Good girl gone bad is different experience when it comes to story telling, and that's a positive on principle alone.
Let's get the bad out of the way.
- This title is simple (not the structure though, that part is complex) and predictable.
- It shows little originality and relies on numerous common places. I haven't seen a game like this, but I have read books like this. I'm not proud or ashamed of that fact. It's about trying something new, and somewhat ironic, given the title's name and premise.
- No audio or very little audio.
- Doesn't fulfill its adult premise (at least for me). Highly subjective, but it never worked as such. I do like the art, but it didn't get me going.
- It gets into auto-mode (no player choice) by logic leaps, every now and then.
- The protagonists cycle of self discovery can get repetitive after a couple of hours. It's a process of whittling down morality, that keeps following the same pattern. It's very noticeable.
The good (and the reason to play it) is divided into 4 aspects:
- Female protagonist POV - Very similar to what you see in a "corruption game", but much faster, personal, realistic, contemporary, and uses common sense (direct opposite to idiotic tropes) as its foundation. A kiss leads to something more. Drinking too much leads to worse. Personal difficulties "lower" morality, the lack of a clear NO, pushes things to something worse etc... There's no subtext here, or life lesson, getting old is the cure for youth, most of the time. You can see where things are going several choices ahead, and the rest is just a lot of perspective. There's value in that, but it's still limited value.
- An account of someone's thought process - The "judging" is all up to your own idiosyncrasies, with no meddlesome writing style. It's a "descent" that is perfectly encapsulated in the name of the title (in case it's not clear I picked most of the "bad options"). This a story that reaches its goal, without losing itself in superfluous stuff.
- It's different - What do you want in a story, videogame, music or art? Experiencing the same thing over and over again? Hopefully not. For me Good girl gone bad worked, because I have never tried anything like it. So I did end up with a new experience (I have different thoughts on whether this is a good title and worthy of purchase, but that's up to each individual).
Translation: I feel neutral(ish) towards Good girl gone bad.
- "Replayability" - There's a lot of paths to pursue, even if notions of good and bad are always present in every aspect of the game, numerically speaking, (morally depends on perspective). Obviously this assumes that you are liking what you read, in which case a couple of runs won't feel repetitive. I had this problem with other highly rated titles, where it feels like a chore to redo things (even with skip). Not here. It's the fast pacing, short text and plenty of choices that end up keeping you engaged, so props on that front, and the amount of work put into that part of the game deserves praise
In short, this isn't exactly good, but I'm glad I tried it, just based on "difference factor". If you feel like this is outside of your comfort zone, it might surprise you, and it could work (it didn't for me). I'd give it a 6/10, but I'm not looking for 6/10's unfortunately.