ah, this one has me conflicted~ it has a beautiful art style, good music (if not a bit repetitive) & okay writing. it rly feels like the devs were putting a lot of love into this & wanting to create something great, and I think they came close in sum respects. however it is definitely not without its flaws.
the biggest thing is the romantic relationship elements. tho u can tell this was written by a guy, it thankfully isn't rly outwardly fetishistic or anything, it just never seemed believable to me; even though they are lesbians it felt more heterosexual/romantic than genuine queer content unfortunately, which is a shame because cyberpunk is such a perfect genre to explore queerness. granted, the setting of the game is a very heteronormative society so some of that could have been intentional, it's kinda hard to tell.
also there were sum elements that felt problematic in a way that I can't tell if the devs were aware of or not, which is a bit of a yellow flag for me. for one, Cila never acknowledges the power imbalance (literal ownership) she has over Mara, & tho it's not as black & white as it seems it still felt weird for it to not ever come to her awareness. Cila's almost parental "protector" approach makes it feel a lil weird too, especially considering how young Mara appears & behaves. also, the "love over all" approach the two take attempts to erase & excuse all of the problematic behaviours each of them engaged in. mind you I am perfectly okay for characters in fiction to be problematic, it's a very human thing, I just question when things aren't addressed in the fiction itself. if there was even a little bit of questioning, even just in Cila's thoughts I think I would have trusted the writer & enjoyed this visual novel a lot more.
also, the UI is a lil clunky- for sum reason the Y button advances text instead of A, which selects from the menu, which is usually defaulted on Autoplay, which caused me to accidentally skip sum scenes a cpl times. also instead of highlighting the buttons you're cursor is on it de-hoghlights them, which feels really confusing and led me to click the wrong thing a cpl times. not huge issues, but ones that would have been very simple to make more intuitive.
the exposition dump towards the end didn't bother me as much as it seems to have bothered others, tho I do agree it did take the tension away that had been building to that point. i liked both endings, but the epilogue seemed a lil superfluous, as it didn't rly contribute anything new to the story.
overall, I'm not entirely sure what to think...
the biggest thing is the romantic relationship elements. tho u can tell this was written by a guy, it thankfully isn't rly outwardly fetishistic or anything, it just never seemed believable to me; even though they are lesbians it felt more heterosexual/romantic than genuine queer content unfortunately, which is a shame because cyberpunk is such a perfect genre to explore queerness. granted, the setting of the game is a very heteronormative society so some of that could have been intentional, it's kinda hard to tell.
also there were sum elements that felt problematic in a way that I can't tell if the devs were aware of or not, which is a bit of a yellow flag for me. for one, Cila never acknowledges the power imbalance (literal ownership) she has over Mara, & tho it's not as black & white as it seems it still felt weird for it to not ever come to her awareness. Cila's almost parental "protector" approach makes it feel a lil weird too, especially considering how young Mara appears & behaves. also, the "love over all" approach the two take attempts to erase & excuse all of the problematic behaviours each of them engaged in. mind you I am perfectly okay for characters in fiction to be problematic, it's a very human thing, I just question when things aren't addressed in the fiction itself. if there was even a little bit of questioning, even just in Cila's thoughts I think I would have trusted the writer & enjoyed this visual novel a lot more.
also, the UI is a lil clunky- for sum reason the Y button advances text instead of A, which selects from the menu, which is usually defaulted on Autoplay, which caused me to accidentally skip sum scenes a cpl times. also instead of highlighting the buttons you're cursor is on it de-hoghlights them, which feels really confusing and led me to click the wrong thing a cpl times. not huge issues, but ones that would have been very simple to make more intuitive.
the exposition dump towards the end didn't bother me as much as it seems to have bothered others, tho I do agree it did take the tension away that had been building to that point. i liked both endings, but the epilogue seemed a lil superfluous, as it didn't rly contribute anything new to the story.
overall, I'm not entirely sure what to think...