This review contains spoilers
i don't feel great about essentially coming back to this game and going "this kind of sucks" because i really do think it's important we support indie developers worldwide and i would rather people fight against the trends of the aaa sphere of gaming and attempt to be lofty and creative and experimental. but... with that said, yeah, i think oneshot's attempts at metafictional elements of gameplay come at the expense of staying power, strong writing, memorable characters, or... any form of purpose. this is a game i think clearly focusing on the gimmick for the sake of the gimmick before worrying about much of anything else.
there ultimately isn't any reason for this game to dive into a metafictional narrative between a player "character", a sentient a.i. and niko, and it doesn't do anything to solidify an authentic relationship between those 3 parties. meta rpgmaker titles were a dime a dozen at the time, and between its 2010s-quirky-cutesy humor and prose and the general "subversive" attempts at manipulating that tone into something moodier and darker (which i will give credit, it manages to pull off every once in a while when it's not shoving a misguided narrative at you or attempting to make you feel something for a character you've shared a dozen lines of text with) there isn't really anything... special about oneshot? there isn't much that it does that i haven't seen plenty of other rpgmaker titles do, and most of which came years and years before oneshot's completion.
if the idea of the meta aspects was to be purely gameplay, then fine, but even that aspect half-asses the execution: look for example at the moment near the end of the first playthrough in which the game goes "oh if ONLY there was SOME WAY we could change this outcome.... oh... if only you could CHECK YOUR DESKTOP AND GO TO THE DOCUMENTS FOLDER, so to speak.... oh... sigh..." - where is the intrigue? where is the meta puzzle solving? wouldn't the puzzle be to figure out how to fix that on your own? to have the player explore in a manner similar to niko? but clearly the game doesn't want you to enjoy the process of playing it, as niko literally turns to the player and essentially goes "but WHY would someone MAKE a fictional world like this? WHY????". and then there's the matter of making a player stand-in who allegedly exists outside of the game but still needs to play by the game's rules (i.e. selecting yes or no answers or a select amount of options with which to interact with niko) even though the entire point is that niko and the player themselves can literally move through the "walls" of the .exe's window. it's a magic trick show for people who don't understand the gimmicks and how they work... not much else of substance beyond that.
if the cutesy aesthetic and "wholesome smol bean!!!" writing don't click with you, i'm sorry but i don't think there's a lot going on here. let alone the fact that the entire concept of the original game, that you have one shot to complete it, is completely taken away by its tacked on true ending route, for the sake of an underwhelming and misguided narrative that has no purpose to incorporate meta aspects but does what oneshot does best - rides on the coattails of the trends of the time without stopping to think of why it's doing it.
there ultimately isn't any reason for this game to dive into a metafictional narrative between a player "character", a sentient a.i. and niko, and it doesn't do anything to solidify an authentic relationship between those 3 parties. meta rpgmaker titles were a dime a dozen at the time, and between its 2010s-quirky-cutesy humor and prose and the general "subversive" attempts at manipulating that tone into something moodier and darker (which i will give credit, it manages to pull off every once in a while when it's not shoving a misguided narrative at you or attempting to make you feel something for a character you've shared a dozen lines of text with) there isn't really anything... special about oneshot? there isn't much that it does that i haven't seen plenty of other rpgmaker titles do, and most of which came years and years before oneshot's completion.
if the idea of the meta aspects was to be purely gameplay, then fine, but even that aspect half-asses the execution: look for example at the moment near the end of the first playthrough in which the game goes "oh if ONLY there was SOME WAY we could change this outcome.... oh... if only you could CHECK YOUR DESKTOP AND GO TO THE DOCUMENTS FOLDER, so to speak.... oh... sigh..." - where is the intrigue? where is the meta puzzle solving? wouldn't the puzzle be to figure out how to fix that on your own? to have the player explore in a manner similar to niko? but clearly the game doesn't want you to enjoy the process of playing it, as niko literally turns to the player and essentially goes "but WHY would someone MAKE a fictional world like this? WHY????". and then there's the matter of making a player stand-in who allegedly exists outside of the game but still needs to play by the game's rules (i.e. selecting yes or no answers or a select amount of options with which to interact with niko) even though the entire point is that niko and the player themselves can literally move through the "walls" of the .exe's window. it's a magic trick show for people who don't understand the gimmicks and how they work... not much else of substance beyond that.
if the cutesy aesthetic and "wholesome smol bean!!!" writing don't click with you, i'm sorry but i don't think there's a lot going on here. let alone the fact that the entire concept of the original game, that you have one shot to complete it, is completely taken away by its tacked on true ending route, for the sake of an underwhelming and misguided narrative that has no purpose to incorporate meta aspects but does what oneshot does best - rides on the coattails of the trends of the time without stopping to think of why it's doing it.