Made me tear up at the end.

Any complaints I have about this game are basically just me being put in Sif's shoes so it's like Lol the narrative working as intended. At any rate even though I enjoy the concept it was very repetitive to keep skipping the same dialogue which I KNOW...! IT'S THE POINT. But it just got me a bit bored. Luckily it's not a long game so it's not that big of a deal.

The writing was slightly hit-or-miss for me and I wasn't into it at the beginning but it really got me engaged by the end. All of the characters are really unique and solid, their personalities are great and fun to read. The Researcher is goated btw.

Excited to get to In Stars And Time.

I was gonna give a more detailed review of this game, but as I was reading it over I realized: Wow, this is pretentious as hell. So I'll spare you and just say the funny parts.

1. This game gets a 10/10 because Ryuki is in it and he's the realest character to ever be conceived in the history of fiction. Wow, He Is Literally Me!
2. This game is flawed and objectively shouldn't get 5 stars from me, however, I really enjoyed playing through it and I think that based on pure enjoyment, it deserves those 5 stars.
3. This game's biggest flaw was the decrease in funny flavor text. This is all NicoB's fault. I hope the third game makes it so that every single object has new flavor text everytime you go to a new location and that the horrible puns get more horrible as the game progresses. Out of spite. And because I'm so mad we didn't get the same amount of banter from Tama and Ryuki that we got with Aiba and Date in the first game. We were robbed. *I* was robbed.
4. Criticism of this game is homophobic because Ryuki is the gayboy of all time. My read on his sexuality is the following: "I desire men carnally. Women can do whatever they want to me because I'm terrified of them." Perfect protagonist fr.
5. I loved The Big Plot Twist, personally. Does it fall apart the more you look at it? Kinda. Does it make the game worse? Eh. Will I turn my brain off and look at it uncritically because I enjoyed the reveal so much and it fucked with my brain? Of course I will it was awesome. It was just so fun. It's a fun twist. Don't we like to have some fun around here? I do.
6. I love Date and Ryuki, both as separate characters and their relationship with each other. Everytime Ryuki gushed about Date I fell to my knees sobbing screaming at the screen "HE JUST LIKE ME... HE JUST LIKE ME FR!!!" That's me and Ryuki's emotional support MILF. Do they not amount to much in the grand scheme of the game? Yeah. Still, the content we did get of them is enough for me to brainrot over until we get the next game, which will hopefully have them making out on screen for 20 minutes straight. I'll even be fine with 15 minutes straight, Uchikoshi, for realsies.
7. Tama is Ryuki's idealized version of Date being a BDSM mommy and I will not be hearing otherwise. When Date made the same gag of "(Pointing at non-sexual object) That's erotic, isn't it?" that Tama did I was like. They are literally the same person.
8. Date looking the same way he does in the last game makes sense btw, even with the spoiler toggle on. Yeah the explanation they give is silly because Date is silly and repressed as hell, but if you think about it for more than 5 minutes it makes so much sense that he'd still wanna look like that. Seeing people take it as bad writing and say that it makes his character worse confuses me a lot, though I will admit it's partially Uchikoshi's fault for not diving into it more. At the same time, it's not Date's game, Even though I wish it could be. (<-- the date fan that dickrides him the least)
9. That being said, I hope they ditch the "no spoilers/minimal spoilers" approach for the next game. I really do think it was to the game's detriment that we didn't get to talk more about the first game. Keep Date like that tho, I love prettyboy Date. Prettyboy Date is all that matters and if the third game has to disregard even more of the last two games to keep him there, then so be it! Fuck narrative consistency, I need my bishounen MILF. Seriously Uchikoshi I will dickride and defend your writing till the end of time in order to keep Date's design like that. #SHOOTERS_FOR_BISHI_DATE
10. also spare some saito crumbs pls. at least add a saito tamagotchi to the eyeballie game come on it's my birthday do it for my birthday i'm just a little birthday boy (<-- Got baited and thought the "Sejima" eyeballie with the Loving and Crazy stats referred to Saito.)
11. so yeah 0/10 not enough saito
12. Also fuck Chikara seriously
13. Also someone needs to cut So Sejima's dick off You would make the world a better place

Final thoughts: I think it's hilarious that Date has 12 years worth of amnesia. I hope AI3 makes it 18. (date's amnesia has a coming of age story)

If I kinned Russell, I don't kin him because I did. No I didn't <3
After I finished this game, I was at a bit of a loss on how I should be feeling about it. I heard a lot of people talk about how utterly depressing this game gets, and I just felt somewhat confused by it, I just kept waiting for the shoe to drop and for it to reach the abyss of negativity that I was warned about... but my expectations were never met. There were even people here who compared it to Omori, but in Omori's case the Emotional Pain hit me way harder. I'm not sure if it's because I've consumed a lot of depressing media, or if it's because I didn't fully connect with this game, but the emotional impact just fell a bit flat for me by the end.
I don't mean this to say it's a bad game, in fact, unlike most RPG Maker games, I was very invested in the gameplay aspects of it, fulfilling all the sidequests and guilt events, Gitting Gud at the fights, grinding a lot, even beating the apparently super hard bonus boss on my first try (I'm very proud of that.) But it's just that something about the story didn't really resonate with me.
I'm saying this right after beating all the main game content, I know there's some more external bonus stuff that I'll check out later, but I was left with a feeling of mild unsatisfaction once finishing the game, and I don't think it was in the way the game intended.
The game's already pretty damn long (if you're doing all the sidequests like I did), but the actual story parts just seem very lacking and not quite fleshed out to me. Like, I wanted to know more about these characters, but so much of their dialogue is optional and I had no clue when they'd change. I would've liked there to be more obligatory cutscenes to get to know the characters more, and have the game be more of a slowburn, but I understand that not everyone is fond of the same type of pacing that I am. I don't think the longer days would've served a greater narrative purpose, but it's just something that would've helped me connect with these characters more.
Because aside from Russell and Kantera, I don't have strong feelings on any of the characters, because I just don't... know them much. And even then, I got really attached to Kantera from the get-go because he fits the archetype of characters I often like, and although I did find reasons to like him as the game progressed, I'm not sure I would've cared much for him if he didn't remind me of Joshua Twewy lol.
It's not like I don't understand what people would like about these characters, they all have a lot of potential that I could explore if I thought about them long enough, but the thing is, the game didn't really give me any motivation to invest all that time into them, because they don't amount to anything after the day they're a major character in. So I just found it hard to get attached to them, especially after taking note of the formula the days followed.
I don't really know what else to say. I think the way the game is structured is interesting, and the story itself is, too, but once more. I just don't think it was explored enough. The way the backstory is explained makes sense, as does the limited point of view we get, but in exchange it just furthers my lack of investment in any character that isn't Russell. Maybe that's intended, but I doubt it.
As for the true endings, they both seem... anticlimactic. It just ends so suddenly, it all comes back to my complaints about the pacing. I just wish this game would've been longer! I wish it had longer build-ups and better payoffs, because as it stands, all the time I spent on it just seems to be wasted.
Another thing I saw is that this game is "edgy just for the sake of being edgy" and... I sort of agree? Not to a great extent, but I do see where that's coming from. The "edginess" just seemed very over the top at times, and while I wanted to maintain my suspension of disbelief, sometimes I just looked at the screen thinking "You really want me to believe a 14 year old did all that and got away with it for as long as he did?" It just seemed kind of silly at times, perhaps that's why it fell a bit flat to me. In Omori's case, what happens is horrifying, but it's also all grounded in reality. Even if you try to pick holes into it, it's much more realistic than what End Roll wanted to pull here... And though I'm fairly certain realism wasn't the intented goal, it all just ends up adding up to just being too gratuitous in its violence and horrors for it to really mean anything to me. But, I don't know if I'd hold it too much against it, because it's not like it's completely impossible that a situation like the one depicted here could happen in real life, but I just struggled with taking it as seriously as other people might have. I guess you could say I grew insensitive to it.
Hmm, don't know what else to say. Like I said, I did enjoy playing through this, Kantera's awesome, Me Me Russell Kinnie, I wish Informant got more screentime, also Does anyone else find it weird how hard they were pushing the 20 year old and the 45 year old to get married? No? (End Roll has a lot of weird shit.) Like, yeah, they're both adults, but come on. It just rubbed me the wrong way. Like girl you can do better than go for the grandpa that looks to be way older than 45, he's cosplaying Manfred von Karma for god's sake! That is NOT a GILF!!! She can't hear me, she has airpods on.
Yeah. That's basically it. I wish I liked this game more than I do. And I wish it was more depressing!! I wanted to get my week ruined by this game, maybe I should reread Oyasumi Punpun just to feel something. Just kidding, I won't do that.
I love Kantera by the way. Did I mention that already? He's great.