Well, I FINALLY got around to finishing this. Took me waaaaaaaay longer than it should have... Part of it was RL getting in the way, part of it was me taking my time to savor the whole thing anyway and doing two full playthroughs, including fighting the EX Optional Boss on Normal. (I don't want to imagine fighting that stun-fest on hard....) However, I'd say the biggest problem was the performance issue the game has, aka, the fact that performance drops with every alt-tab you do, and keeps doing so until you have pictograms that last 30+ seconds every time any kind of dialog pops up. Performance seems to suffer for any session that's longer than about 1 hour 30 minutes as well.
I genuinely can't remember if the JP version had these issues. I don't think it did, since I remember being able to speed run it much more easily... but that might also be a matter of changed specs and operating system and yada yada. My current laptop may be waaaaaaaaaay better than what I had back when I played the JP game, but that doesn't mean it treats this particular game better... and It's an RPGM game with a lots of custom plug-ins and whatnot, and those are always finnicky.
Still, technical issues aside, this was an amazing bit of fun. The translation made everything I remembered about the game even better, and it finally allowed me to understand the details of the story that obviously completely eluded me before. There were a lot of things that I didn't know and didn't understand before, and it's nice to finally have the full picture.
About the only downside the game has, if you can call it that, is the fact that Eva never gets any lewds. As well as the fact that it's unclear if George survived or not. The game implied that he died... but it's honestly unclear. You never see him actually die after all and Eva's words at the end about him being saved might imply that he's still around. I hope he is, fucked up or no, the man earned his happy ending with Eva, so Imma gonna keep dreaming.
Beyond that, I suppose I can guess why this game didn't do as well as the circle hoped it would. In terms of gameplay and whatnot, it's definitely way better than anything else the circle has produced before or after. However, it has the issue that it came after Luviria, and Luviria did exactly one thing better than Nako's game... Luviria integrated its hentai with the story much better, and you only needed a single playthrough to get absolutely everything. No save scumming, no restrictions over the true ending. Nada. You could play and get everything as you went. The switch from chad demon lord rapist protagonist to magical girl rape-victim protagonist likely didn't help either.
The other is, hilariously, their rabid anti-piracy stance. Because of it, the indirect advertisement for this game was much lower than it is for other games. If they took a page out of ONEONE1's book or Acerola's, who don't give a flying fuck, this circle could easily be just as popular. Their art-style and content is definitely good enough to match those two, and they have the perk of trying out more new things with each of their games than either of the aforementioned groups.
In any case. Once more, thanks for the share and the translation. Maybe I'll drop a review too. For now, I'll and my ranting here.
