALSO REAL QUICK: The music in this game absolutely SLAPS

No major criticisms of this game come to mind, so I can't say exactly why I didn't emotionally connect with anyone in this game. It was just something I played once in a while when bored until I finished it, taking me almost 6 months total. I don't regret it, at least.

On the notable plus side: an explicitly 20+ year old set of love interests and protagonist (who is also voiced)!

On the notable ??? side: if there are lines that seem to not be translated, go into the backlog and check for them there. This does mean that if you're hard of hearing or don't listen to the voice acting, you'll miss some of the lines completely.

On the notable negative side: there are numerous typos in the English localization (mainly punctuation), and Luka deserved a route. Cowards

A game I enjoyed but couldn't help but feel that the routes were too... short? Abrupt? Difficult to explain. The cast is incredibly silly and charming and Teuta is a standout heroine who bounces off everyone in such a fun way, though I felt her dynamics with Shu and Crow were the best. I just can't help but feel the routes needed a little bit more time in the oven to really make the most of the incredibly fun cast. The final scenes are an incredibly unexpected gutpunch, too; I just sat there staring at my screen for a while after those last cgs hit. Expect some flaws, but if you approach it on its level Bustafellows has a lot to enjoy.