This game has been on my radar for quite a while, but I never went around to play it, mainly because most of the time when people suggest me popular, well-loved games, they're often overall subpar or have glaring flaws the players willingly ignore, and I always end up dissapointed. I'm glad to see this wasn't the case with Katawa Shoujo. This game has 5 stars on this forum, and it largely deserves them all. Almost.
I won't go back too much on the positives everyone else has already pointed out. KS is a nice breath of fresh air with mature themes without being too dark, the illustrations are suprisingly good, and while the story has quite a slow pace at times, is never hard to follow. Going into this game, I was scard to be lost in countless branching paths in hope to get the best outcome for the relationship I was pursuing, but I was glad to discover the choices are quite straightforward. The structure of the story overall is pretty sound, although it suffers from replaying many of the same scenes in every route to get you to speed on some characters you might not have interacted otherwise. A bit annoying, but comprehensible if you want to get a full picture on what's going on in the MC's back.
Emi's story, closely followed by Lilly's, are by far my favorite routes in the games, followed by Hanako, Rin and Shizune. I think among them all, Emi's is the only one that ticks all the checkboces I had for a story of this caliber : A good pacing, both Hisao (the MC) and Emi's disabilities are not ignored and greatly affect their interactions, the girl has a nice backstory, not too dark but tragic and relatable enough that it was incredibly easy for me to connect with her and understand her struggles. And they actually have disputes over their pasts and their disabilities, which was refreshing to see in an industry where all relationships have to be lovey-dovey all the time with no conflict between the love interests.
Lilly's story is as interesting as Emi's, notably because it actually explores Hisao's view of his disability more than it does Lilly's, which was a problem in the last 3 stories because we didn't get to see much of it. I played Lilly's story last, and in all the others, Hisao's problems were more like an afterthought once the running drama for the current girl was over. Here, it's at the forefront, and it gives more welcomed depth to a character I couldn't find many reasons to empathize with up until now. Although, I regret that nothing much happens in terms of drama ; what actually happens is important for the characters, but I don't know, it didn't reasonate with me as well as it could have been. I think it's mostly because we didn't get that much introspection into Lilly's life and family to know what they actually look like, and so I felt kinda detached from Lilly during their relationship, but it's still a minor gripe. I think it's because I came from Emi's story first, which I enjoyed much more.
Hanako's story is on par with Lilly's, in my opinion, although it has some weird things going on that I do not understand. First of all, Lilly's story has a nice character development for Hanako that is strangely absent from her story, like joining the journal club, and putting more confidence in her voice. Hanako feels like a more complete character in Lilly's story than in her own, and I do understand that this game had multiple writers with varying levels of skill, but it was weird to not see this in her own story, like the writers didn't communicate on this point.
Another weirdness is Miki, a completely generic NPC that pops up twice or thrice in Hanako's route and... Does nothing important. She chats with Hisao for a few minutes, but she doesn't do anything Kenji or a random faceless NPC couldn't have done. I feel like this is where we see the development difficulties the devs experienced while making this game, because it seems like Miki was supposed to get a much larger role in the story as she has full renders and her own disability, but they were short on time and had to axe her out. Too bad, at least she looks nice.
As for Hanako, her story is definitely the darkest and most tragic of them all, but it doesn't have impact it should have, in my opinion. We're told, more than shown, what Hanako has experienced during her childhood (barring her scars of course), with the bullying and her maladive shyness, but while we see her stuttering and fleeing in panic when she gets too much attention, we don't get to experience the reasons why she still is the way she is, even though everyone around them seems to nice and caring towards her. I thought Miki would be sort of like a bully for her, as she only appears in her story, but actually no. Of course, I'm not saying the story is inherently worse because it is not as dark as I would have preferred it to be, but I think it was a missed opportunity to make us truly feel her pain and relate more to her character. As it stands now, the story goes like "Hanako is introduced, you spend time with her, she ends up sharing her past, you spend more time with her, you get the girl, end". It's still good and I really enjoyed it, but it's not as good as it could have been, in my opinion.
As for the last two routes, sadly they don't live up to the level of the first two, in my opinion. The least interesting of the two was Rin's, the autistic girl with no arms. It's not that I don't like Rin because of the fact she's autistic, but rather because it makes it harder for me to relate to her when she is so hard to understand. Rin is a very cryptic character who says weird things and does weird things, and had trouble understanding other people and make them understand her, and her story revolves around Hisao trying to understand her and get closer despite of the inherent inability for her to properly express her feelings. Which is a great character arc for both of them, honestly.
Although, I don't really like cryptic characters that spout nonsense all the time, because what inevitably happens is a lot of useless dialogue that doesn't make sense and that I skipped halfway though because of how bored I was with most of her conversations, the story only takes a turn for the better around halfway though her route, with her art teacher involving her against her will in an art display, and all the stuff that happens there.
The story gets really good there because Hisao and Rin actually have a real dispute that gave me a bad ending the first time I reached it, which, as strange as it might sound, was a great thing to happen to me, because character-wise, it makes perfect sense for both of them : They can't communicate their thoughts properly to one another, they can't understand each other, and so they scream and argue to unleash their frustration, which was a daring move by the writer and a great thing to happen in a story I might not have cared about otherwise. But overall, it was still a weak story with a slow and boring beginning and middle.
As for Shizune, the real problem I have with it is that her story doesn't actually lead anywhere. We learn plenty enough about what Shizune is like (and she is someone I wouldn't like at all IRL) and her fusional relationship with Misha, but in this route I couldn't find the qualities I found in the other routes. For starters, Hisao and Shizune almost never have any communication issue inherent to her condition of being deaf and mute ; Hisa quickly learns sign language and her disability pretty much goes away for the rest of the story. Both characters' disability play such a small role in their story that they might as well not be there, which is a huge missed opportunity for installing conflict and character development. It doesn't help the fact that even though Hisao and Shizune end up dating, they don't do any actual dating, unlike all the other routes. Their relationship is barely mentioned twice in the entire route and ignored the rest of the time as if Hisao never confessed to her, with both characters acting towards each other as they always did. There is nothing wrong with people just being content with being with each other, but their relationship didn't bring anything new to the table, nor did it stir the pot a little bit. It was just something that happened, and then was completely dropped.
Misha also has a small history with Shizune but is never explored in depth nor given enough time or thought to give her a proper character trait other than being the loud bubbly sidekick for Shizune. The latter's spite towards Lilly is also something that is never truly explored, and while I'm not stupid enough not to see much of it is due to their lack of ability to properly communicate, it isn't used for character development more than to lock you out of one route or the other.
There is also something going on with her family, and I greatly expected some conflict with her and her dad over her disability, as her dad is a giant asshole with little care for his daughter as she clearly makes him uncomfortable... But not much happens here either. Her father gets pissy and starts fights with Hisao, but that's it. The issue in Shizune's story is there isn't much conflict going on, between the characters but also for Shizune and Hisao themselves. The communication barrier is quickly removed, their disabilities are barely explored and don't seem to impact their daily lives almost at all, there are no disputes or conflicts of interest between Hisao and Shizune, and while it's well written and IMO more enjoyable than Rin's story, I'd say this is the weakest story of them all, which is ironic considering how much you see Shizune in the other girls' routes.
And Kenji is there. I guess. It's weird that he has a single moment or actual character backstory in Shizune's story while nothing is about him in the story. He's just the comic relief that had one funny moment in Lilly's story, and that's it. Completely negligible. The only reason I stopped skipping his dialogues is because Shizune appeared during one fo them during her route.
And that's it for the routes. I know it doesn't seem like it as I mainly focused on the negatives, but I didn't want to rehash what everyone has already said countless times. I really enjoyed Katawa Shoujo and I'm really sad to see this team won't make another game ever again. They had great ideas and despite their inexperience, they made something astonishing that shaped the AVN industry forever. That's really fucking impressive.
And I know everyone has made the point, but I just adore the story behind how this game came to be. A group of nobodies, coming from internet's smelliest shithole, known for racism, homophobia and doxxing, make a game about disabled girls and played it straight without ever going tasteless and putting everything they had into it. It had all the ingredients to become a worldwide-known disaster, and yet they still acheieved something incredible many writers would be jealous of (me included, to be honest). At this point I'm genuinely impressed to see such talent and passion coming from where you last expected it. 4chan could end world hunger if those fuckers put their minds into it.
