I think its fine. It has diehard fans that will scream to everyone how amazing it is, but imo its just ok. The models are different and take some getting used to but its nice not seeing the same characters over and over in games, and the story is...fine. Imo its not in the tier 1 of games on here, buts its in the tier 2.
Name two or just one Tier 1 games as i find that very hard to believe.
I write for a living and i yet have to see another game that reached this level of writing. To give some examples that i am not just pulling this statement out my ass.
Light of my Life.
1. The story goes through the 5 stages of grief. (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) with most people not realizing this at all.
2. The story references to itself in the museum by talking about lot and his daughters portrayed on a picture. (also not alot of ppl catched that because they skip through it all)
3. The coven from the office (3 office ladies) represent the three stages of motherhood, being single, pregnancy, advanced motherhood.
4. The wards (denise and macy) like real people handle their grief over their mothers death differently. One gets angry and the other one becomes shy and hides from the entire world. This is well established and documented psychological behaviour of kids or young adults who lose a parent early in life. I never saw a VN who portrayed this better than this game in my entire life.
5. The characters are deep and well written to the point i would deny it being written by an amateur and would describe it as the early work of someone starting his/her professional writing career.
6. The story in and of itself is believable and not forced at any given time. We got no mcguffin device to advance the plot and it all feels natural and at flow like a river. Even in the professional world the use of a mcguffin happens over and over again and the audience swallows it by turning their brain off while watching movies, reading books or watching episodes of their favorite show with no substance.
To name a few (cause i really wanna play now instead of writing) and i don't want to attack you or your opinion about the game being just a tier 2 in your opinion or by your personal choices.
However as someone with over 26 years in this business i can say without the shadow of a doubt that this is one of the best if not even the best story written game on this entire board. If you got something that even tops this i would like to take a look and see for myself if this is the case.
As i am around this board for quite a while i also got some devs who can do an amazing job but when it comes to depth in character development they all fail and keep their characters shallow and one dimensional. They appear layered but are shallow.