This review contains spoilers
A club of four girls, led by a hopeless perfectionist, and her vice president, the voice of reason.
The latter starts to lose herself as time goes on, causing the perfectionist in control to panic. Her only response is to eliminate the cause of her worry.
Without that extra help, a new world begins, even more hectic than the last. Those who used to be completely fine on their own are now taken over by somebody who's already started losing control of the world she created, all the while desperately grasping for the attention of the one she can finally relate to the most.
One girl has lost her mind, devoting her life and thoughts to the protagonist of the story. The other, thought to be easily manipulated after years of abuse and an uncaring familial relationship, starts to take notice of the problems in the club. Both of these girls prove a threat to the club president, and are removed from the world hastily.
All that's left in the world is the former club's president, and the boy of her dreams. She believes she's done everything that was necessary. She lets herself speak her mind, reveals everything to the boy, despite knowing the whole time that he had more power than she ever would. Her downfall begins, deletion. In one final attempt at affection, she gives the world back, but nothing can fix the literature club. It's nothing but an endless cycle, better left ruined and destroyed, lest the power of the president come back to haunt the room.
I loved the original Doki Doki Literature Club for the story it told, the characters it portrayed, how easy it was to get attached to everyone, only to watch it all crumble to the hands of the higher power in the second act.
Thanks to the new "side stories" added through the Plus rerelease, they gave each character so much more to love. It honestly started to dawn on me just how much I enjoyed and, to a pretty decent extent, related to these characters through the new content. Reading the conversations they would have to each other, I could see a bit of myself in some of their faults, problems of my own that I would go over in my head from time to time, problems that I've worked hard to get out of or mediate over the last few months. That, as far as I could tell, is one of the points they wanted to make with some of the 6 side stories. It's a form of literature, it's meant to express oneself, to give a glimpse into another's thoughts, to write from the heart, into the heart. As much of a limited genre the visual novel might be, it's still just as great of a way to tell a story that can affect the right people it needs to, sometimes even a better way. It's easy to be immersed, to find solace in the fact that, however fictional the character may be, someone out there can articulate the feelings that others, like myself, are incapable of saying or writing, and to make those incapable, feel just a little better and less lonely in their thoughts.
It's a fantastic experience through and through, one that I was not expecting to love and empathize with as much as I did, especially now, feeling as I had just a few months earlier, and not as carefree as I was when the original first came out. Doki Doki Literature Club, along with the Plus release, is one of the most hauntingly beautiful stories ever told, in my own opinion.
The latter starts to lose herself as time goes on, causing the perfectionist in control to panic. Her only response is to eliminate the cause of her worry.
Without that extra help, a new world begins, even more hectic than the last. Those who used to be completely fine on their own are now taken over by somebody who's already started losing control of the world she created, all the while desperately grasping for the attention of the one she can finally relate to the most.
One girl has lost her mind, devoting her life and thoughts to the protagonist of the story. The other, thought to be easily manipulated after years of abuse and an uncaring familial relationship, starts to take notice of the problems in the club. Both of these girls prove a threat to the club president, and are removed from the world hastily.
All that's left in the world is the former club's president, and the boy of her dreams. She believes she's done everything that was necessary. She lets herself speak her mind, reveals everything to the boy, despite knowing the whole time that he had more power than she ever would. Her downfall begins, deletion. In one final attempt at affection, she gives the world back, but nothing can fix the literature club. It's nothing but an endless cycle, better left ruined and destroyed, lest the power of the president come back to haunt the room.
I loved the original Doki Doki Literature Club for the story it told, the characters it portrayed, how easy it was to get attached to everyone, only to watch it all crumble to the hands of the higher power in the second act.
Thanks to the new "side stories" added through the Plus rerelease, they gave each character so much more to love. It honestly started to dawn on me just how much I enjoyed and, to a pretty decent extent, related to these characters through the new content. Reading the conversations they would have to each other, I could see a bit of myself in some of their faults, problems of my own that I would go over in my head from time to time, problems that I've worked hard to get out of or mediate over the last few months. That, as far as I could tell, is one of the points they wanted to make with some of the 6 side stories. It's a form of literature, it's meant to express oneself, to give a glimpse into another's thoughts, to write from the heart, into the heart. As much of a limited genre the visual novel might be, it's still just as great of a way to tell a story that can affect the right people it needs to, sometimes even a better way. It's easy to be immersed, to find solace in the fact that, however fictional the character may be, someone out there can articulate the feelings that others, like myself, are incapable of saying or writing, and to make those incapable, feel just a little better and less lonely in their thoughts.
It's a fantastic experience through and through, one that I was not expecting to love and empathize with as much as I did, especially now, feeling as I had just a few months earlier, and not as carefree as I was when the original first came out. Doki Doki Literature Club, along with the Plus release, is one of the most hauntingly beautiful stories ever told, in my own opinion.