I have to say there are a lot of things about this game that I simply loved.
Overall, the visual aspect is top-tier, easily on par with other visual novels produced and published by professionals in the industry. Hats off to whoever worked on the backgrounds, because they are by far the best I’ve seen in any Western visual novel to date. The sprites (though I believe Noriko’s could use a bit of a refresh) and the scenes are also outstanding, along with some really exceptionally well-made animations (even if the scene are a bit on the short side dialoguewise and lack thereof the right impact).
Whoever handled the sound design during the animated scenes did an excellent job (though it would be nice to have a sound effect for when punches are thrown—just shaking the screen doesn’t really convey the tension of the moment). The soundtrack is beautiful, though it's a bit wasted on the game. That’s because, for the vast majority of the time, the same two tracks are reused. While they’re both great, they get tiring in the long run. I think the programmer should take more time to carefully select which track plays in each scene, as it would really elevate the quality of the VN—especially since they have such high-quality pieces at their disposal that are currently being underused.
The weaker part of the game, on the other hand, lies in the writing. The characters aren’t bad, though they do fall a bit too much into genre stereotypes. But as the story unfolds, they start to move beyond those limits and become something more. What really fails to take off, in my opinion, is the story itself. The premise of going back to the past is always intriguing, but unfortunately, the narrative is full of holes, with implausible situations piling up one after another in a setting where death threats and pretty heavy criminal activities are frequent, yet the tone remains light. The writing doesn’t help either—it doesn’t flow particularly well, and it's obvious it wasn’t written by a native speaker. It always feels a bit robotic.
Another aspect that doesn’t work is the “sandbox” mode. It serves no real purpose and is just a waste of time and clicks. The story is mostly linear in its progression, so I think it would be better to remove the time-consuming process of clicking through various scenes and instead turn the game into a classic, traditional visual novel. This would also eliminate the issues with bugs and the need to tell the player where to go after each scene. I'm happy to see that in the lastest content they seem to be moving in this direction.