This will be a temporary review and will update it as times goes by and game gets updated.
What I like about this game: Time Travel
What I don't like about this game: Kim (and not for the v0.2a ending)
First of all I want to address a few things:
- there is no lesbian tag although it should be most of the female characters are either lesbian, bisexual or unknown as of yet.
- There should be an NTR flag, if Kim was a guy what happened in v0.2a this topic would be on fire, 0.2b fixed it a bit but still the damage was done.
Another rant is about the narrative about Julia in the past and related to ages and time travel. The rest is a spoiler as by my calculation with the data provided by the dev Kim could have wiped MC out of existence. And this is my reasoning:
Why I dislike Kim: Not because of 0.2a or 0.2b ending, to be honest that was not that bad, as up to that point I already disliked Kim and I for one could not be friends with someone so toxic, and here is why:
- You can't take a shit without Kim's consent she is in all screens.
- She expresses the disgust she has for MC being a man multiple times, even when MC mom entered her room and Kim was there she was disgusted by MC mom insinuation, she was so disgusted by the MC and would not even consider a relationship like that, in the most obnoxious way and not for the first time either.
- The fact that she promised you she would print your homework and not give any kind of shit about you failing the class the very next day, after she literally dragged you into the forest to supposedly help you pass the photography class.
- The obsession with your sister and the double standard when you talk about her mom.
- The conversation you had at the skate park about borrowing the skateboard, really I wanted to slap her just for that.
- The borrowing money from her to pay the lesbian harpie in the library to break the lock... I was doing that to help her with her stupid obsession, yet she was obnoxious about that too, MC is poor but still asked his mom for 5$ and stole from his sister nightstand another $5... that is just sad, now I am stealing to please Kim... best friends my ars.
- The way Kim was designed as a character is utterly annoying, thinks too much of herself, the MC is just a prop for her to use, she thinks she deserve your friendship even if she shits on you multiple times in front of other people.
To be honest the 0.2a ending was better because I felt nothing, I was not angry it did not even bother me, and what I was thinking about Kim being toxic since the first few minutes of gameplay, and overall a bad friend, was confirmed. I just hoped the MC would realize that too... will see if we get future updates as for me Kim up to that point never showed to be "Best Friend" material, we the players know they are best friends but Kim never earned that title from actions and conversations so far.
If the MC just makes up with her and are back to BFF mode, after that half assed apology...., I find it totally ok to talk to her, but no more best friends, Kim needs to earn that title she does not deserve it, heck young Penny was acting more like a friend than Kim did in the whole game.
Kim manages to pull out the worse parts of the MC, because of that the MC feels soulless and purposeless. MC needs some space to grow, having Kim around 24/7 will never allow that, heck for me the MC started to shine when Kim was out of the picture.
If the dev want to redeem Kim, cut the best friends narrative, too forced and too toxic, MC needs to grow out of this so called friendship.
My 2 cents about gameplay and mechanics:
- Linear game, don't remember making any decisions, you can't reject anything, but you can actually skip content as of 0.2b
- The whole open world and times of day it is just plain useless and adds grind to the game, as it ads to nothing, heck I have seen a game around here where you choose between VN style or Sandbox style.
- renpy is terrible for quick time events.
- renders are decent
- animations are good