Acting Lessons - a hidden gem of the Visual Novel (VN) games!
Story/Originality/Amount of content/Grammar -
9/10
I found the story quite original and interesting, the writing is good and the dialogues are enjoyable. On top of that there are plenty of witty & also silly jokes that made me laugh out loud during the play-through and there aren't many games around that fulfill all those check-boxes. The dialogues are well polished and grammar overall is very good. The amount of content is decent - you get plenty of choices, which creates branching in the story-line and affects the ending of the game.
The characters are diverse not only by their looks, but also their personalities to much enjoyment of the fan base.
Without spoiling the story, there is a choice during the game that feels a bit forced onto the player. I've seen some bad reviews of this game based on that alone, but I think it doesn't do justice to this game. I wasn't all that upset by it, in fact, I even kinda saw something like that coming as things were going a little bit too well. It complements the message the game is trying to send to the player - that we cannot always get all we want and that life puts us through tough choices.
The last 2 episodes are rather heavy story-wise, but they also nicely tie together all the previous episodes and lead into the ending, which is quite touching if you really get invested in the story and it definitely was the case for me.
There are a total of 22 ending variations which just shows to me how well thought out the story was by the developer.
Renders/Animations -
8/10
The quality of renders is good. It's possible to tell that there are some renders which have been rendered anew and added to the game later since the quality of those are better, but overall it doesn't ruin the experience. The animations are a mixed bag though - there are some good ones mixed with some pretty awkward ones, so that is mainly the reason for a lower score in this category.
Sound/Voice Acting -
10/10
The soundtrack is amazing! Probably the part of the game I enjoyed the most cause the tunes are catchy, appropriate to the scenes and well timed. I never got tired of listening to them even if they repeated in some of the scenes. There's no voice acting as far as I recall, but the game does well without those anyway.
Playability/Performance/Bugs -
10/10
I didn't experience any bugs or problems during my play-through. The interface is simple and serves its purpose. The dialogue screen is easily readable and doesn't obstruct the scenes. The only thing I'd prefer to have is the possibility to name the saves (and option to delete them within the save/load screen) so that it's easier to tell them apart when doing multiple play-throughs with different choices.
Overall this is an amazing VN game! I'd give it 4.5* out of 5* the only half-star taken away for some weaker animations, but if looking past that the game deserves 5* as it stands out in the crowd of VN games I've played so far. Definitely a recommend!
OMG i will not forget this game ever. Great job and I wish the best to the author who let this story out.