Does a lot of things really well. The possibility of death isn't so bad when there's a moderate healthbar to lower first, and it's actually fun to replay the stage perfectly after draining the energy bar down while still experimenting.
I really loved it at first, though it gets a bit tiring to play too many stages at once, and there's a bit of waiting when you need to move multiple character around, even if it is only in one screen. Pathfinding's flawed too, but bearable.
Definitely a lot more modern in feel than pretty much any other game from that time though.

None of the stories are particularly interesting as "stories" (they're fine for further characterisation, but they're generally uneventful) and you can't save or advance text manually, it's all slow and automatic. It would be definitely worth checking out if you could advance text at your own pace, but since that's not possible, it's a slow and unpleasant experience.
Understanding the Japanese spoken dialogue would definitely improve it too, since the speed of the words would clearly line up with something, and that's down to the player / not the game's fault, but still, it wouldn't make it good.

It crashed into the post-true route stuff, I don't know how to get around the crashing (it might be possible, I'd imagine the PC version is more stable than the PSP fan translation, I might even have accidentally used an old version of it) but since I reached the main ending, I guess it's time to move onto Ever17.
Awesome story though, although lots of interesting elements are in (later released) games. Not sure what's original and what the true origin of plot points and tropes and stuff are. Whatever. I just wish it didn't crash so I got to see more Okuhiko suffering :(