My thoughts on Haven are split, so I'll go down the game's three big elements in ascending order of non-badness rather before giving a verdict.

The Combat. Don't get me wrong, it's not actively awful to play and it can be... a little fun? But it essentially breaks down to two attacks, each not effective on some enemies, a block and a button to "finish off" downed enemies (non-lethally). There's some more nuance to it and some of the encounters do end up feeling like puzzles, which is neat, but overall it's really sloppy. Despite being real time you need to charge your attacks (so it ends up resembling the ATB gameplay you'd see in games like FF7), but sometimes one of your guys gets hit out of the screen and takes 10 seconds to come back, sometimes both of your guys end up sitting by without doing anything because an enemy is getting his attack first... It's an unpleasant combination of simple and janky, and I'd have expected more out of the people who made Furi, whose combat fucking rules. Obviously their priorities were in a different place and they make it explicit that this is meant to be a more casual game (even though it can be weirdly punishing on the default difficulty), but it just makes me want to avoid all the fights I can. Which to be fair, is usually an option.

The Movement. Most of Haven is, or is at least meant to be you running around the maps, doing some light exploration. And it's decently successful at that. The game can sometimes feel a bit too much like a checklist but I feel like 100%ers would appreciate that, and it's not too much of a bother to ignore. Fast travel is a bit clunky because it doesn't let you warp to areas that you haven't cleared of Rust, which is sometimes a bit annoying. Regardless, all of that is secondary. The game looks pretty great, the music's amazing and the characters have a lot to say during travel, which helps it not feel monotonous.

The Writing. As a proud user of this website, I have obviously never felt the loving touch of a woman OR a man, but as I have occasionally had interactions with human beings who did not fully despise me, I must compliment this game for being really good at capturing the relationship between two people who are madly in love with each other and are really getting to deeply know each other in every way. They have millions of tiny disagreements, a bunch of weird jokes that they know the other one will like (some are kinda cringe but honestly they're two lovebirds in their early 20s, they will be almost as cringe as they are horny), it's not wholesome uwu stuff without substance but it is extremely heartful and believable. Kay and Yu both feel like real people with a personality beyond what we see and beyond what we immediately assume is their stereotype. All of their actions are believable, they're filled with numerous tiny flaws and aren't even really heroes, just people trying to live their lives as well as they can. I will say though, as much as I like the writing overall I don't think there's any scenes that really blew my mind, not even in the ending, it's just a really consistent level of quality and honestly that's great too. Bonus praise for letting you play as a M/M or F/F couple, that's very cool.

So uh, I dunno I guess there isn't a verdict, I lied. The writing is really good but not to the point of just letting me ignore the fact that the rest of the game is kinda boring at times. I liked Haven, though. It has heart and good ideas, and sometimes that's all you need.

The idea behind Haven sounds interesting on paper and while I was somewhat interested in the story, the gameplay itself is a huge letdown. The overworld mainly consists of empty plains (I know it's supposed to be an abandoned place, but it's just so bland) and the combat system never clicked with me and felt unresponsive. The menus are unorganized and cluttered.

I wanted to like this game, but because of the reasons mentioned above I could never properly get into it. Maybe I'll pick it up someday again for the characters alone, but I don't think it's gonna be in the near future.

Lightning strikes as my sweat falls down on my controller.
I'm at last place, Huang Gai is in the lead and it's South 4.
I am in Tenpai for a Yakuman.

It's finally going to happen.

I'm going to win.

I'm GOING to win.

I'M GOING TO WIN.

These voices repeat and echo through my head, getting louder and louder with every passing second.

"Ron"

Everything comes crashing down as Sun Jian's portrait appears and he ends the game with a 1000 point hand.