Pretty cool but ahhh ultimately a little too corny for my brain these days
Feel like the actual gameplay interactions should have been a little deeper to justify all the given replays of the thing they ask of you. A LOT of the playtime is eaten up from just redoing crap you've already seen without the ability to quick-jump to specific scenes. And that REALLY isn't ultimately time well spent because the requirements to get the true ending don't reward the commitment and ask from you any meaningful input or out of the box thinking using the knowledge you've gained from your multiple playthroughs to find a 'SECRET FINAL ROUTE' or anything like that. It's just a matter of hitting one of the forced bad endings and then doing the whole game over but picking a very specific order of puzzle rooms to do the next time and choosing some fairly obvious dialogue responses along the way; kinda shallow!
I harp on the 'gameplay' of the VISUAL NOVEL, but it really did consume the experience for me after awhile and outweigh the narrative! I began to care less about the escape rooms and the initially interesting wikipedia and creepypasta type ramblings coming outta the characters because FUCK I've already witnessed this shit like 3 times and I'm just trying to find the new content to read! I'm not appreciating any of this anymore! When some of the ramblings didn't even have any eventual payoff (the "All-Ice" plot-line goes absolutely nowhere) that really didn't aid my trust in the thing!!! There's not too much new environmental subtext or anything like that to really PERCEIVE with your route-completer knowledge beyond some obvious foreshadowing that's occasionally spat out from when you replay the rooms either, so there's really just not a whole lot of value in doing any of this stuff over again like the game asks... Frustrating!
SURE you could say any annoyances the game manufactures just serve to better put you in "morphogenetic" shoes of the characters, but eVEN THAT'S a stretch considering both the protagonist and game in general don't allow use of any of that accumulated knowledge until the ending moments of the final route anyway. AND EVEN THEN the mc only seemingly recalls information from ONE of the mandatory bad endings in particular. The final route goes as far to re-explain things you might already be privy to from the other non-mandatory bad endings; just in case you missed them! Further compounding the futility in even having so many additional routes and dead ends in the first place! Not exactly rewarding my investment here!!!
Def feel I wouldn't be whining about any of this if more of the puzzles were designed in such a way you could more quickly skip doing most of their content if you just remembered their final answers. As it stands, too often are you stuck doing the entirety of puzzle rooms over again but SLIGHTLY faster. Or maybe even slower if you happen to get frustrated with em like I did! Guess I'm just really feelin the 'morphogenetic sorrow' here......
I sure DO love to bitch about popular media... Ahhh it was FINE. Seven was based, Lotus was HOT but yEAH don't be like 999 and misutilize gameplay in such a way that it detracts from the enjoyability of your ultimately simplistic meta narrative omg shtick. Maybe take a page from some of the better Silent Hills too and have more of the stupid do-dads in your adventure game escape rooms serve as metaphors for story shit too! That'd be nice!
Anything else I wanna bitch about in this legendary, beloved vn??? UmMM I think it's reALLY funny how the game is 3 for 3 in getting all of its female characters used in a hostage situation at least once throughout its runtime. based uchikoshi...................
Feel like the actual gameplay interactions should have been a little deeper to justify all the given replays of the thing they ask of you. A LOT of the playtime is eaten up from just redoing crap you've already seen without the ability to quick-jump to specific scenes. And that REALLY isn't ultimately time well spent because the requirements to get the true ending don't reward the commitment and ask from you any meaningful input or out of the box thinking using the knowledge you've gained from your multiple playthroughs to find a 'SECRET FINAL ROUTE' or anything like that. It's just a matter of hitting one of the forced bad endings and then doing the whole game over but picking a very specific order of puzzle rooms to do the next time and choosing some fairly obvious dialogue responses along the way; kinda shallow!
I harp on the 'gameplay' of the VISUAL NOVEL, but it really did consume the experience for me after awhile and outweigh the narrative! I began to care less about the escape rooms and the initially interesting wikipedia and creepypasta type ramblings coming outta the characters because FUCK I've already witnessed this shit like 3 times and I'm just trying to find the new content to read! I'm not appreciating any of this anymore! When some of the ramblings didn't even have any eventual payoff (the "All-Ice" plot-line goes absolutely nowhere) that really didn't aid my trust in the thing!!! There's not too much new environmental subtext or anything like that to really PERCEIVE with your route-completer knowledge beyond some obvious foreshadowing that's occasionally spat out from when you replay the rooms either, so there's really just not a whole lot of value in doing any of this stuff over again like the game asks... Frustrating!
SURE you could say any annoyances the game manufactures just serve to better put you in "morphogenetic" shoes of the characters, but eVEN THAT'S a stretch considering both the protagonist and game in general don't allow use of any of that accumulated knowledge until the ending moments of the final route anyway. AND EVEN THEN the mc only seemingly recalls information from ONE of the mandatory bad endings in particular. The final route goes as far to re-explain things you might already be privy to from the other non-mandatory bad endings; just in case you missed them! Further compounding the futility in even having so many additional routes and dead ends in the first place! Not exactly rewarding my investment here!!!
Def feel I wouldn't be whining about any of this if more of the puzzles were designed in such a way you could more quickly skip doing most of their content if you just remembered their final answers. As it stands, too often are you stuck doing the entirety of puzzle rooms over again but SLIGHTLY faster. Or maybe even slower if you happen to get frustrated with em like I did! Guess I'm just really feelin the 'morphogenetic sorrow' here......
I sure DO love to bitch about popular media... Ahhh it was FINE. Seven was based, Lotus was HOT but yEAH don't be like 999 and misutilize gameplay in such a way that it detracts from the enjoyability of your ultimately simplistic meta narrative omg shtick. Maybe take a page from some of the better Silent Hills too and have more of the stupid do-dads in your adventure game escape rooms serve as metaphors for story shit too! That'd be nice!
Anything else I wanna bitch about in this legendary, beloved vn??? UmMM I think it's reALLY funny how the game is 3 for 3 in getting all of its female characters used in a hostage situation at least once throughout its runtime. based uchikoshi...................