Seriously. This was legit the absolute last place I'd ever expect to come out of an ending thinking(broadly) the same kind of thoughts that I thought coming out of Hotline Miami 2 of all things... That game completely indulged in over-the-top brutality and violence, getting the player into the "flow of gameplay" as you tore through stages, only to then dump a cold bucket of water on your head and make you stare at everything you did. Even the endings for both games were rather depressing in the broad scheme of the story, reinforcing the "an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" idea that the game had constantly been building towards. But the key thing that tied it all together was that, it raises the question of "Is violence okay in games, because no one is actually being hurt, even if it's bad IRL?", and genuinely leaves it open for the player to decide on their own.
Meanwhile here, both endings pretty clearly imply MC doesn't really get a happy ending. Sure the alt-ending he gets an eternal harem which seems cool, but even the narrator says that MC has lost something important about himself in the process, and that he won't really ever be able to return to society. But, unlike Hotline Miami, where the loop of being absorbed into the ultra-violence followed by being snapped out of it made it clear you
shouldn't be mindlessly indulging the bloodshed, here the big moral lesson just drops in at the very end.
Hiyori sorta brings it up at her 2 heart event, mentioning how "You're just like me now, a cruel sadist reveling in other's misery", but it never gets brought up again really, and MC does point out legit problems the girls all have. Natsuna cared more for her high horse position rather than actually inacting justice despite all she preached about it, even allowing herself to be swept up in the MC-hate train when they publicly outed his notebook even though she also started to get some doubts about Hiyori's claim, Hiyori is straight up a sociopathic sadist who only cares about other people when it benefits her, streaming and getting so frustrated over how she's viewed by others as a kid yet ruining MC's life without a second thought, and Mion falling into the cliche bully archetype of "hiding your insecurities by controlling and belittling others so you feel better in comparison".
So if it's meant to be an indulgent power fantasy, the ending feels conflictingly moral compared to the rest of the game, and if it's meant to be a moral lesson on hate fueling hate and making everyone suffer, why even make it so clearly a "porn game to fap to" in the first place?
I can't believe I'm genuinely mulling over the philosophical game design of a revenge-porn game here... What the fuck happened to my life...
