Decided to play this after Super Eyepatch Wolf's video and honestly am disappointed. It's not bad per se, but just mid as all hell with a lot of potential left out.
The game has a great prologue, but from there goes meandering throughout the entire story with the ending that has an interesting idea, but is really underwhelming.
Pros:
- It has gorgeous visuals. The game is undeniably one of the prettiest VN I've played.
- Has some great suspenseful and surprising moments.
- The story is rather engaging and complex, with some clever red herrings and foreshadowing. Though at times it can feel as a jumbled mess of coincidences.
- Some really creative 4th wall breakage.
Cons:
- No distinct gameplay or exploration, and VERY few puzzles. The game is just a series of simple click-through dialogues and a bunch of text entries.
- The story is very linear, with several dead-end fake endings consisting of a couple of minutes of text and are not even worth mentioning.
- Characters are underdeveloped. The story mostly focuses on the overarching plot or frequent exposition dumps and rarely does any notable character moments.
- A ton of missed potential. The first few hours of the prologue have some of the best moments in the entire game, where you try to outsmart the opposing curse-bearers. It actually feels like a thrilling game of cat and mouse. But after that, you barely do anything like that for the rest of the game.
- The game introduces you to some interesting mechanics and then uses them only once or twice more in the entire game.
- It is relying too much on the cheapest jump scares with a ghost.jpg flying in your face and making a spooky screeching sound. Particularly in the first quarter of the game. Especially made worse by the lack of voiceover or any ambient sounds.
- No voiceover, no ambient sounds and though the music that is in the game is good, it's a very limited number of music tracks that get extremely repetitive.
- A few really dumb anime tropes. Like not immediately shooting the bad guy and letting them get away, or making the player to sympathize with a potential mass murderer because they're sad and unloved, etc.
- Felt maybe a bit too long for how simple and repetitive it is.
In conclusion, not a bad game, but I just can't bring myself to like it much. If only between the endless dialogues it had some more puzzles or actual gameplay like Danganronpa or Zero Escape games. Then I'm sure I would've liked it that much more, and could ignore some of it's problems.
Maybe in the sequel, if there ever is one.
The game has a great prologue, but from there goes meandering throughout the entire story with the ending that has an interesting idea, but is really underwhelming.
Pros:
- It has gorgeous visuals. The game is undeniably one of the prettiest VN I've played.
- Has some great suspenseful and surprising moments.
- The story is rather engaging and complex, with some clever red herrings and foreshadowing. Though at times it can feel as a jumbled mess of coincidences.
- Some really creative 4th wall breakage.
Cons:
- No distinct gameplay or exploration, and VERY few puzzles. The game is just a series of simple click-through dialogues and a bunch of text entries.
- The story is very linear, with several dead-end fake endings consisting of a couple of minutes of text and are not even worth mentioning.
- Characters are underdeveloped. The story mostly focuses on the overarching plot or frequent exposition dumps and rarely does any notable character moments.
- A ton of missed potential. The first few hours of the prologue have some of the best moments in the entire game, where you try to outsmart the opposing curse-bearers. It actually feels like a thrilling game of cat and mouse. But after that, you barely do anything like that for the rest of the game.
- The game introduces you to some interesting mechanics and then uses them only once or twice more in the entire game.
- It is relying too much on the cheapest jump scares with a ghost.jpg flying in your face and making a spooky screeching sound. Particularly in the first quarter of the game. Especially made worse by the lack of voiceover or any ambient sounds.
- No voiceover, no ambient sounds and though the music that is in the game is good, it's a very limited number of music tracks that get extremely repetitive.
- A few really dumb anime tropes. Like not immediately shooting the bad guy and letting them get away, or making the player to sympathize with a potential mass murderer because they're sad and unloved, etc.
- Felt maybe a bit too long for how simple and repetitive it is.
In conclusion, not a bad game, but I just can't bring myself to like it much. If only between the endless dialogues it had some more puzzles or actual gameplay like Danganronpa or Zero Escape games. Then I'm sure I would've liked it that much more, and could ignore some of it's problems.
Maybe in the sequel, if there ever is one.