CWs for Loop8: Summer of Gods: pedophilia, mind control, partner abuse,
loop8 is a spacious and dreary dating sim about scattered memories and people who have been othered from society where also all the men are bisexual. It is a sobering affair, often dealing out character events without ceremony and certainly without any UI feedback. The world situation is ever so slowly revealed to you in fragments by unreliable characters, unlogged anywhere other than your own memory. I think the measured drip of events in-between selecting the more abstract relationship building dialogue options is really breathtaking for both the pace of more prominent scenes handed out and the kind of re-contextualizing done with the stock remix characters. If you're not privy to Japanese creation mythology like myself, you might feel like you're missing out on some core allegory the game is doing but tbh it seems a little uninspired from what I can glean. Combat is simple and works well to feel more like a cutscene where the fruit of your day-to-day planning is reaped and fucking owning you if you need your schedule making prowess checked. The overworld is extremely crummy in the way that these sim hybrid games tend to be, but each area is so small that it barely matters when Terasu clips through the restaurant.
The game, however, often feels like it doesn't quite have the polish to support its core looping mechanic or normal successive playthroughs. The fast-forward is absolute dogshit and combat feels a little drawn out even at nearly maxed stats. It sounds small but both are hugely burdensome and can really sour a loop or your run to get another character's epilogue. The ending system/structure itself feels really arcane and too unspecial to me still, but a little crud and experimentation when you're going for the other endings feels more like an unsolved issue in the genre that I don't necessarily want to take this game to task for individually. I think this game is pretty great if you have the palette for actual dating sims. I really strongly wish a number of characters were conceived of with platonic non-date conversation options, but it's easy enough to just avoid these and pretend like they're not there as they feel like marketing obligations which live outside the emotional core and sentiment of the game. I will be continuing to play to at least get Saru's epilogue, but I wanted to hop on here and set the record straight for people who have understandably uninformed, unrealistic, or ahistorical expectations for this game as an RPG.
loop8 is a spacious and dreary dating sim about scattered memories and people who have been othered from society where also all the men are bisexual. It is a sobering affair, often dealing out character events without ceremony and certainly without any UI feedback. The world situation is ever so slowly revealed to you in fragments by unreliable characters, unlogged anywhere other than your own memory. I think the measured drip of events in-between selecting the more abstract relationship building dialogue options is really breathtaking for both the pace of more prominent scenes handed out and the kind of re-contextualizing done with the stock remix characters. If you're not privy to Japanese creation mythology like myself, you might feel like you're missing out on some core allegory the game is doing but tbh it seems a little uninspired from what I can glean. Combat is simple and works well to feel more like a cutscene where the fruit of your day-to-day planning is reaped and fucking owning you if you need your schedule making prowess checked. The overworld is extremely crummy in the way that these sim hybrid games tend to be, but each area is so small that it barely matters when Terasu clips through the restaurant.
The game, however, often feels like it doesn't quite have the polish to support its core looping mechanic or normal successive playthroughs. The fast-forward is absolute dogshit and combat feels a little drawn out even at nearly maxed stats. It sounds small but both are hugely burdensome and can really sour a loop or your run to get another character's epilogue. The ending system/structure itself feels really arcane and too unspecial to me still, but a little crud and experimentation when you're going for the other endings feels more like an unsolved issue in the genre that I don't necessarily want to take this game to task for individually. I think this game is pretty great if you have the palette for actual dating sims. I really strongly wish a number of characters were conceived of with platonic non-date conversation options, but it's easy enough to just avoid these and pretend like they're not there as they feel like marketing obligations which live outside the emotional core and sentiment of the game. I will be continuing to play to at least get Saru's epilogue, but I wanted to hop on here and set the record straight for people who have understandably uninformed, unrealistic, or ahistorical expectations for this game as an RPG.