A cute coming-of-age story about learning to be honest about your feelings to the people you care about via the narrative device of waking up one day as a catgirl. How to Take Off Your Mask doesn't break new ground with its storytelling, but within the simplicity lies the charm. These childhood friends are clearly crushing on each other, but their fear of losing the other by being "different" keeps them from being honest, and so the rom-com commences. The story does try to be serious at times, though it undercuts its own plot by not fully explaining what's going on with the group who hates cat people (maybe they do in the other VNs in this series?), but the sugary sweet childhood friends romance is the real star here. I'd recommend this to someone looking for a fluffy low-stakes romance who are willing to accept that they might not get all the questions about this world answered.

Cafe 0 almost had me. At the start, when I realized that Roseverte had created the spiritual successors to the routes from Duplicity by having the player pick between romancing a groomer or a jerk classmate again, I almost quit. But this time around, thanks to the genre shift, the writing in these routes made it clear that this was not meant to be romantic. The routes were pieces to the puzzle of the amnesiac main character's history, and putting them together might mean solving the mystery of her death. In essence, everyone in Cafe 0 is a jerk, and the goal is not for the main character to fall in love so much as it is to see every situation from as many angles as possible to figure out the complicated social web that has led to the murder mystery scenario at the heart of the story. Making it overt that the uncomfortable feeling in these routes is intentional goes an extremely long way in making these characters easier to take than the ones in Duplicity. It's also a quick read - I finished it within an afternoon - and the tighter focus and faster routes work in the story's favor.

Where it all falls apart, however, is how short the final scene is. There's a lot of time spent in the true route clarifying everything and revealing even more secrets, but when the time comes for the main character to take everything she's learned and change her fate...you blink, and it's over. Add that to a strange UI, unpolished art style, and backgrounds inconsistent to what the text is saying about a scene, and Cafe 0 ended up leaving me feeling disappointed despite its compelling story. Maybe it just needed Sui to take more of an active role. I enjoyed his polite sarcasm as the main character's life was unraveling around her. Overall, while this title is a huge step forward for Roseverte from Duplicity, Cafe 0 ended up tripping at the finish line.