Want to preface this by saying, I don’t really like giving this game a review so early. It currently is only on its first major update which got two smaller updates to (debatably) fix some things. Why am I making this review then? There has been a lot of discussion along with back and forth regarding this game, especially in regards to how the story is told and presented thus far. I myself played the demo back in June of last year and despite it being no more than a few minutes long, I kept this game in the back of my mind for a while. The demo itself consists of the two opening scenes in the current update which are a flashback scene then a present day scene although the current update version has changed up the dialogue since the demo. I want to utilize this review to show how I may agree or disagree with the other complaints this game has gotten while also being informative for people interested in checking this game out. Plus, I hope the developers will continue to improve as development on this game continues. I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but since this is the first update, a lot of the story right now is purely an introduction to the world and characters and nothing too major has happened yet.
First, I want to start with my personal biggest issue with the game currently and that is the text and more importantly, the dialogue. To start on a smaller issue about the text, it is in regards to the cell phones of the characters. During several scenes there seems to be music or a ringtone coming from the cell phones of the characters and because of how the text is presented, it is hard to understand what is happening. This is because the nametags for this text show the character’s name and it almost comes off like maybe they are speaking in their head until it is later clarified they were receiving a call or something. I thought maybe this was a limitation or something they couldn’t quite hammer down, but late into the update, one of the LIs, Grace, gets a phone call and the nametag shows something along the lines of “Grace’s phone.” Seems odd this is one if not the only time this solution was given for the current update when it happens multiple times throughout it. I do believe the developers are working on this, but it seems odd this is inconsistent when they have used a solution already in the game. Another issue with the text for phones is it can go on for a bit too long. You may find yourself clicking through 10-15 lines of text of song lyrics coming from the phone and while there may be significance to them, I feel because of how they are presented, they overstay their welcome. And this brings me to my other issue with the text and that is internal and external conversations going on for too long. This can be applied to a lot of examples throughout the game in its current state, but I want to focus on an early scene featuring the MC, Alice, Afina and Kylie at a cafe. The scene starts off well as it is a pretty standard early scene to help introduce Afina and her sister Kylie while also illustrating what we may see from the relationships between these characters. The issue starts to really come in when Kylie joins the scene. Afina and Kylie coming from a very wealthy family and traveling all over the world has helped them become well versed in at least four different languages. Afina and Kylie go back and forth for a bit, and it keeps going on and on. This was a major letdown to the scene and extended far beyond what it needed to. The other two characters being the MC and Alice, do not understand anything going on thus are left out entirely and kills a lot of momentum of the scene. Also, the back and forth between Kylie and Afina goes on for way too long to the point it becomes exhausting to read. Now, for potential players of the game, imagine that, but pretty much every scene after that is like this. Internal thoughts for a character go on and on to the point it is hard to get a grasp on the direction of them. Conversations between characters keep going on and on despite reaching the goal of the scene or meandering for a bit too long. It is an exhausting read and I imagine will be draining as the game gets longer and more complex as we delve deeper into these characters. These need to be trimmed or altered. It is fine to have flavor text beyond just hitting the major points for a scene. You need them to help give life to your characters and their relationships. But, there is a point when you need to stop and not keep going on and on as it will become a detriment and not a benefit to the scene. Another example of this is Kylie at the bar when she realizes her boyfriend/fiance is standing her up again. She goes on and on for a while and it gets to the point where I didn’t understand the reason to keep continuing the scene beyond a certain point. Then her father enters the scene and it is a solid heartwarming scene, but then that conversation overstays its welcome as it basically goes in circles about the message the father is trying to give Kylie about her life. Again, these are solid ideas for scenes and there is good writing in there, but there is just too much of it overloaded within each of the scenes. There are several other examples, but don’t want to harp on this for too long.
Second, I want to talk about the lack of focus in the story thus far. This game is the kind of game that has introduced pretty much most if not all the major LIs early on. On top of this, we are introduced to several other side characters as well. For pretty much all the LIs, we are already given a bit of drama for each of them, usually some hardship or trauma they have experienced that is still haunting them. This seems to be done so players can get an idea of what to expect moving forward for each of these plotlines. Where does the issue come in? How it is presented. Not too long after the cafe scene I mentioned earlier, after the MC says goodbye to Alice and Afina for the day, since the MC is now separated from the other LIs, the story shifts to jumping around between the LIs to give doses of their everyday lives and their struggles. One issue with this is how often it keeps jumping around. You will go from one LI’s scene then jump to another LI’s scene then jump to a different LI’s scene then back to a previous LI’s scene being continued and so on. This gets confusing and exhausting really fast. When you combine this with my previous issue about dialogue going on for too long, you can imagine what happens. You have a bunch of scenes happening that are basically chopped up and interrupted with other scenes with dialogue going on and on for a bit too long at times. At first I thought scenes were chopped up to show them in chronological order, but there are times when things are referenced or times are given and it is clear these aren’t exactly in chronological order or overlap or are going back and forth with the timeline of things. Maybe this will be used in the future for storytelling reasons, but for now it is a detriment to the presentation of the story since these are scenes meant to get the reader to understand these characters. This also brings me to my other issue with these scenes, and that is I feel they show too much. One criticism I have seen a lot in other reviews and in the thread is how these scenes shouldn’t really be happening unless the MC is present or we the reader should only know this information when the MC finds out or something along those lines. I don’t entirely agree, and here is why. There is no reason for the MC to be present with these characters during any of their current traumatic experiences or traumatic episodes. So, the only way to have the MC currently find out would be to be told from the LI or another character without seeing it happen unless some circumstances arose. This still does not detract from my previous point about showing too much, and this I feel is especially evident with Afina. Her trauma surrounding her previous abusive relationship I feel was shown and presented just a bit too much. We get a flashback and we pretty much see how an entire traumatic episode for her plays out. I feel showing flashes of it and not giving such a detailed depiction this early would’ve gone a long way for the future. I feel similar towards the Kylie scene to a lesser extent and even a bit with Tianna’s breakdown to some degree.
My third primary issue with the game in its current state is the change made to Grace. Initially in v0.1, Grace’s hardship was that she used to sleep around a lot during her late teens to early 20s and settled down by the time she hit her mid 20s to not sleep around like she used to. Now that she has settled down, she has struggled to find love and is being blackmailed due to her past since she wants to do better for herself and find happiness and love. This of course was met with a lot of backlash and conflict from what I saw stemming from the fact she is a major LI who use to be promiscuous and thus in v0.1.1 it was changed so that Grace wasn’t actually sleeping around a lot, but instead was sleeping around primarily with the guy blackmailing her. Grace was under the naive impression that he would leave his wife for her because he actually loved her, but this was clearly a lie she eventually realized and accepted as time went on leading to her settling down by her mid 20s. I personally think the original version hits a lot harder than the revised version especially based on how her plotline is being set up. The MC knew her when he was a child going through traumatic events himself and she helped him a lot when she was in her late teens at the time. The MC does not know about her previous promiscuity and she seems to have a crush on him. The MC being a good guy likely will potentially look past it and support her anyways along with various obstacles along the way. If this is a general idea of how the plotline may go, I feel the initial version of her story from v0.1 shows greater development and depth to Grace’s character as she truly made mistakes she can’t take back and was actively doing so and was in a much dire position because of it. It goes from someone who wasn’t looking for love or didn’t care having sex with many different people to maturing herself and wanting to find the one person she wanted to spend the rest of her life with and only share her body with that person. The edited storyline from v0.1.1 maintains the idea that she matured, but a lot of the edge and trajectory of her maturity I feel is diminished by doing this. I feel passionately about this because in the current state of the game, Grace shows the best potential by far in terms of a well-written storyline and a solid relationship with the MC with Afina being a close second. Both of them have the possibility and already signs of great mature themes while also being more complex in interesting ways compared to the other LIs and it was that initial storyline presented in v0.1 that made me feel such strong emotions.
It is clear the developers behind this game care deeply about this project. The opening and ending “meta” scenes featuring the developers show this. They care about these characters and they are doing a lot to show that off. I am sure at least part of the reason they are showing so much about these characters so early and writing so much dialogue is because they care so deeply about these characters they have crafted. Despite technical limitations they are making the scenes work. The renders and character models look beautiful and there are several really well done scenes despite the issues I stated previously. I am giving this a 3 / 5 because I do not think this is a poor game and I do not think it is a near perfect game. I think it has shown me great potential and love from the developers and I think many of the issues with it can be fixed and this game can continue to flourish as time goes on. I will be more than glad to update this review especially if my issues with the game are fixed or anything else changes drastically especially as we get deeper into the story. I wish the developers luck and look forward to future updates.
