English:............6/10
User Interface:.....6/10
User Experience:....7/10
Art:................8/10
Dialogue:...........7/10
Story:..............3/10
Opinion:............5/10................
Avg:.............6.0/10 [3.0/5]
This is a game that SHOULD be one of my highly rated games. Currently I don't know if this will be 3 or 4 stars, and if the game still has the same issues, it was a simple slam dunk to be a good game, it'll be a 3. If the story still hasn't started by the time I finish it, this is officially a lost cause. Sure, last time I played suddenly MC had a split personality disorder and talked to himself a lot. But it still failed to tell me what the point of the story is. I liked a couple characters, the dialogue didn't make me angry, but I was bored and frustrated at the micro updates. I understand this REALLY wants to do "them anime vibes" I'm honestly a little tired of them, but it succeeds for the most part. It's also kinda funny because the anime Lycoris Recoil came out at the same time this was starting(or updated, I don't know time is a blur to me) and somehow has nothing to do with each other. It also does that "Let's try to be profound" thing that is grating at this point. I think the opening has been changed, I honestly don't remember. If this is the direction of the game now, MC rambling conspiracy theories to a child and making them cry, I'm so done. And if I remember right, MC is some Edgelord Assassin on top of this all. Chill... For all of us.
Like I said, it starts with pseudo deep thoughts rambled in a blindingly bright blue abyss. Then for some reason, transitions to MC talking out loud about weird incel topics to a little girl, making her cry. What you learn is MC has amnesia, strike one. A mystery box sent him a letter about who he was. Somehow his life was so secret not even the world's top whatever-he-is could find out about himself. though I'm sure MC's 'master' shot down his plane and took him in for whatever reason Then, MC acts like a dick to the people he's meeting because MC is a Gary-Stu and doesn't need to be nice. Maeda immediately shows signs that she likes, or even loves, him after he's a complete ass to her. If this trend continues, that's strike two. Anywho, Maeda and Honda show up to pick MC up for whatever it is they're there for. The long and short is: someone found out he is a member of the Yagami family, whatever that means, who knows. MC meets Rei, and continues to be an asshat. And for some dumb reason, another mystery box is thrown at you in the form of MC's mother's name. Why? WE, the readers, DON'T KNOW ANYTHING. But anime does this about moms a lot, so gotta put it in this as well! And after that, you see a summary of MC's life after the crash. The village he was in threw rocks at him to garner sympathy from you, the reader, they all got killed off-screen in minutes, and a guy that may or may not have done it, takes in MC to train him. Then, MC has the audacity to complain about "master's cringe" after being mostly cringe himself. Immediately after, MC has his first psychotic break where his body moves on it's own. I don't get why, from a writing perspective. There's already so many mystery boxes, why add split personalities in the mix at this moment? Neither personality is charming or even a decent character, I don't care about them. Hell, MC barely cares about anything at all. It's one thing to be skeptical and on guard, but to just be a constant dick to people showing him hospitality is not a good look. And I don't care about how "rough his backstory" might be. He's obviously done work in civilized environments, it shouldn't be difficult to be a normal human being to another one.
Chapter two opens to meeting Mirai. A mute shut in that's overly attached to her brother. She's also 17, so for the love of whatever you pray to, don't put her in any adult situations. Sure, they don't explicitly say her age but MC is 19 and she is two years younger. She is a no fly zone. An attempt to be a cute mascot for the game and have yet another character in these adult games that act like they're eight years old. Why? I no longer care to know. Anyway, she was so distraught by MC's disappearance she hasn't spoken a word since. And all three of the younger girls MC has met show up in his room to wake him up because they are all in love with him, because anime. Are you bored yet? They loved him before the memory loss and even though he's a dick and will likely barely ever remember his past, at least for the next 6 years while the writer avoids writng the story, they still love him. Because character writing is hard. Nobume is tsundere, Akira is big-tiddy onee-san, and Mirai is the little sister type. I'm going to assume that Mirai will be every little sister type to fit whatever situation the story needs because writing is hard. And MC does the tried and true "Awkwardly stand there with his hand on his chin, acting as if everyone should stop while his under developed brain assesses the situation" This little tidbit has become a standard, and annoying, trope lately too. Everyone points and laughs, but it's legitimately just a bad writing habit for MC to just tell the reader what is currently happening. If you don't let the reader infer things, they won't have a stake in the world. Children's stories do this better. It'd be like if "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" instead of the boy telling the townspeople a wolf is coming, you get three pages of the boy thinking "And now I will go to the town again and tell them all a wolf is coming. It would be so funny to see them come running but no wolf is coming. I'm such a prankster and seeing them frustrated makes me laugh." Is that good storytelling? No. Then, suddenly, haha reclusive hacker girls that are in love with MC! So original! So Quirky! That's sarcasm, if you can't tell. How many games now is MC a secret agent/assassin/mercenary with a tech girl that's in love with him? All of them I'd wager. And by the scene of MC getting coffee with Nobume, the English disappears, unfortunately. Tropes aside, if the English proofreading was better and MC wasn't awful I'd have nothing to complain about up to this point. The only thing I don't understand, and likely never will this decade, is Nobume's character. It just doesn't make sense to me. She's mad at him for.... Something. And acts like an ass for... Some reason. She's also super strong and fast... For some reason. Maybe one day we'll know.
Eventually, MC visits Akira at work. He meets Hashimoto, likely someone responsible for the crash, and, shocker, doesn't like or care for him much. Essentially the place is Stark Industries. Everything's super advanced and there's even a regenerative medicine department headed by Akira. Which you soon learn that his mother cracked the code, MC is likely the results of regeneration. The reason he survived the crash. And a side effect is most likely the split personalities. And Akira can't figure out where their mother's research was headed. Oh darn. Did I figure it out too soon? I guessed all that my first playthrough, 3 years ago. Eventually MC talks to the two obsessed twin techies. They tell him the pillar families are powerful families with powerful connections. Because context clues didn't give that away? And he meets up with a girl he had a fling with to learn... Nothing, again. She's literally just there for a sex scene of some kind. She even verbally states that he is the only person she will sleep with while he can sleep around. Not even trying to hide it. It comes out of nowhere and is unearned. So you learn nothing, get possibly the only sex in the game still, then go to dinner and learn nothing again in the form or Rei's story. Fun. During Rei's story, the English gets EVEN WORSE, so be prepared for that. It's also at this point it dawned on me, Edgelord all knowng MC that everyone likes despite being a shit person, last name Yagami? Death Note. Almost got me, but I figured it out. And then the big shift in chapter three happens when personality 2 appears and you actually make choices. Revealing that I was right because it was telegraphed with a neon sign.
Finally, you learn a little bit, MC is actually Spiderman. Insert Madame Web meme here. MC even does the dumb "Thwip" with his hand after learning this. And after your first choice, the game tells you that you'll be making choices, as if that's a novel concept in a VN. Then, where the last version I played ended, MC going to MIG. MC meets Ruri, his new over-advanced AI that will no doubt fall in love with him. Because the 8 females already in game weren't enough, and the possible 8 more branch family females, lets add an AI! And the worst part is, the "advanced AI that can do it all" pretty much invalidates the usefulness of Diana and Artemis. If Ruri can hack into anything and find any info, what does he need them for? Then, suddenly, his family has mystical abilities and Maeda is now her own mystery box. So there's three or four mysteries going on and the plot has barely started. This will never end. Maeda even develops a personality and adds yet another LI. So we are at either 9 or 17, if the pillar families all have girls his age. After the training session it's clear there was no point in naming MC. Most decisions are Ren or Inei choices and it just feels like any agency I, the player, have is gone. They hard-track their personalites and do things to the extreme of either "Brutish dick" or "Conniving schemer" no in-betweens. On top of that, how Akira isn't related to them is lost on me. I read it a couple times and It just didn't translate well. Second marriage, I guess.
When MC FINALLY goes to school. Because BITCH YOU THOUGHT THIS WAS GONNA BE ANYTHING BUT A CRAP COLLEGE STORY?! Think again. Yeah, the genre of the game suddenly changes to "MC goes to college and all the girls fall in love with him" So I'm even more disappointed by the fact that there's such a long time between updates, the dev changes what the story's gonna be. There's too many layers. Anyway, when MC finally goes to school, the first thing that happens is a girl falls crotch first onto his face. Remember? Anime? Only this time, MC is so big and strong he doesn't fall over. Wow. So cool. It forces him to meet the last branch family member and she is the typical bullied outcast. This section highlights a MAJOR issue with the writing. Reika is now the ONLY character with any sort of build-up or depth. EVERYONE else is just this whacky caricature of an anime trope. She finally has a personality. Akira comes close, but is still so bland. So of the current 10 LIs only ONE is written with any personality or personability. That is not good. And right after the sudden genre change, it adds another thing: Murder Mystery. Are you serious? There is simply no good way or reason to have all these conflicting layers and mystery boxes in this story. My ONLY thought is this was supposed to be another throwaway amnesia incest story and suddenly the writer's interests changed. Then 6 months went by and their interests changed again and again. There is FAR too much going on. If you FOCUS on one of the layers of this convoluted story, I could see something good. But this is just too much. MC is invited to Shuu's office and is now tasked with finding a killer? To which MC stabs the guy over knowing his past? Edgelord MCs are honestly the worst. And after the QTE 2.0 he suddenly develops some new persona calling everyone nicknames? I just don't see any consistent direction in this story. Throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks is not how you write a good story. They legit did this to explain away the terrible character setup at the beginning of the game. I can't get over how annoying this is.
This game lacks focus. If anyone possibly disagrees with this point, they are blinded by "cute anime girls." What started as a boring and typical amnesia/incest story moved to mystery boxes and super powers. Then that added on MC goes to college and meets girls that love him instantly. Then it added crime noir. Then added slice of life gags. And I'm certain the list will go on. If this settled on a theme and stuck with it, this would be fairly charming. Hell, if they got rid of the two non sequitur nude scenes this could be an okay visual novel. (Let's be real this is barely an AVN, and I'm not even one to care about the amount of sex in these things) But as this drags on and on even the STYLE of the visuals has changed at least three times since the beginning of the game. It's weird, too. In chapter six(ish) they suddenly change to using the character sprites... But I think they're still full renders, instead of using Renpy's in-built character image system. So they're not even taking advantage of the engine? Why? And the fact that there's essentially three main protagonists is annoying. He completely changes his demeanor at the drop of a hat. There aren't even choices to do so, like the game said there would be, so you're given even less agency than you already have. I'm frustrated because I should be able to like this, but not even the translation quality is consistent. If "anime vibes" are all you need have a wild time with this. But there's only one sliver of a sex scene, so the horny brigade can't come in to defend this. And the writing is all over the place.
In summary, every chapter, almost every scene, feels like the English was proofed by someone different. There are lines in this I could barely understand then in the first half of chapter 6(or whatever the last chapter is) I forgot it had broken English for a minute, only for MC to eat his tongue and mess up again, eventually. The UI is MOSTLY customized, everything's still in the same place but all the pictures and stuff are edited. It looks decent, outside of the placement of the flower in the background. It makes the sliders in the preferences menu hard to read. The Art is great. Outside the issue of HS having very dark shadows in the eyes and the fact there are three different styles of art used through this, it looks as good as HS can get. The Dialogue, for the most part is really strong. I wish MC didn't think he was "oh-so charming" and the mute sister stuff is kinda just "look at this crazy pose for no reason." But it's not bad dialogue. The story is bad. Every update there's something completely new to focus on for no other reason than it took the writer 6 months to get back to working on it, so they forgot what they were doing. I just don't see a reason to have all these ridiculous layers and so many characters. If this cut back and focused on, maybe, Luna, Akira, Nobume, Reika, and Sakura this would feel so much better. The ONLY character, like I said, with anything deeper than a character trope is Reika. Akira has potential, and Sakura already has her "oh-so-tortured past" hinted at. But characters are already being made superfluous, MC is unlikeable, suddenly there's detective work to be done, and there's already been miles of filler content for no discernable reason. I get you want this to be light and fluffy at times, but it feels like it's forced at best and doesn't belong at worst. You have SOMETHING here, you just gotta find it and focus on it.
