The main character of NITW, Mae, is incredibly rude, immature, and irresponsible. This game is Mae's story, rather than the player's, and that left a huge disconnect between what was happening in the game and how I wanted the events to unfold. There were dialogue options, dialogue sequences, and events that Mae carries out that paint her as a selfish idiot. Having a despicable main character isn't damning on its own, but what really grinds my gears is that many of the selfish things Mae does are either retroactively made out to be justified, or they are hardly acknowledged and she faces no consequences for them.

Beyond my gripes with Mae, the game is sometimes obnoxiously slow paced. The routine of walking left for a few minutes each in game day to start the next scripted event, the lack of a run button, dialogue that doesn't relate to any existing characters or plot threads that also isn't funny, insightful, or interesting, corridors with nothing to interact with and no interesting visuals. It felt like my time was being wasted many times throughout the game.

The pacing of the story is also very strange and I found it unsatisfying. The first half of the game is mostly exposition for Mae's life and hometown, which is fine, but then out of nowhere the genre of the game shifts from a slice of life walking sim into a mystery narrative based game. The thing that ruined the last quarter of the game for me was that it felt extremely disconnected from the rest of the game. The mystery has next to nothing to do with any of the existing characters and entirely derails the narrative focus away from Mae learning what she should do next with her life and how to improve herself as a person. This leads to a very confusing ending where Mae hasn't actually grown at all and leaves the entire story feeling pointless.

There were definitely some good moments in the game, but they are far outnumbered by the boring or frustrating moments.