hatsutori
it was just ok. the gameplay and aesthetics were only kind of interesting and has an unsettling atmosphere with wonderful art to match.
in all honesty, it almost felt like a hodgepodge of inspiration slovenly thrown together. it was like they wanted you to hear the words silent hill, evangelion, ghost in the shell, etc. the aesthetics are fine but nothing that is very subversive or groundbreaking so it overall just looks boring. much of the enemy design was just “crazy robot woman.” the random words in several different languages that popped up on screen felt more like garnish for a story that wasn’t there, rather than actually contributing to a cohesive plot. and the story was quite literally crumbs until the end. im all for environmental storytelling and a mysterious world, but the worldbuilding tries to keep itself too vague to the point where its structure is unstable and hard to parse. the lack of cutscenes for most of it do not help either; in fact it very much hurts it. as the player, it is hard to connect to elster at all because she barely speaks. there is hardly a cornerstone of development for her to even grow from because for the most part she seems like a blank slate. the characters get a few lines once every couple hours of gameplay, and that is about it for story outside of documents and the endings. it seems a significant portion of the playerbase has to watch a video or go through the wiki for the story to be understood at all.
the puzzles were at least interesting but the combat and exploration weren’t. there were many times where it was just a little fetch quest chain to go from key to key. it made the exploration more of a slog to go through rather than feeling like i was actually making discoveries.
i quite like the character designs in this futuristic setting, but the monster designs are underwhelming and it takes away from the horror they are trying to convey. the lack of variation in “mob” monsters make them an eyesore to encounter again. as someone who enjoys humanoid robot aesthetics, it would have been nice for them to lean more into body horror and elements of uncanny valley in these designs.
it honestly felt like people saw the word “lesbian” in other reviews and decided that was all they needed to be a good game. i love lesbian media but there has to be a point where you can say the writing was not the best. how far can tropes and aesthetics take you? i guess for this game it seems pretty far.
in all honesty, it almost felt like a hodgepodge of inspiration slovenly thrown together. it was like they wanted you to hear the words silent hill, evangelion, ghost in the shell, etc. the aesthetics are fine but nothing that is very subversive or groundbreaking so it overall just looks boring. much of the enemy design was just “crazy robot woman.” the random words in several different languages that popped up on screen felt more like garnish for a story that wasn’t there, rather than actually contributing to a cohesive plot. and the story was quite literally crumbs until the end. im all for environmental storytelling and a mysterious world, but the worldbuilding tries to keep itself too vague to the point where its structure is unstable and hard to parse. the lack of cutscenes for most of it do not help either; in fact it very much hurts it. as the player, it is hard to connect to elster at all because she barely speaks. there is hardly a cornerstone of development for her to even grow from because for the most part she seems like a blank slate. the characters get a few lines once every couple hours of gameplay, and that is about it for story outside of documents and the endings. it seems a significant portion of the playerbase has to watch a video or go through the wiki for the story to be understood at all.
the puzzles were at least interesting but the combat and exploration weren’t. there were many times where it was just a little fetch quest chain to go from key to key. it made the exploration more of a slog to go through rather than feeling like i was actually making discoveries.
i quite like the character designs in this futuristic setting, but the monster designs are underwhelming and it takes away from the horror they are trying to convey. the lack of variation in “mob” monsters make them an eyesore to encounter again. as someone who enjoys humanoid robot aesthetics, it would have been nice for them to lean more into body horror and elements of uncanny valley in these designs.
it honestly felt like people saw the word “lesbian” in other reviews and decided that was all they needed to be a good game. i love lesbian media but there has to be a point where you can say the writing was not the best. how far can tropes and aesthetics take you? i guess for this game it seems pretty far.