Comparisions to LiL are unavoidable (I mean, a bi rocker girl who falls deeply in love with a cool girl, bonkers mc with visions which pass moral judgement onto the player...), but it does what it does really well. This post will mention that game a lot because it is one of my favorites.
The mc is likeable, not gross and age appropriate; the girls are cute, fleshed out and the relationships are endearing in how they develop. Overall seems to be going faster than LiL (a lot of girls are already in romance and even horny-content territory I think), which isnt bad but was a bit jarring in one moment or another. Some observations which arent necessarily critiques but jumped out while I was playing:
- The shell shocked face is really well done. The shifty eyes makes me feel shell shocked as well. 10/10
- The
happy events mind thingies are personified pretty quickly. I think having a face and name and a defined personality may take away from the mind-fuckery aspect of mind thingies, which is not bad as it is clearly the direction the game is taking but is something to note if you expect the same level of mind-fuckery as the aforementioned game
- The first mind tree thingie before the fight was a little sudden in the way it tried to introduce the "judging the player for enjoying the sad story" aspect without much buildup before, I think? Still hit pretty hard afterwards.
- I feel like
Yumi Kirei broke out of her shell waay too fast. But again, the overall pace of the story seems to be aimed at being a little fast.
- comforting Kirei with physical proximity after she was just assaulted, even with an inocent hug, felt very insensitive to me. Maybe if there was some communication from her after the MC explicitly sat near her without any contact it would feel more believable. I think that was the only scene I felt the MC messed up despite it not being written that way.
Overall this is really promising!
