Get into the damn robot, Shinji. Except... not really.
What a confusing read it was, the simplest way to summarize this experience would be "aimless". But one thing at a time.
Game start promising enough, with us getting sent into the future and we just so happen to fight giant monsters in giant mechs from invading aliens. However this entire premise is simply never developed. There are, from my memory, whole 3 scenes in the game that are in any way connected to titular Mech's or the academy part. Outside those chosen scenes this could be a baseball camp and nothing would really change. Another issue is, in the lore of the world a giant amount of various refugee aliens came to the world prior to events of the game, yet our LI are 3 humans, one half human that looks like human, and one alien that looks like human, so this entire part is just completely unexplored.
The game also makes one of the worst first impressions you could ever give to the player, in the beginning our protagonist is an unimaginably chauvinistic, braindead, outstandingly rude sexist incomprehensible moron, yet somewhere couple episodes in he kinda becomes this zen monk of wisdom and equality, and then flip-flops in between those states as a full time schizophrenic. Following this observation, choices in this game are absolutely nonsensical and pointless, in general you are expected to understand personality of a character and act accordingly, but in here you will just pick options, check stat screen, see if sympathy rose up and then go back to check another choice, it's nigh impossible to gauge what is good and what isn't here.
Love interests are severely underdeveloped, each got a very small personal arc and that's it. Secondary characters just appear as a one time shag and get nuked from the plot entirely like poor doctor. Their models are fairly nice though. Except Mei, she looks horrifying.
And as a staple of such projects, insanely rushed, stupid and unsatisfying ending as a cherry on top.
So while the game starts overall with good intentions it just jumps from one corner to the other, never developing a singular of it's concepts, plotpoints or relashionships and simply can't focus on anything at all. Just an overall poor experience.
What a confusing read it was, the simplest way to summarize this experience would be "aimless". But one thing at a time.
Game start promising enough, with us getting sent into the future and we just so happen to fight giant monsters in giant mechs from invading aliens. However this entire premise is simply never developed. There are, from my memory, whole 3 scenes in the game that are in any way connected to titular Mech's or the academy part. Outside those chosen scenes this could be a baseball camp and nothing would really change. Another issue is, in the lore of the world a giant amount of various refugee aliens came to the world prior to events of the game, yet our LI are 3 humans, one half human that looks like human, and one alien that looks like human, so this entire part is just completely unexplored.
The game also makes one of the worst first impressions you could ever give to the player, in the beginning our protagonist is an unimaginably chauvinistic, braindead, outstandingly rude sexist incomprehensible moron, yet somewhere couple episodes in he kinda becomes this zen monk of wisdom and equality, and then flip-flops in between those states as a full time schizophrenic. Following this observation, choices in this game are absolutely nonsensical and pointless, in general you are expected to understand personality of a character and act accordingly, but in here you will just pick options, check stat screen, see if sympathy rose up and then go back to check another choice, it's nigh impossible to gauge what is good and what isn't here.
Love interests are severely underdeveloped, each got a very small personal arc and that's it. Secondary characters just appear as a one time shag and get nuked from the plot entirely like poor doctor. Their models are fairly nice though. Except Mei, she looks horrifying.
And as a staple of such projects, insanely rushed, stupid and unsatisfying ending as a cherry on top.
So while the game starts overall with good intentions it just jumps from one corner to the other, never developing a singular of it's concepts, plotpoints or relashionships and simply can't focus on anything at all. Just an overall poor experience.