You know, it's kind of hilarious... and sad at the same time.
As of v0.2.2, here we have another prime example of one visually very polished basis for a 4-star or 5-star game with...
[+] good quality renders,
[+] attractive LI's,
[+] features like a gallery/special renders, a quest tracker & an index/glossary/stats overview,
[+] a well-implemented UI
[+] music, atmos & fx sounds.
Apparently, the dev has gained some good experience of quality presentation and visualisation. Neat so far!
[o] Sandbox. Not the grindy one, but still.... Some may like, some may hate it. If the "free roam" sections are going to give the player exactly the intended freedom eventually, then the sandbox will be more a plus for me.
[o] snippet voice sounds, like "aha", "haha", "uhm" etc. I personally hate them, so I mute them. Unfortunately I had to mute all sounds because those voice snippets were falsely assigned to the fx track.
Now to the mentioned sad and/or hilarious thing: the reason why this game is also a prime example for scattering its own high potentials and efforts:
[-] The Writing. As polished as everything else is, the writing is certainly NOT. And I'm not talking about the plenty spelling errors.
Dialogues are sometimes kind of awkward, stilted or even forced "coolish" and make desperate efforts to sound casual. But they don't come natural. Beyond, there's a bunch of annoying nonsense chatter most of the times. Makes me feel pity for the intellect of the characters. Narratives aren't strong either. It does not really help any immersion to write them from the 3rd persons' perspective like "He (the MC) is doing..." instead of "I am doing..." as well.
In short: the dev seem to have much less experience and skill in writing , contrary to their visual ones.
But - sadly and most surprisingly - every story is only as strong as the writer and their skills to tell this story in an engaging and compelling way. What's hilarious for me with this game here is that all the apparent solid work efforts are very much undermined needlessly by the sloppy and unexperienced writing.
A huge issue this game shares with many other stories / games here unfortunately. Too many!
Due to the bad writing I couldn't enjoy all the positives of this one.
Conclusion: as of now this is only 2,5 stars instead of its potential 4 or 5 stars. And as of now only worth a recommendation for those who like to skip the story/dialogues and enjoy the renders solely.