Feeling like you've been recognized and have a place in the world makes me cry. The fact that this crunchy little game exists and has what it has means so much to me.
Moonshine isn't an expansive VN detailing all the experiences and facets of being a trans women, but it treats being a trans women so naturally that they too are people who have their own lives.
And the fact that this is said in a little window over real photos for backgrounds with crunchy voice clips and music that loops after a few seconds says a lot. It says that the people who made this wanted to impart this message, even if it wasn't in the most high scale production. Sometimes the smaller lines you have with someone on an average day are what leave the most impact.

This was like playing Ys 1 but fucked up.
Playing a game from before a lot of genres and their mechanics were codified is such a unique experience. The combat and dungeon crawling is extremely limited and is kinda just kinda a glaze on top of a point and click adventure game, but it's interesting that it's there and sort works at all. The adventure game is about what you'd expect of having a lot of runaround for singular items to continue.
With that all said, this is an H-game where the sexual content is not hidden in nooks and crannies. Maybe it's a bit interesting to see this kinda of stuff integrated into the game instead of purely a reward at the end of specific routes and scenes, but also idk if I could stomach this game at all if it was more complex and involved. Even in its first entry, Rance is an H-game that is pretty bad in what the main character does. Though the CGs are single images with a short bit of dialogue, there are plenty of scenes of sexual assault and other explicit images. Like, yeah, this was a hentai game made in the 80s. Probably one of the more interesting ways this integrated is that the combos of how you fuck your partner Sill gives you your different magic spells. Something something gameplay story integration. The epilogue scene of Rance and Sill needing to bounce as soon as they find out that having sex with the princess means they have to get married and they leave an entire tub full of GOLD (which Rance mentions hurts to bath in) was also funny and makes me fearful that the comedy and writing of the larger series might actually be good.

Toxic Yuri that goes in the right directions to expand on its predecessor... except I wish it was grimier.
Almost everything about Portal 2 is the right thing to do in regards to building upon building upon the original Portal, almost to a degree that it's surprising that the original Portal was followed up with this. The expansion on the spacial continuity and momentum based movement of portals is explored in a lot of good ways that still feel really smart. Exploring old Aperture, learning its deeper history and how that relates to GlaDos, and building upon the ideas of AI to create a tragic story is something I wouldn't have really expected. GlaDos really does feel like such a full character after basically being just an off kilter voice and surprise antagonist.
The only complaint I have is that for the game being a lot more direct about the facility being old and broken down, Portal's mix of sterility and grime ends up being more effective. A lot of the colors were clear whites and blacks and Harsh reds when you get to exploring the guts of the facility. It's one of those things you can't really account for, but the specific textures and lighting of the source engine gives such a sense of emptiness. You can tell that these tests are actually dangerous. The water is stagnant and murky, your blood swears across the walls when you get hit by turrets, the machinery of the facility is rusted and dusty.
Portal 2 doesn't really have that as much. A lot of areas have this blue that softens a lot of it up and even as you're trailing through the guts of a factory, nothing feels quite as malicious as it did in Portal. I'd imagine part of that problem is that with the now direct comedic and tragic tone and a lot of the in workings being intricate levels, you can't do the sterile, oppressive tone again.
Anyway, that's my one singular, understandable gripe with the game. I guess in the end Portal 2 is purposefully trying to be something very different from Portal. Like it's some kind of sequel or something.

A piece of fiction with a central theme that most of everything ties into, and exhausts almost all dimensions of its medium to explore. The theme is that of Commitment and Regret and the way it explores this is through an eroge VN. That said, this game is dripping with so much empathy and emotion while being designed to be engaged with from the single perspective of YOU playing it. Spoiling or divulging anything would be a disservice to it.
Play the JAST USA version or the Director's Cut patched Steam version. Everything in this game is made with a purpose that feeds back into itself, so cutting anything down or out is unimaginable and just isn't the same experience.

Most present feeling I have is that this sure was the game made before Little Goody Two Shoes. Which isn't bad per say, but the accomplishments of LGTS shine brighter while the rigidity of this games ends up peaking through.
Pocket Mirror is at it's core an RPG Maker game but with a ton of great presentation and not a lot of aggravating puzzles and death states. The thing is though, that that's about all I can say about it specifically. With it being the predecessor to LGTS, you can easily see how this games direction would go up in scale and and expanding on.
Along with that, since I played these games chronologically, most of the value in the story was seeing how everything had turned out from this game's prequel. It's neat to see which ending was "canon" and how little details lead into this game.
"Neat" is the word I would have to say though overall. It's neat to go back and see the previous works that originated from something you like. Not groundbreaking exactly, but you get to see the DNA of another thing and trace how it developed.