This review contains spoilers
The game starts fun: seeing the small changes on interactions; how the characters open up to you month by month until romance starts to blossom was honestly quite charming.
But the stat raising system becomes tiresome after a while, specially because each route lasts one year in-game. It's not that it's difficult, it's just too repetitive. It does not surprise me that Cheritz has since focused on mobage, this is like a mobage-lite. I didn't even do most of the bad ends, it was just too much to my head. I just did Jisoo's since it had cgs and watched the rest on Youtube.
Even then I mostly enjoyed the routes, the hilarious group interactions, the heroine's journey and the story's message.
Route tier:
1. Jieun: best boy who made me cry. I even replayed some of his scenes. I just find his personal growth very satisfying to watch! And everything was just so cute :') I wish they kissed tho (gonna have to draw that myself I guess...).
2. Jiwoo: he was sooo tsundere but then you realize he acted that way cause he actually wanted Heejung to dislike him so he could lose the game and have all the painful memories of his family wiped. He didn't expect she would actually love him :'''') I think I appreciated his route more after it ended because it was my first and I was still getting used to the system.
3. Jiyeon: he is a rather polarizing character ^^" I think what is enjoyable in his route is the gap between his usual cute attitude and the rude behavior he presents to keep people away. He's the kind of asshole who can only have shallow relationships because of trauma and I just vibe with that. But the fact he was associating Heejung with his grandma friend was kind of funny.
4. Jihae: he's ok! I just found the route a bit boring, maybe because he and Heejung are too similar to each other. But his past was very sad. I think he's the character that would benefit from a memory cleansing the most because he is too driven by duty and full of guilt. I find it funny how the game misdirects the player into thinking that helping his model career by becoming his manager is the way to go, only to be greeted with a bad end where one of Jihae's fans stabs you
chef's kiss.
5. Jisoo: I just don't like him as a love interest! He just works better as a friend. His route is the only one where we actually see the process by which Heejung accepts that to become an artist she will have to let others see and evaluate her art. It was a very touching arc, but that only happened because Jisoo himself doesn't have one - the time is mostly spent on her problems. His jealousy and yandere side is not part of his personal arc and he just never seems to get better. I however think his bad end was very enjoyable and an excellent example of story affecting game mechanics: the stat raising system has you walk around your house to perform activities and sometimes the characters will talk you and do that activity together; in the bad end Jisoo appears to talk to you more and more, actually preventing the player from doing anything inside the house, until the climax happens...
6. Whatever that thing with the Wizard was: Look, I am going to mostly ignore that extra ending cause even though it gives us insight into what was happening behind the scenes, the way it re-contextualizes the whole game actually ruins it! It tries to tie up every route and give a happy end to the Wizard, who we barely know or care about (at least I don't), at the expense of Heejung and everyone else. They should have just let him wish that maybe one day he would meet someone who would love him, turn human and lose his memories in the process, THAT would make him sympathetic in my eyes.
But the stat raising system becomes tiresome after a while, specially because each route lasts one year in-game. It's not that it's difficult, it's just too repetitive. It does not surprise me that Cheritz has since focused on mobage, this is like a mobage-lite. I didn't even do most of the bad ends, it was just too much to my head. I just did Jisoo's since it had cgs and watched the rest on Youtube.
Even then I mostly enjoyed the routes, the hilarious group interactions, the heroine's journey and the story's message.
Route tier:
1. Jieun: best boy who made me cry. I even replayed some of his scenes. I just find his personal growth very satisfying to watch! And everything was just so cute :') I wish they kissed tho (gonna have to draw that myself I guess...).
2. Jiwoo: he was sooo tsundere but then you realize he acted that way cause he actually wanted Heejung to dislike him so he could lose the game and have all the painful memories of his family wiped. He didn't expect she would actually love him :'''') I think I appreciated his route more after it ended because it was my first and I was still getting used to the system.
3. Jiyeon: he is a rather polarizing character ^^" I think what is enjoyable in his route is the gap between his usual cute attitude and the rude behavior he presents to keep people away. He's the kind of asshole who can only have shallow relationships because of trauma and I just vibe with that. But the fact he was associating Heejung with his grandma friend was kind of funny.
4. Jihae: he's ok! I just found the route a bit boring, maybe because he and Heejung are too similar to each other. But his past was very sad. I think he's the character that would benefit from a memory cleansing the most because he is too driven by duty and full of guilt. I find it funny how the game misdirects the player into thinking that helping his model career by becoming his manager is the way to go, only to be greeted with a bad end where one of Jihae's fans stabs you
chef's kiss.
5. Jisoo: I just don't like him as a love interest! He just works better as a friend. His route is the only one where we actually see the process by which Heejung accepts that to become an artist she will have to let others see and evaluate her art. It was a very touching arc, but that only happened because Jisoo himself doesn't have one - the time is mostly spent on her problems. His jealousy and yandere side is not part of his personal arc and he just never seems to get better. I however think his bad end was very enjoyable and an excellent example of story affecting game mechanics: the stat raising system has you walk around your house to perform activities and sometimes the characters will talk you and do that activity together; in the bad end Jisoo appears to talk to you more and more, actually preventing the player from doing anything inside the house, until the climax happens...
6. Whatever that thing with the Wizard was: Look, I am going to mostly ignore that extra ending cause even though it gives us insight into what was happening behind the scenes, the way it re-contextualizes the whole game actually ruins it! It tries to tie up every route and give a happy end to the Wizard, who we barely know or care about (at least I don't), at the expense of Heejung and everyone else. They should have just let him wish that maybe one day he would meet someone who would love him, turn human and lose his memories in the process, THAT would make him sympathetic in my eyes.